The first major test of the acquisition powers of the Defence department’s new Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) will pass a major milestone next month with a competitive “fly-off” of prototypes developed by local drone makers.
The Sovereign UAS Challenge being pursued by ASCA has attracted criticism for a range of perceived shortcomings. It’s sub-scale. The investment is tiny. It doesn’t involve new science or new technology.
But the technology is not the point, it is the acquisition process that is potentially game-changing here.
A week ago, 11 companies were given a modest, $110,000 contract to built a prototype Uncrewed Aerial System (a drone) in the sub-2 kilogram that can be tested in front of Defence officials from all branches of the services in March.
All but one of the companies are headquartered in Australia, underlining the ‘sovereign’ component of the challenge.
In addition to a prototype drone, each company must also submit a production plan, outlining how they intend to scale the manufacture of their product – as well as submit supply-chain risk outlines.
The process so far has happened at lightening speed when compared to a standard Defence procurement.
The ASCA was stood up at the beginning of July last year. The Sovereign UAS Challenge was published on July 31, and ASCA engaged with about 250 respondents to that challenge through August.
Contracts were signed in December and the fly-off will occur in March. That’s very fast.
The proof of the process will be in whether one of the companies – or even several – are given contracts to build thousands of these drones in Australia to supply to Defence, and to other government customers like Border Force, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.
Defence chief scientist Professor Tanya Monro said the ASCA deliberately chose these small drones as the first challenge. The technology is almost at commodity consumer level – but the point is to refine the engagement, assessment and acquisition process, which can then be applied to more complex systems.
“Defence needs drones, from the smallest class (of aerial surveillance system) right through to the extra-large un-crewed submarines and the equivalent in the air,” Professor Monro said.
“What we’re doing with this is picking the easiest use-case to kind of flush through a new approach to how we acquire autonomous systems,” she said.
Because if you have to use the standard Defence procurement procedures “you’re almost guaranteed to have obsolete equipment by the time you acquire it, just because of the pace of change in this space”.
“We are really trying to change that.”
Professor Monro said ASCA had modelled its Sovereign UAS Challenge a little bit like what the US has done through its Replicator program.
“[Replicator] is drone and autonomy focused, but it’s not so much about developing the autonomy but rather changing the acquisition approach so that you can acquire autonomy at the right speed,” she said.
The Sovereign UAS Challenge has a long way to run yet. Actual contracts to procure drones still need to be signed, the companies still need to produce the drones at modest levels, and ultimately the process must result in a commercially sustainable business (or multiple businesses) that now have this drone production capability.
The only way this works is if defence is able to follow through in a reasonable timeframe with actual orders for product. The proof will be in the eating, and the fact that the most senior levels of the Defence hierarchy are driving the program (including the Vice-Chief of Defence Force who is an active participant) is critical.
Changes like this “don’t happen from the bottom up. You really need the seniors to all really want to change the system.”
The industry challenges are about speed to acquisition. The Sovereign UAS Challenge was Defence asking industry “what have you have you got in this space (in this case drones), what can we get from you now, or what have you got that we can help develop quickly”.
“It’s about the stuff that’s either ready or near-ready with a bit of support,” Professor Monro said. “So ASCA’s role in this might be just to provide funding to get companies to the point where they can deliver [a capability] in three, six or nine months.”
ASCA, which this week appointed its interim chief Professor Emily Hilder permanently into the role, is also running a program of ‘missions’ – slightly longer-term projects that have the similar dual aim of getting capability into the hands of warfighters, as well as production capability into domestic industry.
“Missions are a little bit more ambitious in that they are things that would take two or three years to get capability into the hands of the warfighter.
“They start with problems that the VCDF has signed off on. And we put together teams under a mission leader, who can come from anywhere across the system.”
The missions look at the capability that different parts of the systems have right now, and then identify the capability that needs to be developed together by different parts of the system.
Current missions include one looking at how Australian Defence can penetrate and degrade advanced integrated air missile defence systems, so that effective long range strikes can be conducted. Another is focused on improving the processing and synthesis of large amounts of intelligence data.
“We want to broker the creation of teams that are able to do that. Some of it will be R&D and Unis, but most of it will be SMEs and larger companies bringing up what they have, and helping us to shape it into something specific that we can give to the warfighter,” Professor Monro said.
If ASCA’s Sovereign UAS Challenge seems like a modest start, it has been very deliberately chosen.
“We got a bit of criticism, to be honest at the start, because there’s no new science here, there’s no new technology. But that’s not really the point,” Professor Monro said.
“The point is that Australia needs a way to be able to acquire this kind of stuff at scale and at the same time be supporting its industry.
“So, this is the missing glue.”
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