The AUKUS vision of a tri-nation security partnership to deliver next generation warfighting capabilities stands to be transformative for the industrial bases of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Its success demands much of each partner nation.
While Pillar I and the delivery of nuclear-powered submarines has dominated discussion, Pillar II presents a significant opportunity and challenge. The focus of Pillar II on harnessing undersea capabilities, Quantum, Advanced Cyber, Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, Hypersonics and Counter Hypersonics, and Electronic Warfare represents a vast undertaking. To maximise the potential for Australian industry, there is a clear need for increased dialogue at the national defence planning table through transparent and meaningful engagement.
The clear challenge now shared by Defence and industry is turning the “how” and “when” of Pillar II into a coherent, long-term, actionable roadmap. This includes solving the tri-nation challenge of collaboration without unnecessary duplication, and how to maximise our alignment.
A formalised process is needed for Australian industry and government to partner and have capacity to realistically contribute at the tri-national level.
The Government has recently released various reviews and strategy papers which provide guidance for Australian defence industry; including outlining seven key areas as part of its Sovereign Defence Industry Priorities (SDIPs).
Three key priority areas for Nova Systems, an Australian owned and controlled company of 1000 professionals globally, are Test and Evaluation, Certification and Systems Assurance (T&ECSA), Autonomous Systems and Digital Engineering.
T&ECSA was recognised as one of the SDIPs - and is arguably one of the most important.
It plays a critical role across all elements of the life of a platform or system and runs across all other SDIPs. As stated in SDIP 7:
“Its role is to assure that capabilities are safe and operationally viable through the provision of objective evidence to quantify the risk of new technologies, concepts or capabilities on warfighting operations”.
Achieving the Defence aim of “speed to capability” and delivery of “minimum viable capability” requires sufficient T&E, particularly a focus on testing early during the development process to identify and mitigate any deficiencies before they manifest themselves in capability shortfall. This will only become more important under the AUKUS agreement as we buy more capabilities from our partners. There’s also a clear opportunity to introduce greater T&E rigour in Research and Development and experimentation working with academia and research organisations.
For two decades, Nova Systems has been playing in the real-world traditional T&E space, while upgrading our services to innovate and meld this with modern T&E applications, such as digital and synthetic modelling.
Through Nova Systems’ T&E Centre of Excellence, we have invested in advanced training development, leveraging a combination of digital engineering, model-based systems engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), modelling and simulation and specialised new software tools.
This approach also extends to advancing our capabilities in autonomous and uncrewed systems, providing a range of capabilities including concept development, design, safety, integration, testing, implementation, and lifecycle support for remote and autonomous systems.
A key to unlocking the true potential of autonomous systems is Digital Mission Engineering, along with modelling and simulation. This approach provides a comprehensive understanding of their capabilities, limitations, and operational effectiveness. In other words, it can simulate missions and optimise them digitally before a client ever has to take the system out of the box or shed.
Defence recently released the Defence Digital Engineering Strategy 2024 which is a necessarily ambitious plan to reap the digital engineering benefits that can only be realised by broad application, integration and data sharing. The next step is a Defence-wide roadmap with digital engineering champions contributing – an area Nova will collaborate with Defence on to ensure these benefits are realised No AUKUS partner can afford to separately advance the different classes of advanced technologies. Rather, we should have focal areas of responsibility, allowing faster and more efficient capability development, bringing forward tangible contributions to the partnership without duplication and at speed. This approach would also assist in resolving workforce challenges across all three partners.