Australia’s Defence Forces (ADF) will implement a new Digital Engineering Strategy to help the Commonwealth streamline its acquisition process and address operational gaps.
Built upon digital transformation programmes undertaken by the US Department of Defense (DoD), the engineering strategy outlines Defence’s commitment to streamline processes through an approach that better connects people, tools and data.
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The outcome will result in increased collaboration with industry, better decision making and faster introduction of capability across the ADF.
“By working more closely with industry in this space, existing partners and small to medium enterprises will have the opportunity to contribute to the design of shared collaborative platforms, delivering speed to capability in a secure and streamlined digital environment,” outlined the Deputy Secretary for the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Chris Deeble.
So far it has yet to be seen what this strategy will look like in its details. The ADF will work in close consultation with industry and universities to develop a greater understanding of digital engineering practices for collaboration.
What will this look like?
Australia’s forthcoming digital transformation will be modelled on US DoD processes.
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By GlobalDataIn mid-July 2024, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies spoke to Dr Radha Plumb, the DoD’s Chief Digital Officer, who outlined the American model, which he asserts hinges on artificial intelligence (AI).
“I think the good news for DoD AI is we have really strong technical foundations and we have proven out now over the last year-and-a-half an experimentation-based approach that allows us to rapidly accelerate technology solutions into fielded capabilities.
“I think part of this [is] what doe sthe government need to do? Like, to enable this commercial technology to… meaningfully be adopted, we need these kinds of environments that can take the data in the department, mash it up against commercial technology, and see sort of what are the tech solutions that are actually solving our capability gaps?”
Tapping into SME innovation in Australia
A longstanding problem for Western governments has been their lack of agility to derive innovation from small-to-medium size enterprises (SME). Of course, governments cannot fund every concept on the market, and they have come to rely on larger primes based on their enduring relationships.
Both have wrestled with how far either side must concede to successfully cultivate a more diverse industrial supplier ecosystem that leverages SME innovation when it emerges. This remains a potential operational gap that the ADF may need to overcome through its new Digital Strategy.
Typically, the UK and US governments have approached this dilemma with a competitive procurement process, stripping their prescriptive requirements, to enable SME competition.
At the end of April, the US DoD accepted Anduril, a non-prime, in the competitive procurement process for its future crewed-uncrewed teaming concept: the Collaborative Combat Air programme. At the time, a company spokesperson noted that the decision “signals a demand for continued expansion of the defence industrial base.”
Likewise, in July, the UK Ministry of Defence released a notice broadening the scope of suppliers in the existing uncrewed aerial system heavy-lift capability framework.
The MoD aims to accelerate numerous concepts to better understand its options on the market while also ensuring it has access to them as technology evolves. No limit has been placed on the number of concepts that may be developed, but certain factors will need to be considered first, not least funding availability.
