Defence’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator is firing on all cylinders, according to its head Professor Emily Hilder, who says she is “surprised” by how much work her small team has chewed through in just over a year.
As the accelerator moves into its second year of operations, Professor Hilder told InnovationAus.com that work on all programs is well underway, and that contracts are beginning to flow.
Contrary to assumptions that “being within a large organisation would slow [ASCA] down”, the ability to leverage the Defence department’s existing systems and processes, as well as consult closely with the Australian Defence Force on their needs, “actually sped us up”, she said.
Contracts have been signed with three companies under the Sovereign Uncrewed Aerial System challenge, and contract negotiations are underway for the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies program, which focuses on longer term research and development.
Negotiations are underway with 23 companies and universities, with an “even mix” across the quantum technologies stream and the synthetic media and disinformation stream.
While the 2023 Defence Strategic Review recommended that “ASCA must be an unencumbered entity outside of Defence”, Professor Hilder said being established within the department allowed it to leverage existing support infrastructure, rather than developing its own.
“There might have been assumptions that being in a large organisation would slow us down, but it’s actually sped us up, and that’s because we’ve been supported to do things differently, even within that large organisation.”
Part of this support has come from Defence’s overall shift to simplify procurement and contracting frameworks, including under the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).
This is based on a philosophy of using simple contracting arrangements rather than complex ones that “try and take away all potential risk to the Commonwealth”. As such, ASCA is using contracting approaches that already existed in Defence, but weren’t frequently used.
“We have a lot of scope to be able to improve our contracting but it requires us to use the rules to the best of their extent,” Professor Hilder said.
“We can start with a simpler contract and think about how we get to a meaningful and acceptable level of risk that we share with our industry partners.”
ASCA’s focus on co-design has enabled contracting arrangements tailored to what an SME can deliver.
“We create the solution together, which means that rather than just asking for a bunch of information and interacting through emails… we’re actually developing the program of work together, often in the same room, having more direct conversations.”
The unit is also building on co-design lessons from the $180 million Ghost Shark project delivered by defence company Anduril under the Next Generation Technologies program, a legacy program now managed by ASCA.
The Ghost Shark project had been co-developed with the Royal Australian Navy and Defence Science and Technology Group, with development activity that resembled an ASCA mission but did not yet have a “viable transition pathway” from prototype development to production.
“Once we’d identified a viable transition pathway, it made sense to use this as our pathfinder mission, as something that we could use to learn from and help us be better prepared for our future ASCA missions.”
Professor Hilder said one of the key lessons had been that “sometimes developing the physical asset or technology” can be easier than approval processes within the department.
“[Ghost Shark] has helped us to test our processes and understand in terms of our approval processes where we can speed things up and where we shouldn’t,” she said.
These include process to “make sure that things are appropriately certified for use, and then making sure we have the workforce that can use it, and all of the things that we need to maintain and sustain a capability”.
While most of ASCA’s work is progressing towards filling known capability gaps, under specified challenges and problem statements, Professor Hilder said the upcoming pitch day would be an opportunity for about 30 businesses and universities “to tell us about the things that we don’t know”.
“Sometimes you don’t even conceive a problem because you couldn’t conceive that there was a solution,” Professor Hilder said.
Looking ahead, the ASCA chief said “we really only just got started on things, so it’s going to be nice to, as we grow and refine, become a bit more familiar in what we’re doing”.
“But it’s all really exciting if I’m honest,” Professor Hilder said.
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