{"id":55312,"date":"2020-04-23T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=55312"},"modified":"2020-04-23T15:22:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T05:22:00","slug":"harnessing-defences-technological-strengths-for-combat-and-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/harnessing-defences-technological-strengths-for-combat-and-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Harnessing Defence\u2019s technological strengths for combat and coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia has so far managed the Covid-19 pandemic as well as anywhere else on the planet, except perhaps our near neighbour New Zealand or the vibrant techno-democracy of Taiwan.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s lucky, because if our federal, state and territory governments and our population had not cooperated on the drastic social-distancing measures put in place in the past few weeks, the horrific scenes we\u2019ve seen in New York would be happening right now in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.<\/p>\n

In that alternative universe that we were just a few days and decisions away from, we wouldn\u2019t be hearing restive Australians asking what all the fuss is about. We\u2019d all be angry and energised about the lack of protective equipment and ventilators in our overwhelmed hospitals and we\u2019d all be asking why our governments and our companies couldn\u2019t supply us with what we urgently needed.<\/p>\n

That alternative future we have so far narrowly avoided has a close connection to our $40 billion per annum defence organisation, because the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force have some eerily similar needs for rapid development and production of technology.<\/p>\n

So, defence is also the organisation that we should be able to turn to for rapid development and production of systems\u2014whether ventilators or other equipment\u2014in future crises, military or otherwise. That\u2019s the advantage organisations with big budgets and high technology needs have, if orchestrated and organised properly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not news to anyone involved in defence policy and capability that the rapid change in civil technology is also affecting the balance of advantage between the world\u2019s militaries. For Australia and our allies, there\u2019s a lot of bad news here about Chinese, Russian, Iranian and even North Korean militaries\u2019 and intelligence services\u2019 rapid development and adoption of technologies. Terrorist organisations like Islamic State (no, they\u2019re not dead, not even resting) are also skilled at rapidly making and fielding very dangerous systems\u2014improvised explosive devices, armed drones and even cyber systems.<\/p>\n

Depressingly, our defence organisation, like numerous Western militaries, is struggling to cope with the pace of change. Instead, it has doubled down on its long lead time approach to developing and acquiring military equipment, which is why we see the bulk of the government\u2019s $200 billion integrated investment program for defence going into ships, submarines and big armoured vehicles that are taking years\u2014decades, in the case of the ships and future submarines\u2014to design, build and get into service.<\/p>\n

Even if these lumbering capability programs are still useful when they eventually turn up, they won\u2019t succeed alone. The big manned subs will need to work with legions of small unmanned, disposable systems that can inform and protect them against enemy \u2018kill webs\u2019 of manned and unmanned systems. The same is true for the air force\u2019s joint strike fighters, the navy\u2019s future frigates and the army\u2019s big armoured vehicles.<\/p>\n

So, our defence organisation will need to do two things. Operationally, Defence and the ADF need to be able to respond to technological and tactical surprises, like when an adversary unexpectedly fields a new and highly destructive weapon such as a directed energy gun, or uses a biotech weapon that \u2018out-stealths\u2019 the most advanced system in Australia\u2019s or America\u2019s arsenal. And, to do so, they must be able to out-innovate adversaries. That\u2019s done by developing and fielding new weapons and protective systems very fast, whether they are countermeasures that protect against the adversary\u2019s weapons or even more powerful or effective weapons that overturn the adversary\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n

The ADF has done this before as a one-off, crisis-driven exercise. That story is told in Brendan Nicholson\u2019s history of the Bushmaster protected mobility vehicle and the counter-IED systems used with it during Australia\u2019s part in the Afghanistan war. So, it\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

But Defence needs to get beyond one-off, ad hoc solutions for this abiding technological problem. That can only be done by creating a focal point in Defence that has this as its primary task.<\/p>\n

A seed for this approach is Defence Minister Linda Reynold\u2019s announcement<\/a> that Chief Defence Scientist Tanya Monro is heading up a new Defence-led rapid response group. Its task is to \u2018help increase domestic stocks of invasive ventilators, as part of Australia\u2019s response to the Covid-19 outbreak\u2019. It will do this by coordinating \u2018the activities between public and private stakeholders, \u2026 harnessing Defence Science and Technology\u2019s capabilities and facilities, and utilising existing expertise in specialist research engineering and technology development\u2019.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a deep irony here, though: the government is creating this group because Defence has the latent capacity to do this urgent work well by using its own scientific and engineering expertise, and by taking advantage of partners it already has in academia and industry. But it has no standing arrangement or dedicated section that takes advantage of these latent strengths and applies them to meet the ADF\u2019s own already obvious and urgent military needs.<\/p>\n

The new group will undoubtedly do fantastic work. The obvious question, however, is why such a group wasn\u2019t already part of Defence\u2019s permanent structure. If it had been, not only would the ADF be able to keep up with and outpace potential adversaries\u2019 capability development, but Defence would also not need to stand up an ad hoc group in a time of crisis. We would be weeks ahead on the ventilator challenge by now.<\/p>\n

May Monro succeed beyond her and Reynolds\u2019s wildest expectations. And may this lead to Defence doing what the future military operational environment, and our current pandemic, require: creating and operating a permanent, well-resourced rapid response group. That will mean that in future times of military conflict, or grave national crisis like we have now, Australia will be able to rapidly develop, manufacture and operate machines and systems we need urgently in numbers. This is only going to be more necessary in our turbulent future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia has so far managed the Covid-19 pandemic as well as anywhere else on the planet, except perhaps our near neighbour New Zealand or the vibrant techno-democracy of Taiwan. That\u2019s lucky, because if our federal, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":55314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2658,983,332],"class_list":["post-55312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus","tag-pandemic","tag-technology","dinkus-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHarnessing Defence\u2019s technological strengths for combat and coronavirus | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/harnessing-defences-technological-strengths-for-combat-and-coronavirus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harnessing Defence\u2019s technological strengths for combat and coronavirus | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia has so far managed the Covid-19 pandemic as well as anywhere else on the planet, except perhaps our near neighbour New Zealand or the vibrant techno-democracy of Taiwan. 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