DSTO - New direction: New Chief Defence Scientist, new challenges for DSTO | ADM Oct 08
Australia’s new Chief Defence Scientist, Professor Robert Clark, takes the helm at DSTO just after the completion of a Companion Review to the Defence White Paper which examines DSTO’s current role and its future direction.
Gregor Ferguson
Professor Robert Clark of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been appointed Chief Defence Scientist and was due to assume his position this month.
“Professor Clark brings significant national and international expertise and a strong background in scientific research and is an eminent scientist in the field of quantum computing,” said Minister for Defence Science and Personnel Warren Snowdon.
“Professor Clark has also held senior appointments within universities and research councils and has extensive experience in collaborating with industry, government and defence agencies within Australia and overseas,” Mr Snowdon said.
For the first time in a generation, and possibly for the first time ever, Australia’s Chief Defence Scientist (CDS) and the professional head of DSTO will be a former member of the defence force.
Professor Clark spent 10 years as an officer in the RAN.
He left the service in the rank of Lieutenant to undertake a Ph.D in Physics at the University of New South Wales and Oxford University’s Clarendon Laboratory.
While its possible to make too much of 10 years’ service as a junior officer, the fact is, he has stood his watch aboard eight RAN ships, and as an exchange officer with the Royal Navy, and has direct, personal experience of the reality of operating a warship.
His scientific CV is what really matters in this context, however.
After a postdoctoral research position at the Clarendon, Professor Clark was appointed University Lecturer in Physics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Queen's College in 1984.
He returned to Australia in 1991 to take up the position of Professor of Experimental Physics at UNSW, where he has been based ever since.
Currently the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology at UNSW, Professor Clark in 1991 founded the National Magnet Laboratory and Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility.
In 2000 he established the Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, the world's largest Centre devoted to this new science, and has served as its Director since then.
Quantum computers have with potentially transformational applications in areas such as genetic engineering, biomedical science, weather prediction, finance and security.
DSTO is a sponsor of the Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, and the Centre also collaborates closely with leading research institutions in the USA and Europe, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the USA and Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK.
In August 2008 Professor Clark he won the Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science for his role in making Australia a world leader in nanotechnology and quantum computing.
Homework – the S&T Review
Once he takes up his new position, one of Professor Clark’s first pieces of homework will likely be the Science & Technology (S&T) Companion Review to the new Defence White Paper.
This was due for completion around September/October.
One purpose of the S&T Review is to determine where DSTO stands at present, where it needs to be in around 2020, and how it should get there.
ADM understands the Review has also examined other countries’ models for investing in and exploiting defence-related S&T and whether or not these should, and can, be adapted in some way for Australia’s needs.
Among the questions the Review is understood to be addressing are whether or not DSTO should remain part of Defence, and what aspects of DSTO’s activities and expertise its customers within Defence and the ADF believe are critical.
The Review has canvassed the views of most of the major stakeholders in Defence S&T: the ADF, the wider Defence organization, the DMO and analysts.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the Review concluded that DSTO is being pulled in too many directions at once: Defence is not a single customer but a complex tribe of (usually) overlapping interests and pre-occupations, and DSTO has somehow to satisfy them all.
One thing seems to be constant, however, and that is a requirement across the Defence organization as a whole for uncontaminated professional advice and for ongoing access to high technology developed by, or with, Australia’s key allies – principally the US, but also the UK and the major NATO European powers.
DSTO’s role in this sense is likely to remain unchanged: its S&T activities and Operational Analysis (see p106 for more) are designed to fulfill these critical functions and less of its resources go towards R&D (in the old fashioned sense of the expression).
It carries out research to expand and validate its own knowledge and under-pin the advice it provides to the ADF.
And because it is government-owned and therefore free of commercial taint, DSTO provides a secure mechanism for Australian participation in government to government research agreements, including most critically the Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP), the five power (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) defence research cooperation program.
This is a fact often ignored by commentators who call for DSTO to be privatized.
The Australian government’s ability to access and share advanced technology from its key allies is to a considerable degree the by-product of DSTO’s own credibility as a scientific authority and as a world leader in some niche but important technology areas such as HF radar and sonar.
These provide it with something it can bring to the table in exchange for the technology benefits Australia receives from these government to government engagements.
The creation of Qinetiq from the non-core elements of the former UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) is held up by some as a model for the evolution of DSTO.
But it is generally forgotten that the core elements of what is now the British government’s Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) remain in being for precisely the same reason DSTO exists – for example, it is the only UK agency involved in nuclear warhead research with the US.
The case for privatization
As some European powers are reported to have found, privatizing certain defence research and evaluation capabilities distances these from the customer and can reduce their value as a result.
This can also result in the closure of expensive, under-utilised but valuable research assets such as wind tunnels and the like, along with a dilution of the expertise remaining within the ‘government’ establishment.
As a research scientist of international renown himself, Professor Robert Clark will find that DSTO does a great deal less R&D than was once the case.
What DSTO’s customers, and especially the ADF, overwhelmingly demand from it is expertise in the here and now, not new product or long-range research – hence the oft-expressed support from the three services for bodies such as the Maritime Platforms Division (to support development of the Air Warfare Destroyer, LHD and replacement submarine), the Air Vehicles Division (to support life extension studies for the current and future RAAF fleet and Land Operations Division, to support current Army operations in the Middle East and closer to home.
DSTO’s own list of its key capabilities underlines this.
These capabilities include:
• Through-life support of air, maritime and land platforms, with a particular focus on technical performance, low cost maintenance and life extension.
• Operational analysis to assess the effectiveness of military operations as a basis for analysing current capabilities and determining priorities for the ADF’s future developments, acquisitions and tactics.
• Warfighter support - the provision of direct support to the warfighter through a mix of modelling and simulation tools combined with expertise in human sciences.
• Acquisition advice – the provision of scientific and technical advice on the acquisition of new equipment; DSTO also acts as technical adviser to the Capability Development Group and DMOs during the development of new capabilities and their introduction into service.
• Support for national security, which includes supporting Australia's defence against terrorism, contributing to wider, multi-agency security research tasks and conducting chemical/biological defence research.
So it seems unlikely that DSTO’s current posture will result in the creation of unique, new Australian-developed capabilities such as LADS, Jindalee, and Ikara, whose genesis lies in a different era of defence science in Australia.
That said, the recent establishment of the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) at Swinburne University places some of the emphasis back on R&D, in an area that bears directly on DSTO’s expertise in things like airframe structural analysis and testing.
It’s not known whether, or how much, the S&T Review will address the vexed question of commercialisation of DSTO’s R&D.
There’s a view that DSTO does so little real R&D these days that this isn’t an issue; and as far as Defence and the ADF are concerned, this isn’t and shouldn’t be a priority for the organisation.
But the fact remains that of the money spent in this country on defence-related R&D or S&T activities, at least 80 per cent of it, and probably a much higher proportion, is spent on and through DSTO.
And notwithstanding spectacular successes such as LADS, Nulka and JORN, DSTO and industry haven’t developed an efficient mechanism for commercializing DSTO’s R&D.
This is the environment Professor Chapman is entering.
Whether or not DSTO’s tight focus on its customer needs will keep the organisation refreshed, in an intellectual sense, and relevant through and beyond 2020 will probably be established by the Review; when this will be published is not clear at present.
Hornet centre barrels OK, says DSTO
The Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, and the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, Warren Snowdon, have announced that full-scale fatigue testing of RAAF Hornet airframes by DSTO may have saved Defence over $400 million.
“We are pleased to announce that extensive work by the DSTO and the DMO has determined that the centre barrel structure of the RAAF’s F/A-18 aircraft are not as fatigued as originally anticipated,” Fitzgibbon said.
This could reduce the number of F/A-18 Hornet aircraft requiring replacement of the fuselage centre barrel in Phase 3.2 of Project Air 5376 from 49 to just 10. By reducing the number of centre barrel replacements required, the DMO and DSTO have effectively increased the availability of aircraft for operational use.
DSTO conducted full-scale fatigue testing of ex-service centre barrels at its Fishermens Bend laboratory as part of the structural refurbishment program for the F/A-18 fleet in order to attain a more accurate assessment of the fatigue life of the centre barrel.
“The leading edge fatigue testing and analysis conducted by DSTO has shown that the actual life of the Hornet centre barrels is 10 per cent, or two years, greater than originally certified,” Snowdon said.
“These findings are thanks to Australia’s internationally recognised world-leading expertise in testing and managing ageing aircraft, and is the result of decades of experience developing this capability.”