• A radar module built at Daronmont's Mawson Lakes facility. 
Credit: Daronmont Technologies
    A radar module built at Daronmont's Mawson Lakes facility. Credit: Daronmont Technologies
  • The interior of the PETRA module, which is fully transportable, has multiple configurations. Credit: Daronmont Technologies
    The interior of the PETRA module, which is fully transportable, has multiple configurations. Credit: Daronmont Technologies
  • The PETRA module built at Daronmont's Mawson Lakes facility. Credit: Daronmont Technologies
    The PETRA module built at Daronmont's Mawson Lakes facility. Credit: Daronmont Technologies
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In the latest tranche of Defence Innovation Hub contracts announced last week, the Commonwealth awarded $13.4 million to a group of five Australian companies for their work in developing some of the latest secret technologies for Australia’s defence.

The contracts covered work being performed in the fields of radar, sonar, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detection, data encryption and electronic support measures.

Notably, the $7.9 million contract to Daronmont Technologies represented the largest to be awarded by the Hub since its December 2016 inception.

The company has been working with DST Group on the development of an indigenous radar capability, essentially a deployable solution to facilitate the generation of surveillance data to support situational awareness.

Such technology is of interest to a number of projects in the land, maritime and aerospace domains where mobility has been identified as one of the principle design drivers.

ADM's attempts to understand more of what is going on behind the scenes in both this and the other affected fields were met with polite refusals, with Defence apparently extremely sensitive to any publicity surrounding the secretive technologies.

Daronmont Technologies business development manager Lee Stanley was however prepared to comment on the process of working with the Centre for Defence Capability (CDIC) and the Defence Innovation Hub which had been very constructive and would enable the technology to achieve operational maturity much faster than would otherwise have been the case.

“We were very impressed with the process overall; the CDIC advisors were indispensable to our success and the Hub staff were very transparent and supportive as we worked through the process together.” 

Stanley was particularly impressed that the Hub has thought carefully about an appropriate level of documentation to enable a relatively efficient process for industry.

“It’s a great project for us and the ADF – the contract is enabling us to recruit  and develop engineers and further develop our local South Australian supply chain; without this innovation support from Government it would have taken much longer for this technology to have found its way into ADF service.” 

Queensland-based Teledyne Defence Australia was awarded a $3.4 million contract for a project to develop a vehicle-mounted IED detection and clearance capability that uses an advanced radar system that could be integrated with existing ADF deployable vehicles.

Sonartech Atlas from NSW received $1.3 million to investigate the potential of improving sonar performance and classification of underwater acoustic signals. Another NSW company, Jenkins Engineering Defence Systems (JEDS), received $276,000 to explore a cost-effective microwave-band Radar Electronic Support system to provide automated warnings and recording capability of potential threat signals without the need for a dedicated expert operator.

ACT’s Quintessence Labs was awarded a $528,000 contract to develop a resilient encryption method that could protect sensitive data on mobile assets in uncontrolled or hostile environments through Virtual Zeroisation technology.

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