The two Australian companies who won contracts after last year’s AUKUS Innovation Challenge, PentenAmio and Advanced Design Technology, are expected to demonstrate their new Electronic Warfare (EW) technologies at the end of this calendar year, according to ASCA head Major General Hugh Meggitt.
Their contracts, signed with ASCA, the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, will see the two Canberra-based companies develop and demonstrate prototypes of their EW systems in an operational construct. Present at the demonstration, the location of which has not been disclosed, will be Capability Managers or their representatives from each of the three services and the Joint domain who will decide how the systems might apply in their domains also.
Depending on how well the prototype works and also how cost-effectively its technology can be adapted for different domains, the two companies’ technologies could enter service with one or multiple parts of the ADF, or with none.
MAJGEN Meggitt emphasised that the AUKUS Innovation Challenge is an Innovation Incubation activity rather than a formal ASCA Mission, so there is no guaranteed path to an ADF production contract and frontline service.
PentenAmio has developed a multi-spectral, multi-domain electronic deception capability. The publicity shy Advanced Design Technology is a specialist consultant and designer of complex electronic and EW equipment; the company is producing an undisclosed EW payload as part of the challenge. Adelaide-based Inovor Technologies was also named a winner in Stage 1 of the Challenge but, according to MAJGEN Meggitt, ASCA judged that its (undisclosed) EW technology didn’t represent sufficient value for money under the terms of the Challenge, so the company wasn’t awarded a follow-on contract.
In all, Defence received 103 submissions from 79 separate respondents. Some 92 of the submissions were from industry and 11 from academia, he said, and it was clear they all understood what ASCA was looking for.
“It was a really great indication of the depth of Australian innovation capacity and the potential to expand the defence industrial base,” MAJGEN Meggitt said.
The 2024 AUKUS Innovation Challenge received 173 submissions in total from the three partner nations, but ASCA hasn’t disclosed the number of submissions it received for the 2025 Maritime Innovation Challenge. MAJGEN Meggitt said that, in the 2024 challenge, each country judged its own entries and will work independently to commercialise the outcomes. He pointed out that part of the purpose of the inaugural Awards was to see examine and highlight how each country’s innovation system works, including in a resource-constrained environment: it’s not just about money, but also about technical and capability management specialists to assess submissions and manage subsequent stages.
The only significant change between last year and this year’s Challenge is that this time all three countries will assess all of the submissions trilaterally: that way, he said, all three countries will have access to ‘best of breed’ technologies in undersea communications. This is perhaps the most significant lesson learned from the inaugural Challenge.
Given that EW and, in 2025, undersea communications is notoriously difficult, ADM asked MAJGEN Meggitt if ASCA and its partner, the UK Defence and Security Accelerator DASA) and the US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) had set the bar too high in technology terms.
“These capabilities do represent a challenge, but quite frankly we should be ambitious,” he admitted
The 2025 AUKUS Maritime Innovation Challenge, which focusses on undersea communications and C2, was launched not long after ASCA had moved from being a sibling of Defence’s Science and Technology Group (DSTG) to the Vice Chief of the Defence Force (VCDF) Group, though this change had no impact on how ASCA handled the Challenge. At around the same time MAJGEN Meggitt took over from his predecessor, Professor Emily Hilder, who had set up ASCA and oversaw its first successes.
ASCA is now closely aligned with key players in VCDF’s Group, including the two-star Heads of Force Design, Force Integration and Strategic Plans. MAJGEN Meggitt emphasised the organisation’s purpose and the reason why it moved to the VCDF Group: “ASCA’s mission is to accelerate the development and transition of asymmetric capabilities into the ADF through innovation in order to meet Defence’s priority needs,” he explained.
The three ‘strands’ to ASCA operations, Missions, Innovation Incubation and Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, are symbiotic but each are designed to achieve different things, he points out. The Missions are designed with a clear path to service – if they work within a two or three year frame. If they don’t, or can’t, Missions come with off-ramps. The Innovation Incubation program funds projects to identify and develop solutions that address capability priorities approved by the VCDF but will not necessarily lead to a production contract.
And the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies ‘stream’, which runs on an annual cycle with priorities articulated via Opportunity Statements, helps to ‘future proof’ Defence by researching leap-ahead technology and asymmetric capabilities. Operating on a three to five-year timeframe it doesn’t necessarily lead to a production contract but could spin-off new technologies and concepts that do.
“ASCA’s mission remains extant but it now sits within Defence’s strategic centre - to remain aligned with and be responsive to Defence priority capability needs,” MAJGEN Meggitt said.