EW: Does Aussie EW have a future? | ADM May 2010
Julian Kerr | Sydney
Speaking at the biennial Old Crows EW and Information Operations convention in Adelaide in April, McDowell, who heads the country's largest defence company and commercial EW organisation, acknowledged an element of bias.
But he drew a pessimistic picture of the implications flowing from an inability by Australia to maintain a self-reliant posture in EW - concerns echoed by fellow speaker Kim McCleery and touched on but not directly addressed by Air Commodore Andy Dowse, Director General Integrated Capability Development.
The future of the domestic EW sector is clearly a sensitive issue - several companies active in the field declined to discuss the subject on the record with ADM, citing industry-Commonwealth differences.
But the concerns highlighted by McDowell appear to generally reflect those held elsewhere within industry.
McDowell pointed out that EW first became a part of the Australian industrial landscape in the early 1980s when Australia could not longer get the support it needed from the US for the F-111's ALR-62 radar warning receiver.
"This heralded a significant hardening in US defence policy - no longer was the US prepared to release the software source code for its EW systems, regardless of national alliances," McDowell told the conference.
The ADF was thus left without the capability to develop effective mission libraries for a rapidly-evolving threat environment or to modify the system to suit the Australian region of operation or doctrine; a gap initially addressed by ad hoc measures and ultimately by the establishment of what is now known as JEWOSU (Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit).
Current industry capability, in conjunction JEWOSU and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), provided comprehensive operational support (including intelligence support), for airborne, maritime and, more recently with the counter-IED program, the land environment.
Self-reliance
"In an EW context, self-reliance (for Australia) not only means a capability to be self-reliant in the development, validation and production of mission data files for its EW systems, it is also critical that Australia has access to the operational software and equipment data to be able to modify, adapt and support its systems to keep pace with the ever-changing threat environment," McDowell commented.
Australia was already affected by a very restrictive US national disclosure policy that prevented access to the fundamental data required to re-program and maintain some of the EW systems it had procured.
"There is currently no facility within Australia to re-program the directed infrared countermeasures system..... while the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is prepared to establish such a facility and staff the facility with US nationals, this comes at a significant price to Australia."
(Although McDowell did not specify the platforms involved, the Northrop Grumman Nemesis DIRCM suite equips the RAAF's six Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft, is to be fitted to its five KC-30A multi-role tanker-transports, and is slated for the C-130J medium transports).
With Defence through the 2009 Defence Capability Plan (DCP) seeking to procure nearly all its EW capability of-the-shelf, Australian industry becomes restricted to the provision of mission support and through-life sustainment-related activities as the only remaining avenue to shore up business viability.
"If this involvement is further reduced or eliminated as a result of procurement decisions and policies, the Australian EW industry will disappear; a capability that has taken over 25 years to establish," McDowell said.
"If the EW industry simply goes into a sustainment and support mode, it will loose the key design and development skills necessary to upgrade or even address fundamental obsolescence issues with the capability required - we will become forever reliant on an off-shore OEM who will inevitably take decisions which are not aligned to our strategic needs."
The publicly-released 2009 DCP had little to offer to the Australian EW industry and it was unclear from the plan what, if any, contribution local industry could make.
This environment was a serious threat to Australia's ability to integrate overseas-procured EW systems on legacy Australian platforms and its ability to develop unique EW capabilities for the Australian region of operation and doctrine.
"It will also lose the bargaining power it currently has in gaining access to sensitive technologies and information - commonly known as the ‘EW trade goods' - something that only comes as a result of having a strong demonstrable EW industry base."
Calling for a careful review of government EW procurement policy, McDowell suggested industry should be asking Defence to provide detailed classified briefings on the EW aspects of the classified programs not included in the public DCP "to gain a consolidated and holistic picture of current and emerging requirements" over the next 10 years and beyond.
As far as BAE Systems Australia was concerned, its major EW programs would be completed by the end of 2010.
While some SMEs were likely to linger on, it would not be too long before they too felt the pinch, meaning a capability required to meet the niche technology areas eventually identified by government as Priority Industry Capabilities (PIC) would take years to reconstitute.
PIC status
The government's nomination of EW as a PIC also required clarification - what sovereign capability was wanted, if any, or was this a value-for-money policy tradeoff?
Echoing McDowell's themes, Kim McCleery, former Business Development Manager at Tenix Systems and now a defence business consultant, said that government making MOTS and COTS solutions the benchmark against which any indigenously-developed capability was to be assessed "no doubt provides great encouragement for foreign suppliers and little comfort for local EW companies.
"Unless Defence commits to the development and acquisition of indigenous EW products, the fulcrum will be displaced even further in an already unbalanced playing field."
In McCleery's view, the contracting mechanisms for the acquisition of MOTS/COTS systems did not serve product development well.
"The hiatus between funding of phases of development only prolongs development programs which should otherwise progress in a timely manner to ensure the engineering benefits remain available and the ADF gains the operational benefit....
"A strategic approach must be adopted to determining what indigenous EW development is needed and to its funding and oversight."
McCleery envisaged a future where the EW function would in time become a subsystem or element rather than a stand-alone system in its own right.
"Taking advantage of these technology developments demands a collaborative approach between academia, defence science and industry in conducting research to transition technology from discovery to operational EW systems - a coordinated approach involving collaborative planning and execution by all parties is the most cost-effective approach."
While intelligence was a Defence responsibility, industry needed access to intelligence products to design, develop, test and evaluate EW subsystems and systems.
On the assumption of a cogent strategy, there was good reason for EW participants in each of the components that constituted Australia's national EW capability to have visibility of that strategy and other Defence EW plans and policy at a classified level.
A strategic EW development program must included DSTO and be managed within the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) as a continuous program, not separately through the Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) program, CTD extension and acquisition programs "which can only be considered a lottery from industry's perspective."
McCleery stressed the importance of self-reliance in operational support, but saw the Joint Strike Fighter program as presenting Australia - and other international partners in the program - with a dilemma.
"No doubt everyone, including Israel, is struggling with this instantiation of US foreign policy but how will operational support be provided and how will Australia achieve self-reliance?" he asked.
COTS/MOTS
Discussing EW requirements in the contact of the DCP, Air Commodore Andy Dowse, Director General Integrated Capability Development, confirmed the COTS/MOTS system as the exemplar to which other options might be compared.
"This has advantages in ensuring we don't gloss over the challenges that may be associated with a developmental or integration-heavy alternative, but it does not discount such alternatives," he said.
A small percentage of EW proposals not included in the 2009 DCP included the ‘core' projects that arose out of the EW capability development strategy produced in the lead up to the 2009 Defence White Paper and Force Structure Review.
"I do not expect that the planned improvements to the next DCP will extend to inclusion of these classified proposals," AIRCDRE Dowse said.
"I understand that this makes it difficult for industry to do its own strategic planning.
"However, we will resolve this issue by focusing our industry engagement in relation to these projects through other mechanisms that are not in the public domain."
AIRCDRE Dowse said the classified work involved two tranches - remediation and enhancement.
Remediation was currently in the requirements phase, while the enhancement tranche was scheduled for mid to late decade.
The immediate focus was on remediation of the ADF's existing EW capability.
This would upgrade and extend current land and maritime EW, but would also include the development of joint operational support arrangements.
Before moving to the enhancement tranche, a phase of work would review, reconcile and reform EW by continuing to review future EW priorities, learning from the remediation activity, investing in science, technology and industry, improving joint EW education ad training, and shifting conceptually and culturally towards the vision to force-level EW.
"The enhanced EW investment then is likely to replace and enhance EW capabilities across all three environments, as well as further invest in the joint analysis and dissemination support to force level EW," he said.
Capability Development Group was working with DMO to identifying the future requirements for EW and to get a sense of which aspects may be best served by Australian industry.
In the real world
However, Australia needed to be realistic about the extent of its sovereign EW capability.
"There are some aspects that we need control over, such as operational support and validation; others that we need to influence; there are opportunities for us to provide sustainment and niche development of EW systems, and there are some aspects of EW in which the ‘fitted with' and MOTS equipment will likely be the best option," AIRCDRE Dowse said.
Having said that, it was "not beyond the realms of possibility" that certain aspects of EW industry capability might benefit from targeted investment so such sovereign options could be retained into the future.
AIRCDRE Dowse noted that EW projects not in the public DCP had been discussed with key EW industry players, notably via the Australian Defence Information and Electronic Systems Association (ASIESA), and a Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) EW workshop held last year.
"As we do progress each project, industry will be engaged on a restricted basis where appropriate and in line with usual practices."
But he cautioned: "While we are and should remain interested in opportunities and innovation, it is important to remember that frankly, Defence's interests are driven by what EW capabilities we need and can afford, and this may not always align with industry's priorities."