Lockheed Martin Australia, in collaboration with UNSW and Adelaide University researchers, and delivered through Lockheed Martin's Advanced Systems & Technologies (AST) R&D team, six R&D projects are underway and being supported by the Defence Trailblazer.
The projects are building advanced capabilities in hypersonics, space systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to inform their Southern Shield anti-access, area-denial R&D strategy.
AST is Lockheed Martin’s first and most advanced multidisciplinary R&D facility located outside the United States. AST has established a coordinated, national R&D effort designed to rapidly demonstrate and de-risk advanced capabilities addressing Australia’s defence needs as set out in Defence’s National Defence Strategy (NDS).
Southern Shield provides the mission-driven framework for coordinating R&D partnerships that allow advanced technologies to be rapidly integrated, demonstrated and evaluated at a system level.
“The Southern Shield R&D strategy is designed to provide a core innovation system that can be applied to multiple programs required to achieve the vision of Australia’s Future Integrated Force,” Director of AST at Lockheed Martin Australia, Tony Lindsay, stated.
The program is designed to rapidly deliver new sovereign technologies for Defence hypersonics, counter-hypersonics, and space-related capabilities. The R&D collaboration further strengthens the strategic partnership between Lockheed Martin and Defence Trailblazer.
Lockheed Martin played a key role in the co-development of Defence Trailblazer’s Combat Systems Engineering Micro-credentials, delivered by Adelaide University and UNSW.
“Lockheed Martin Australia has demonstrated ongoing dedication to Defence Trailblazer’s R&D and workforce portfolios, investing in Australian technologies and supporting the development of a future defence-ready workforce," Executive Director at Defence Trailblazer, Sanjay Mazumdar, highlighted.
“This suite of collaborative projects will bring momentum for advanced hypersonics and space sensing technologies to Defence through an integrated systems approach. We are proud to support Lockheed Martin Australia in delivering advanced, transformative operational capabilities across all domains.”
Three of the projects are aligned with the strategic Defence priority of Hypersonics & Counter-Advanced Threats, by enhancing critical sovereign capabilities for vehicle design and machine learning capabilities.
The projects are led by chief investigator and Defence Trailblazer’s UNSW Theme Lead for Defensive Hypersonics & Counter-measures, Andrew Neely, and partner investigator at Lockheed Martin Australia, Scott Beinke.
The sovereign rapid aerodynamic design tools project investigated and developed methods for rapidly predicting the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic vehicle geometries using analytical, empirical, and computational methods.
The aerothermal shape distortion of hypersonic vehicles project extends existing collaborative research to model how aerothermal heating distorts the shape of hypersonic vehicles and investigates the impact of these effects on the performance and controllability of hypersonic systems.
“By developing these methods for predicting the performance of hypersonic systems, the projects are providing tools and insights to improve early performance analysis and later detailed design of future hypersonic vehicles,” Beinke affirmed.
The analysis methods and R&D from these projects are being applied to the design of a flight system in the Common Front End (CFE) hypersonic flight testbed project. The overall goal of the CFE project is to develop a high-speed flight testbed capability that can accommodate multiple experiments to enable greater access to flight testing opportunities.
“This increased access is needed to accelerate the pace of hypersonic and countermeasures technology development for the benefit of both established and emerging defence industry players and therefore for Defence,” Neely explained.
“UNSW Canberra has a strong relationship with Lockheed Martin Australia, and we welcome the opportunity to continue to work collaboratively to develop and test these systems, leveraging our world-class hypersonic capabilities and facilities.”
As one aspect of the Southern Shield anti-access/anti-denial (A2/AD) technology development, Lockheed Martin is developing and integrating sovereign advanced sensing and associated automated information workflows in the context of space-based hypersonic vehicle detection and tracking through two projects led by Tat Jun Chin, Defence Trailblazer’s Defence Space Technologies Theme at Adelaide University.
Space Domain Awareness on the Edge will harness machine learning to improve the performance of optical sensors to monitor the night sky. A further objective is to raise the computational efficiency of the data processing for deployment on edge compute devices, as on-satellite space surveillance provides a complement to ground-based systems.
To support Integrated Air and Missile Defence, the Space Layer Optimisation project is increasing sovereign capability to rapidly design and assess satellite constellations, for the purposes of demonstrating the dynamic utilisation of space-based assets as part of the integrated, all-domain system.
The project is led by Director for UNSW Canberra Space and Defence Trailblazer’s UNSW Defence Space Technologies Theme Lead, Melrose Brown, and project lead at Lockheed Martin Australia, Luke Tracey.
The project investigators are developing the methodology and software tools for design and performance assessments of satellite constellations, with the goal of optimising for integration with other all-domain tools required for end-to-end capability assessment.
The outcomes are aligned with Defence’s priority to invest in capabilities that strengthen space-based situational awareness and decision advantage, as outlined in the 2026 NDS.
“Ultimately, this will inform studies in the design and improvement of a Future Integrated Force A2/AD capability,” Lindsay said.