Tag Archive for: DARPA

Innovation for security: why Australia needs its own DARPA

Australia should establish a national centre for breakthrough technologies along the lines of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

An Australian Advanced Research Projects Agency (AARPA) is needed to stay competitive with other powers in the Indo-Pacific in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and biotechnology.

China, well aware of the power of state guidance and funding for high-risk, high-reward technological development, aims to position itself as a world leader in those technologies. It has spent more than US$15 billion on quantum computing, US$220 billion on biotech and US$184 billion on AI, guided by the Chinese Communist Party’s five-year strategic plans.

In 2023, Britain established its own DARPA equivalent, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). So an AARPA would be the third leg of a tripod of AUKUS organisations. It would enhance collaboration on breakthrough technologies under pillar 2 of the AUKUS agreement.

In December, the Australian government announced a review of the Australian research-and-development landscape. If it is serious about technological collaboration within the AUKUS agreement and being a key player in Indo-Pacific security, it will need to back that up with serious changes to Australian research funding.

Australia has the potential for greater contribution to global research. However, it has historically failed to spend much on science. Government research and development spending has been less than 0.2 percent of GDP for years. Even gross R&D spending, which includes business, is only 1.68 percent of GDP, well below the OECD average of 2.7 percent. China is spending 2.4 percent and the US 3.5 percent.

Despite that, Australia publishes more papers per capita than Britain, the US or China. Imagine the volume and impact of high-value inventions that we could be producing if we invested properly in research and translation.

Australia consistently underestimates itself. Selling minerals to China shouldn’t be our future. Economic de-coupling from Chinese growth is essential for Australia’s national security and sovereignty. In a more fragmented world, where nations are increasingly investing in onshoring advanced manufacturing, investing in critical technologies is essential. Establishing an AARPA would be a big step in that direction.

The Chinese Communist Party’s five-year plan for the period to 2025 has outlined China’s ambition to become the world leader in AI, biotech and quantum technologies.

AI is already rapidly accelerating progress in biotechnology, enabling the design of new drugs. However, those technologies have dual-use potential, enabling the design of advanced bioweapons. BGI Group, which has ties to the Chinese military, collected vast amounts of genetic information globally during the Covid-19 pandemic, raising concerns about potential misuse. BGI was recently restricted from doing business with US companies due to serious national-security concerns.

In response to the threat of Chinese dominance of biotechnologies, the US has established the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. The commission’s first report highlighted the convergence of biotechnology with AI and quantum computing and the ability of those technologies to rapidly transform the security landscape.

Western democracies must respond to these emerging threats by maintaining a technological advantage and reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains. That can be done only through strategic investment in sovereign technological capability.

The current government research funding model is broken. The success rate for government grants was below one in five in 2024 and has fallen steadily for the past two decades. Continuing decline risks serious brain drain to other countries.

To understand the value that an AARPA would bring, consider that, for decades, DARPA has been the world leader in funding transformative technologies. It created programs that gave us mRNA vaccines, GPS, drones, the internet and many other technologies that define the 21st century.

In contrast to the Australian government’s Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG), which directly employs scientists to conduct research, an organisation using the DARPA model would employ sector experts as term-limited program managers who are given autonomy in the design of funding programs. They would focus on high-risk, high-reward projects, creating breakthrough technologies for national security. In the US, DARPA’s independence enables it to respond to new developments and bet on technologies with transformational potential that would otherwise go unfunded. AARPA would complement DSTG by acting as a dynamic funding body able in invest in research across academia, government and industry.

The 21st century will be defined by advances in AI, biotech and quantum technologies, which are quickly combining to create faster advances than previously predicted. Those technologies have huge national-security implications. They will fundamentally change the security risks to Australia and our allies in ways that we can’t yet foresee. Australia is already a hub of innovation in these technologies, and our researchers can deliver projects faster than global competitors. Establishing an AARPA will ensure that Australia is able to continue to innovate and compete in a rapidly changing security environment.

Policy, Guns and Money: Russia–Ukraine war, policing and AI, and an Australian DARPA

This week, Russia has continued its assault on Ukraine despite widespread international condemnation, including a vote by 141 member states of the UN condemning the invasion. ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge and Marcus Hellyer discuss the Russian attack, Ukraine’s long-term warfighting capability and the potential off-ramps for the conflict.

ASPI’s Teagan Westendorf speaks to Lyria Bennett Moses, director of the Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation and law professor at UNSW Sydney, about the ethics of artificial intelligence in policing. They explore different ethical frameworks, oversight measures and data practices of AI in law enforcement, and consider the notion of ‘undemocratic AI’.

Marcus Hellyer speaks with Graeme Dunk about the potential for an Australian version of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They discuss how an Australian DARPA would support defence innovation and the delivery of defence capability in Australia.

What would an Australian DARPA actually do?

A Royal Australian Navy ship is transiting international waters in the South China Sea. A large fleet of fishing vessels, some with reinforced bows, deliberately manoeuvres close to the Australian warship. In the melee, one such vessel collides with the warship, inflicting significant hull damage. The ship might sink, or it may be able to retire to a nearby base for repairs. The navy’s multibillion-dollar warship has been put out of action by a fishing boat. The government now has to decide whether to risk deploying another warship or abandon any presence in the South China Sea. Not a shot has been fired.

This is asymmetry in action, and it’s not an unlikely scenario. Technology could avoid it. It’s not hard to conceptualise a drone that could be dispatched with a special technology to disable the fishing boats’ engines, or at least significantly slow them. And it could be done without firing a shot, and therefore avoid escalation.

We can conceptualise this, but we can’t actualise it. In Australia, we have a stymied approach to innovation, a slow and risk-averse innovation culture, an overwhelming bureaucratic process, and a reluctance on the part of the Defence Department to advance and adopt sovereign innovation.

On 17 November, Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched a list of critical technologies which set out a vision for the types of technologies we need in order to preserve our national interests. This welcome initiative should serve as flagbearer for the sort of capabilities and economy we want to have (and also a reminder of the gaps we have allowed to develop over the past two decades).

But, as the long-form publication of the list (ambitiously titled the ‘Action Plan’) acknowledges on page 11: ‘We recognise there is more to do. The List does not cover instances of technological convergence.’

The two immediate problems that arise are that most of the technologies on the list are cross-industry and that they all face significant headwinds in traversing the well-recognised ‘valley of death’ from concept to prototype (technology readiness levels 4 to 7) and then on to commercialisation. The prognosis for success is therefore, at best, clouded.

Earlier this year, we argued for the introduction of an Australian version of the US Defense Advanced Projects Development Agency (DARPA) and explored how it might be established. What we were positing wasn’t simply a rehash of the US model or a pure defence munitions focus. The name wasn’t important; we just borrowed that.

What was, and still is, important is the creation of a cross-industry technology development agency, however named. We need something structural to encourage local technology convergence, to break down silos, to proactively and continuously search for cross-industry linkages, and to strive for results such as Defence ordering locally developed technology.

That will require a shift in both policy and culture. The spirit and culture that prevail in our current industry-facing government departments won’t get us where we need to go. Pervading these departments is risk avoidance and a focus on immediate task completion. There is no next-horizons thinking or risk-taking in the execution of things.

We therefore need to keep this technology development office (we call it Australian DARPA) outside of Defence. An Australian DARPA will become a centrepiece of the Australian innovation landscape, drawing in funding from public and private sources and providing a vehicle to bridge the gap between concept and prototype.

Commercial systems and products such as GPS, the internet, weather radar, superglue and virtual reality came into everyday use as dual-use outcomes from initial military requirements. Despite the potential (Australia has enough smarts and enough risks), Defence will never be the backbone for innovation like this. The missing link? The culture and business processes and the structures that ingrain them.

For the initial technology focus areas that the government has announced, we need to ask, how do Australian companies originate rather than simply attach to foreign prime contractors and their capabilities? And we need to bear in mind that it’s not about just incrementally improving what we already have. We need to disrupt. We need to create vulnerabilities in a potential adversary and overcome our own vulnerabilities. Fight and win must be the mantra, not just fight and survive. Better still, we need to develop capabilities that raise the stakes and deter the fight from commencing.

The hypothetical scenario we started with highlights the power of asymmetry in military operations. An additional multibillion-dollar ship isn’t going to make any difference. A billion dollars invested into Australian DARPA—well, that’s another thing entirely.

In the consideration of defence and innovation we also need to keep in mind Peter Drucker’s comment that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Stepping outside of cultural impediments is essential.

And we are reminded of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Democratisation of technology: Iran shows Australia what’s possible

The rise of China as a high-technology competitor to the US is one of the underlying drivers of the return to great-power strategic and economic competition. It’s a phenomenon that has enormous implications for the design and structure of Australia’s military.

Left unattended, the result will be a return of combat losses to Australia’s military at a level not seen since the two world wars.

Facing this increasingly uncertain environment, Australia can and must push its own technology companies to provide timely and novel capabilities for the use of the Australian Defence Force. And we need to invest accordingly.

The new technological age that we are living in provides enormous opportunities for local technology companies in both the defence and space sectors. The need for such technology and local involvement was demonstrated starkly by the extraordinarily destructive attack on the Abqaiq oil refinery in Saudi Arabia in September.

Imagery shows that the attacker—most likely Iran—was able to repeatedly hit processing tanks at the same point with small, precisely directed weapons, most likely a combination of drones and cruise missiles.

This precision attack disabled 5% of the world’s oil production and evaded sophisticated Saudi Arabian radar and air defences purchased from the US. The attack was reminiscent of the technological dominance the US displayed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Most crucially, it shows that the creation and conduct of precision warfare is no longer restricted to great powers. The technology that enables this destructive military power has been democratised and it’s available independently to states great and small.

It’s not just the Iranians who have shown the destructive potential of harnessing commercially available technology. Islamic State terrorists temporarily paralysed ground operations of anti-IS forces in Iraq and Syria with off-the-shelf drones carrying hand grenades and other improvised explosive devices, forcing a reappraisal of tactics, techniques and procedures and sparking urgent research into countermeasures.

This democratisation of technology has mainly been viewed as a threat by modern defence organisations, with the reaction being to double down on the usual sources of advantage—like the big US and European defence ‘primes’.

Some of that makes sense, but even the most capable multinational primes in defence and other sectors are struggling to keep up with the speed of technological change and the fast adoption and adaptation of technologies for myriad unexpected purposes. Hand grenades slung from drones designed for hobby use are just one example.

But this threat also provides a huge opportunity in the innovation that can give the Australian military and broader defence organisation real capability advantages and an ability to do so in far shorter timescales than the three decades required to get 12 submarines in service. It can be achieved by investing in Australian technology and advanced manufacturing firms in ways that simply were unimaginable even five years ago.

The main obstacle is a psychological one based on more than a century of sourcing defence capability advantage from our principal strategic partner—the UK in the early 20th century and the US since World War II. This mindset makes the likely response to rapid technological change a doubling down on sourcing advanced—and even not-so-advanced—solutions from our key ally’s industrial base.

A smarter approach would be balancing this at-times healthy instinct with a much clearer-eyed appraisal of what the Abqaiq attacks and Islamic State have shown us.

As the army’s unfunded robotics strategy shows, much of the technology that our military might wish to acquire and deploy will have a related use in Australia’s emerging space sector. That’s because autonomy, precision manufacturing, precision guidance and navigation, and advanced propulsion and manoeuvre technologies happen to be exactly what space activities require.

I’m thinking of companies and applied research outfits like Defendtex, Gilmour Space, Varley and Marand, and the Trusted Autonomous Systems defence cooperative research centre. A small company out in the light industry area of Canberra envisaged, designed and built the world-beating CEAFAR phased array radar being fitted to Australia’s warships to protect them from missile attack.

The local arms and subcontractor chains of firms like Thales, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin can also play a role by embracing local investment and manufacture. But they will need to be driven by a determined set of defence portfolio ministers, as we saw with Christopher Pyne and his successful drive for real Australian content with projects like the army’s combat reconnaissance vehicle that was won by Rheinmetall.

Beyond the ministers that should push the contracting arm of Defence—CASG—away from risk mitigation through offshore purchase with low Australian content, a structural shift is required to break the psychological hold that capability acquisition from our great and powerful friends has over Australian capability planning and development.

That won’t happen by just implementing the current defence industry policies and tossing a bit more money or attention at the defence innovation hub.

The Morrison government can really make an impact by diverting a fraction of Australia’s $40 billion annual outlay on defence from the massive spend on slow-moving conventional major projects in the Integrated Investment Program to a new Australian version of the hugely successful US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

An Australian DARPA with an annual budget of $300 million wouldn’t dent the mega-budgets of the future submarine, frigate or infantry vehicle projects. It would, though, do what Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants from his revamped bureaucracy: get results fast. It would do that by bringing real capabilities that adapt and apply commercial technologies and products to Australia’s military personnel in a timely and efficient manner.

ASPI suggests

Will the real Kim Jong Un please stand up?

We’re keeping your Black Friday screens bright with infographics of the conflict in Syria, private military security companies, China’s military, India and Australian uranium, Fatboy Kim and more.

The Institute for the Study of War has ‘maps on maps on maps’ with a useful series of situation reports and infographics on Syria showing the location and advance of the various groups involved in the conflict. ISW’s latest chart (PDF) shows ISIS continuing to lose ground in northeastern Aleppo, while their 9 February map (PDF) marks out areas controlled by the regime, ISIS, rebels, Kurds and others.

In case you missed it, here’s the full text of President Obama’s newly unveiled National Security Strategy. For a quick hit, check out this summary, but for those who want to dig a bit deeper, check out Thomas Fedyszyn’s wrap on The National Interest, Michael Krepon on Arms Control Wonk, and National Security Adviser Susan Rice as she takes questions at the 35-minute mark of this Brookings event. Read more

ASPI suggests

We’re kicking off a bleak news day with some new reports, interesting reads, and videos from the defence and security world.

Who’s your greatest ally/threat? While you’d expect most respondents in Asian states to say the US is an ally and China is a threat, those in Indonesia said the US was both! Check out the newly-released results of a Pew Research Center poll on global public opinion on the US, China and the international balance of power. Unsurprisingly, territorial disputes with China were also high on the agenda, with the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan overwhelmingly concerned that disputes could lead to military conflict. For those stats and more, keep reading here.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict looks at Timor-Leste after Xanana Gusmão, a dominant figure in post-independence political life. With a highly personalised system of governance, the report notes it’ll be harder for the country’s weak institutions to develop, and the professionalisation of the security forces remains a work in progress. Nevertheless, Gusmão’s departure should expand opportunities for other members of the political elite and reduce political issues rooted in past feuds and rivalries. And that’s potentially good news for Australia’s neighbourhood. Read the full report here. Read more