May 24, 2008It comes to fundamentals and who else is the right person  than Roger Lough (who is in the defence science business for nearly 45 years)who understands one fundamental truth about Australia's defence force.

For the Defence Science and Technology Organisation's 2100 scientists and engineers, a large part of that challenge is about how our defence force will be able to do more with less.

"The history of warfare is the history of technology. It's advancing at a rate of knots," Lough observes. And Australia will have to work a lot harder and lift investment in science and technology to stay ahead of the game, he warns.

Lough, 63, retired from the top job at DSTO yesterday after a remarkable career during which he rose from technical assistant grade 1 (temporary) at a defence lab in Salisbury, South Australia, in 1963 to chief of an organisation with 12 research divisions and an annual budget of $370million.

"With a large continent and small population you have to invest in technology (that) is going to minimise the amount of people you are going to utilise, yet maximise the coverage you generate in the three dimensions of warfare: physical space, the electromagnetic sphere and, increasingly, the cyber world which controls the information flow," he tells Inquirer.

That means a sharp focus on surveillance systems and information systems networks will remain top priorities for our defence scientists for the foreseeable future.

DSTO is engaged in cutting-edge research in fields ranging from hypersonic jet engines and quantum computing to nano and biotechnology and materials research.

Lough, a rocket engineer, is particularly excited at the potential of hypersonics, in which Australia and the US are engaged in a long-term $80 million collaborative project.

"The promise is not only in the military domain but in the transport domain," he says. "It's 15-20 years away. The military application is super-fast missiles for deep strike."

As Lough explains, having a missile travelling at mach 12 could be a gamebreaker: a new technology that fundamentally changes the way warfare is conducted. In naval warfare a hypersonic missile would render existing defensive systems obsolete, travelling at a speed that would allow no warning of its approach.

In another sphere, defence scientists are striving to mimic the natural world using nano-technologies. Tiny aerial vehicles weighing less than 500g that could hover above a terrorist hideout and stream live video, and small robots for mine clearance and booby-trap detection, are not far away.  

Defence scientists are looking at how insects and reptiles see and navigate at the molecular level and how to translate that into silicon and develop an "insect eye" that can be used for surveillance.

"It will be applied in things like stealth technology," Lough observes. "Technology is trying to mimic nature. Nature has had several million years at getting things right."

Compared with the 1960s, DSTO now has a far more intimate relationship with the military and domestic security agencies. A generation ago the defence science boffins hardly saw a military uniform as they focused on long-range research projects that had little to do with the day-to-day operations of the Australian Defence Force. "Now I can't get rid of them," Lough jokes.

STO's scientists, engineers and systems analysts are far more focused on supporting ADF operations across the globe with less emphasis on "blue-sky" research, which accounts for just 10 per cent of the budget.

The organisation has been working flat out on countering the devastating effects of improvised explosive devices and improving the survivability of infantry fighting vehicles using the electromagnetic spectrum. A big part of the applied research and development effort in recent years has been focused on counter-terrorism, including cutting-edge work in information systems for the intelligence agencies led by ASIO.

Lough says that increasingly DSTO is taking off-the-shelf technologies and seeing how they can beintegrated into systems used by the military.

"A lot of the technology is now commercial-led, not defence-led," he says. "DSTO has to be more of an integrated and integrating organisation than it was even 10 years ago."

While there are still a few specialised defence technologies such as missiles, defence no longer leads in areas such as information communications technology, nano-technology and biotech.

Looking out 30 to 40 years, Lough sees the ADF using more space-based hardware including communications satellites. On Earth, unmanned air, ground and underwater vehicles will be networked with space-based systems in a fully automated battle space. The importance of cybersphere will be paramount as the world's reliance on robust information networks grows exponentially.

"What we can't see very well are the disruptive technologies coming through, the ones that are going to be game-breakers," he says. One of these could be quantum computing, which promises to revolutionise the speed and power of computing and could lead to fundamental changes incryptography as unbreakable codes yield to a new generation ofsupercomputers.

In 2045 there will still be ships, submarines and aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, and there will still be a need for boots on the ground. But we will have to work harder at surveillance tasks.

Lough foresees the greatest threat to Australia coming not from the physical sphere but from cyberspace. Already China is trying hard to penetrate top-secret defence networks.

The cyber threat is here and now and very fast-moving," he says. "We have got a program (that) is going to get bigger looking at how to protect our networks. As networks become larger and more interconnected, the more vulnerable they become."

In the physical sphere Lough is proud of what DSTO has achieved with the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network, an Australian technology that has been 45 years in development and is still evolving.

"It's come out at the end as the quintessential long-range surveillance capability that's not in space," he says. "It gives you the broadest coverage that you can get from a ground-based system."

JORN can track ships, aircraft and land vehicles from several thousand kilometres distance from Australia and its signals processing is far advanced compared with even 10 years ago.

As well as local R&D exemplified by JORN and the Nulka missile decoy, DSTO plays a vital role testing and adapting technologies for the ADF. For the Collins class submarines, DSTO expertise proved fundamental to that project's eventual success. DSTO played an important role in solving a range of problems, from noise propagation associated with machinery on board the submarine to propeller cavitation and integration of the combat system.

Lough has no doubt that Australia should have the confidence to build a next generation submarine to replace the Collins, the next great defence industry challenge for Australia 

.He says there were some "tremendous lessons learned" out of the Collins experience but cautions that Collins submarine builder Adelaide-based ASC will still need help from DSTO and other key research and industry partners.

"We could probably buy cheaper submarines from overseas, but would they do the job? We have a unique requirement for a submarine that is not met in any other conventional submarine available. Of course it would cost a premium, but I think we now have the skill set there."

He has no doubt that the RAAF's preference for the F-35 joint strike fighter is the right choice for Australia when compared with the more expensive F-22 Raptor.

"The F-22 is a very nice fighter aircraft, but it is not what we want and we have the studies to prove that. DSTO has done the major part of the operational studies for the new air combat capability and that includes an assessment of the F-22.

"Many, if not most, of the avionics in the JSF are F-22 derived. So you have learned the lessons of the F-22 and applied them to the JSF. So they are cheaper, more robust, they are more maintainable and they are arguably increasing performance."

Lough firmly rejects the view of DSTO critics who argue that the organisation struggles to justify its $370 million annual budget.

"They don't know what they are talking about," he says. "The feedback that we get from our line customers is very, very good. We are highly regarded by the direct users," referring to the ADF and domestic intelligence and police agencies.

He equally rejects the idea that DSO should be privatised. Here there is a key strategic issue of having a close marriage between government defence scientists and the military in solving problems involving high classified defence secrets as well as the issue of working with allied governments on collaborative research and analytical engineering.

DSTO's future will be under review in the new defence white paper ordered by the Rudd Government and the homeland security review being undertaken by former defence secretary Ric Smith.

So is DSTO getting what it needs to remain at the cutting edge in terms of what the ADF and the wider national security community requires? "No," Lough responds. "I can see gaps all over the place where we need to invest in science to be able to meet some of the challenges we will face in five or six years."

Compared with its US and British counterparts, Australia's expenditure on defence science is lower as a percentage of gross domestic product, but we are on a par with Canada.

Lough's parting message is that Australia must train more scientists and engineers, and push the central role that science must play in our future.

"The data are quite stark in terms of looking at the broad demographics of the Australian population," Lough says. "Of the university population, a smaller proportion are doing maths, science and engineering. The supply is not good in those fields. In terms of our strategic workforce planning we have to look at a few issues."