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Opinion: With a growing emphasis on bridging the gap between research and development and fielding of capability identified in the Defence Strategic Review, working with partners through organisations like the Quad, AUKUS, and other partnerships may serve to provide the edge, explains Guy Boekenstein.
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The Albanese government has committed $3.4 billion to develop the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator program. This will be charged with getting cutting-edge military technologies into service sooner, including hypersonic missiles, directed energy weapons, and autonomous vehicles. The commitment will also focus on developing long-range missile platforms, quantum computing, and information warfare.
The Australian government wants the accelerator to develop game-changing technologies that will give the ADF an asymmetric advantage over potential adversaries amid the most challenging strategic circumstances in generations. But how will it coordinate and collaborate with allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific region?
Most governments in the region are developing or have similar types of programs. With the United States Defense Innovation Unit, and its various subordinate programs, as one of the most advanced. While there are institutional linkages across government departments and agencies, it will require a whole of government — industry — civil society effort to really bring the ecosystem together to ensure critical and emerging technologies stay in the orbit of allies and partners.
What is a defence accelerator?
A defence industry accelerator is a program or organisation that supports and accelerates the growth of early-stage companies that are developing innovative technologies for defence and national security applications. These accelerators typically provide funding, mentorship, resources, and networking opportunities to help start-ups grow and succeed.
A defence industry accelerator is often operated by government agencies or private companies in collaboration with the military and defence industry. The goal of these accelerators is to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the defence sector and to identify and support promising technologies that can be used to enhance national security.
Why do we need an Indo-Pacific ‘allied nations’ defence accelerator program?
The Indo-Pacific region is undergoing a period of heightened geostrategic uncertainty, defence posture adjustments and increases, and an increasingly complex latticework of alliances and partnerships.
It is also a region of rapidly emerging technological innovation, including dual-use technology that can have civil and military applications. An allied nation’s defence industrial base accelerator can play a vital role in driving innovation and supporting the development of critical and emerging technologies to enhance stability and security in the region.
Another benefit of a defence industrial base accelerator is that it can help to strengthen partnerships between government agencies, defence contractors, and start-ups. By bringing these stakeholders together, an accelerator can help to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing, which can lead to the development of more effective solutions to complex security challenges. This is particularly important in the Indo-Pacific region, where there is a need for close coordination and cooperation between countries to maintain stability and security.
An Indo-Pacific defence technology veteran, Bernice Glenn Kissinger, vice-president of the Pacific Impact Zone, notes: “Capability collaboration across allied nations has been ignited in response to China and Russia threats. AUKUS, the Quad, and Japan as a defence partner doubling its spending and securing counterstrike capabilities while dismantling its export barriers are all accelerating partnerships.”
Missing — until now — are rapid-acquisition vehicles for allied nations to collaborate on developing and delivering the right solution to the warfighter at the right place and the right time. “Some kind of rapid procurement and acquisition tool, like the US OTA model, could deliver much more value to the government than they have in the past. This is particularly true for vetted allied-nation teams not only for prototyping to programs of record, but also for purchasing materials, securing sustainable soft-power benefits, and strengthening the US and allied nations,” Kissinger says.
Bringing it all together
Successfully coordinating this complex environment, understanding and overcoming the range of regulatory requirements and barriers, engaging the entrepreneur community, and coordinating funding streams will require government, industry, and civil society to work together.
For some time now, the International Security Industry Council of Japan, the Pacific Impact Zone and the Pacific Northwest Mission Acceleration Center have been working to develop an Allied Nations Defence Industrial Base Accelerator (DIBX) platform. They are all non-for-profit organisations comprised of former senior government, industry, and civil society members from the US, Japan, UK, Australia, India, and NATO countries.
This supports the Pentagon’s newly unveiled science and technology strategy calls for better coordination among the military services, more urgency in fielding the latest technology, and greater investment in the department’s physical and digital test and lab infrastructure.
The unclassified version of the strategy, released 9 May, highlights two forces that are driving the United States Department of Defense’s push for more partnerships among the services and the rapid fielding of new capabilities: a threat environment that’s growing in complexity, and a commercial marketplace “infused with private investment” that the department can leverage.
The document also emphasises the role international partnerships play in strengthening science and technology development. It calls for an expansion of existing multilateral agreements in order to increase production capacity among allies and strengthen overall deterrence.
The DIBX seeks to engage allied nations with a shared strategic interest for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Australia, like the US and Japan, is facing the challenge to rapidly develop innovation in its defence industrial base. There is also a requirement to co-develop this innovation between allies and partners. The US–Australia–Japan trilateral strategic relationship is logical one to explore, especially around hypersonic and long-range strike capability development, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyber, and other critical and emerging technologies.
The DIBX can provide valuable benefits to Australia’s defence industrial build-up efforts and support many elements of Pillar II under AUKUS, as well as supporting sovereign SMEs. A range of industry briefings will be held in the coming months by the DIBX team to explain how Australian companies and start-ups can get involved.
Guy Boekenstein has spent two decades working in the Indo-Pacific region in the defence and national security sector, including a focus on Japan and diplomatic postings to Japan and Indonesia. He is also the Australian representative for the DIBX.
