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Noetic Group, one of the companies partaking in research under the Next Generation Technologies Fund (NGTF), aims to prepare defence for emerging and disruptive technology over the next two decades.
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The Australian company, with headquarters in Canberra and offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Washington, has partnered with Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG) and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) to be among the first organisations to explore future technologies and environments, enabled through the recently announced fund.
As reported on Defence Connect, Noetic, DSTG and UTS will host an Emerging Disruptive Technology Assessment Symposium (EDTAS) on information, knowledge and digital disruption on 10-11 April in Sydney.
The symposium will aim to understand the impact, be it transformative or disruptive, of emerging and potential technologies for defence and national security over the next 10-20-year timeframe.
Topics of discussion will include artificial intelligence, human machine interface, big data and machine learning.
Noetic Group's general manager strategy, Matthew Graham, and principal consultant, John Smith, spoke with Defence Connect about the partnership, the project and the upcoming event.
"The work itself, the initial part of it, is all about gaining insights into the subject," said Smith.
"This first EDTAS symposium [about] information, knowledge and digital disruption is a very broad topic and so, as you can imagine, there are a lot of people that have expertise in this.
"It's important to go beyond the standard convention, the standard range, because the whole nature of the topic is around emerging and disruptive so we purposefully try to engage with as wide a group of people as possible."
Graham said the ambitious project will be a challenge, but one Noetic is looking forward to undertaking.
"This is a really exciting project, for all of DSTG, UTS and ourselves," said Graham.
"It's not an easy endeavour trying to think about the future, and at no point are we going to try and predict the future at all. This is really about gaining some insight into what's possible, and the purpose of this is based around understanding where future investment might be for defence research, for research by other academic institutions, where the defence industry community might direct their own research and development dollars, and to make sure defence is on track with having a think about the future and how they might be testing and experimenting with some of those ideas."
