‘Aim for Seamless’

FORUM STAFF

PHOTOS BY AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE DEPARTMENT

Australia’s Department of Defence prioritizes technology and innovation in its efforts to preserve a global rules-based order and a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. Dr. Nigel McGinty is at the forefront as the department’s chief technology officer for science strategy, communications and international engagement. McGinty, a panelist at the 2023 Pacific Operational Science & Technology (POST) conference in Hawaii in March, spoke with FORUM about his mission to establish an atmosphere that encourages original ideas and multilateral cooperation to develop and deploy new technologies. The conversation has been edited to fit FORUM’s format.

What are your job duties and what do you hope to accomplish?

My role is shaping and guiding the science strategy for the organization — science, innovation and technology as they apply to defense and security. Where is Australia heading and what are our target goals? For those who don’t work in these worlds, we have to explain their importance to the foundation of what Australian defense does — always aiming to articulate where we need to head in a clear and compelling way.

The international piece is critical for the Defence Science and Technology Group [DSTG]. We aim to achieve outcomes through international partnerships and helping to establish those relationships is part of my role. So much of it comes down to people and good relationships. We have strong partnerships with many nations, including the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, the Republic of Korea, France and Sweden. Wide-ranging partnerships with nations that share values are essential. We can only achieve a rules-based global order together. I’ve got a team that works with me, helping to lead and facilitate what DSTG does collaboratively.

We want to focus more on next-generation capabilities. That’s my challenge. When I eventually finish in this role, I’d like to say we helped make it bigger, better, stronger in Australia.

Is there value in tackling challenges multilaterally, as opposed to each country doing innovation and development unilaterally?

It can be more valuable to look multilaterally, but it also can take more time. As a comparison, say you have three or four people in a room trying to design something. Everyone is trying to get their concepts into the project, right? An alternative, to establish momentum, is one person starts the ball rolling and then others join in and add to it. The project evolves over time. You get sort of a template from one person, or one country, and then the others join in on it. We need to be open to bring in collaborators.

A collaborative project has to meet the needs of all partner nations, most simply how to integrate into the force structure. The project has to evolve with a co-design philosophy. I think this is a practical way to develop something, and it can happen quickly. Otherwise, if you’ve got lots of stakeholders offering up needs, you just get stuck in a system that is overly complex. And we’ve got to unstick things.

Partnership, with everyone working together in an interactive, evolved way, is the future. An example is the Technical Cooperation Program in which Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States collaborate on strategy-led science and technology initiatives. It’s a forum for exchanging ideas and expertise to extend each nation’s research and development accomplishments while avoiding duplication and improving interoperability.

Does sharing information jeopardize a nation’s security?

I get that every nation must protect its crown jewels. However, the very essence of the scientific principle is publication and peer review — enabling open science. We need to become protective later in the cycle when we start to think about application and if the technology or scientific breakthrough will gain a military capability advantage.

Among our defense departments, for us to really have this seamless, collaborative, innovative, creative moment, we need to be more free with our information. 

This needs to be underpinned by trust. We’re different countries, but we’re aligned in our values and beliefs. In the international sphere, what we are seeing now is far more agility, a far stronger push by all sides to do more. And that’s fantastic.

You have said that innovation is a creative activity but also that it needs to happen quickly. Is that a conflict?

I don’t think so. Remember, some of the great artists we have are very, very fast at producing great works. It doesn’t need to take 10 years to develop and deploy something. World War II didn’t take that long and look at everything that was envisioned and created in that time frame. We need to look at developments that are practical but also at how to do things quickly. We do that by starting with a Model T and getting to a Rolls Royce over time. That’s another piece of this. I think we get caught up in the 10-year development period where we calculate all the different parameters that we need a particular thing to do as opposed to sitting down in that collaborative way to understand the co-design element. You know, what can we do quickly? Can we achieve, say, 90% of what we’re seeking to accomplish? We might be able to do that, you know, in a week. But 100% is going to take us five years.

Defense is quite traditional in the way it looks at capability development. But the traditional approach can be slow and exceedingly expensive. So, we do need to look at how we can accelerate the uptick of technology to provide capability advantage, particularly for Australia or a small nation. How can we get an asymmetric advantage with technologies and capability that has some sort of multiplying effect?

We need to explore nontraditional ways to come together and determine what we can achieve quickly and keep improving that capability over time as opposed to trying to make the Rolls Royce the first time around. Essentially, the heart of science and technology and the great world that we live in is continual improvement. So, we need to be able to get some transformational capabilities in and then improve over time. Essentially, that’s what I’m advocating.

Is there more communication now between government — specifically defense — and private industry?

That’s what this [POST] conference is all about. Is there more of a connection now? Is there more emphasis on trying to get private industry to work with government, with the Department of Defence, to figure things out? Yes. In 2016, our Defence Department pivoted. We made a commitment that industry was fundamental to capability, and that means that we’re in partnership with industry. That’s across the whole range of activities of what Defence does but most definitely includes research and development. So that’s important. In 2016, Australia invested in innovation through the creation of the Defence Innovation Hub and the next-generation technology fund. We’ve been able to lift the bar with programs to sponsor and build up smaller industries, smaller companies. SMEs [small- and medium-sized enterprises] connect researchers with commercialization partners to look at potential opportunities. Companies are being established on that business model. We’re where we are because companies have created unique innovation systems. The Advanced Strategy Capabilities Accelerator is the next revolution in Australia’s defense innovation system.

What are your biggest challenges?

It’s an expensive business and money never is secondary. But the greatest challenge is finding people who can fulfill the mission, people who can see what we need to accomplish and meld it with the art of technology. Innovation is a creative process. It’s a special kind of person who can articulate a vision and then start to work through it. DARPA [U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] does this well.

If you can sell a vision, you can get people on board, organize financing, line up companies, get the military people, the scientists. It’s that connectivity. What are the paths we can take? If the mission is well articulated and clear to everybody, and you have the right people in place, things fall in line and begin to move forward. You can start to build programs.

Australia is investing in innovation. The Australian system has grown able to absorb more and now has a more mature innovation ecosystem.

Are conferences such as POST valuable?

Absolutely. We need to have more events like this. We need to stay more connected. Technology allows us to meet regularly and has made the world a smaller place. But meeting in person and building relationships is essential. These conversations streamline the process of establishing MOUs [memorandums of understanding] and making project arrangements. I connect with colleagues from the Pentagon, in person through events like POST and virtual, more than I ever did pre-COVID-19. 

COVID-19 forced our hand to communicate even more because you couldn’t meet in person all the time. Before the pandemic, we got together a few times a year in a meeting room and talked about opportunities. Then we went back to our respective nations and went about the business at home. During COVID, a lot of events like this conference were not taking place. So, we had to figure new ways to communicate. We’ve seen the value of frequent discussions and now we’re more open to them. To enable strong, productive international partnerships means we need to fuse events like POST with online engagements. I would say meeting virtually does mean it’s a little bit early for me in Australia. Science can’t get around time zones — yet.

Where are we headed?

Technology is rapidly advancing and is transforming militaries. Autonomy, AI [artificial intelligence], quantum, hypersonic propulsion and hyperconnectivity are foundations of this transformation. Anything seems possible, as scary as that might be. The world’s just different, and this needs to be managed in partnership. And although Allies and Partners are communicating better, no doubt so is the rest of the world. We need to do things in less bureaucratic and more productive ways, with more transparency. Aim for seamless.