Think big

“I would like to be able to deliver, very effectively, next generation systems to actually earn the right to take higher risk and do the generation after next,” he said at the first year anniversary event in Melbourne.

“We would love to have some sort of DARPA construct in Australia. But I don’t think the Australian culture would put up with an 87 per cent failure rate.

“That’s out there and we have to do some of that but in my mind you have to earn your right to do that.”

But in my mind you have to earn your right to do that. Dr Tony Lindsay

DARPA was founded in 1958 “to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.” 

This was prompted by the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite and the horrified US realisation that if the Russians could place a satellite in orbit, they could also drop an atomic bomb on New York.

Among DARPA’s many achievements are stealth aircraft technology and ARPANET, an early computer network linking research scientists, which led directly to the internet and the information revolution.

STELaRLab – the awkward acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering Leadership and Research Laboratory – was launched in August 2016, with Lockheed stumping up $13 million initial funding, with $30 million over three years.

A year on it has a director, Dr Lindsay, offices close to Melbourne University and an initial team of 10 researchers, with the aim of 14 by end of year and 20 in two years.

The one year anniversary was a big deal, with a visit by Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne and Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson, flanked by Australian ambassador Joe Hockey, addressing the gathering on a video hookup from Bethesda, Maryland.

 She said nothing symbolised the company’s commitment to innovation and collaboration than this lab.

“Last year the Australian government released the Defence White Paper and the National Innovation Science Agenda and both of those documents highlight how important innovation and science is, especially in the defence industry for national security,” she said.

“It also highlighted how critical innovation and science is to the long term economic growth and opportunity in Australia.”

“What the STELaRLab does is bring together the finest minds in Australia with the Australian academic institutions so we can work on those very important technological advancements.”
        Explaining how he got STELaRLab up and running, Dr Lindsay said he wanted to hire the right people. 

Perhaps one in 30 gets through the interviews, he said. Some have backgrounds in defence science and of the 10 current researchers, seven have doctorates “and those who don’t should.”

        “We will grow up to about 80-90 in the next few years and see where it goes from there,” he said.

 “We have capacity to influence globally in some of the R and D programs we are working on.”

Dr Lindsay said when he came on board, he suggested a research agenda.

“I did that on the basis of defence knowledge, looking at Lockheed Martin’s strengths and where I thought the nation really needed to be and where we could contribute the most,” he said.

He says STELaRLab  is fundamentally an information research lab, working on data analytics, machine reasoning and the like.

He cites Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter, soon to enter RAAF service, as an example of how this works.

F-35 was designed to mostly invisible to radar, a spectacular advantage when the first stealthy combat aircraft, Lockheed’s F-117 Nighthawk first flew in 1981. But now not so much.

“We are getting a fifth generation fighter. It used to be that stealth capability was not only the ticket to the ball but you got to choose your dance partner. Now it’s just a ticket to the ball,” he said.

       “The advantages are coming from elsewhere. The things that matter are information integration and faster utilisation of information. There are a whole pile of potential Lockheed things we could do.”

Other areas of interest are space situational awareness (tracking space debris), hypersonics (how to communicate with an aircraft at Mach 20), autonomy (unmanned systems operating independently) and C4ISR (command and control system architecture which could apply to the proposed new air and missile defence system).

But that’s not all. STELaRLab is reaching out to universities, with some of their work showcased for the 12-months anniversary of the lab.

STELaRLab sponsored a group of Melbourne University final year engineering students to come up with a means for a small rotor UAV to autonomously monitor powerlines. That’s a job usually done by helicopter at an estimated national cost of $1 billion a year.

   There were various challenges – just operating autonomously, detecting power lines and topping up batteries, which typically allow around 15 minutes flying time before a recharge is necessary.

The solution – harvesting power from the powerlines themselves using an inductive coupling. The UAV would fly under the powerlines, latch on and recharge while dangling like a fruitbat.

    That would appear to have vast potential and not just for powerlines or for Australia. How about a discrete UAV keeping watch on a suspect location for weeks, charging each night from the local grid?

Another group of Monash University students worked on autonomous operation of unmanned bushfire fighting helicopters, map reading to identify buildings, roads and water sources so it could plan a flightpath to and from the fires.

Dr Anee Azim of the Monash University team said autonomous firefighting UAV helicopters had advantages that there was no pilot at risk and no need to stop except to refuel.

An operator would assign the UAV using Google maps or a satellite image.

“Based on that map it will calculate an optimum flight path. Then it will go and combat the bushfire,” she said.

Former defence scientist Kevin McDonald, whose work involved developing simulation environments for F-35, demonstrated a simulated air defence architecture which merged real world data including aircraft movements, drawn from the internet, and a simulated F-35 flown in real time from within STELaRLab.

That employs the US DDF system, which underpins the entire US defence common ground system, and the Australian Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group’s LASAGNE, a truly spectacular defence acronym  which stands for Layered Approach to Service Architectures for a Generic Networked Environment.    

Mr McDonald says this was termed a visualisation tool to understand operation of a complex mission system.

A pair of hostile aircraft are detected approaching Sydney. Blue force assets include a pair of F-35s, a surface to air missile site and a pair of Aegis warships, one of the new air warfare destroyers and a future frigate.

The two unidentified aircraft are declared hostile. 

The system now considers what’s the best means to respond, through what are termed weapon pairing target algorithms, an area of recent  STELaRLab research. 

Rather than everyone shooting at the two intruders, the system considers the best and closest weapons for the job and assigns the mission.

“Instead of having four or five blue entities, take it out to 20, 30 or 40 and you also 10 potential threats, what’s the optimum engagement. That is really difficult to work out, especially in a time-compressed environment and these type of algorithms can help us make those decisions faster,” he said.

Mr McDonald said this particular system had been designed and implemented in about three months. 

“We are really looking forward to using this architecture to support further research into artificial intelligence, autonomy, analytics and of course open architectures. We are hoping closely with the RAAF using this technology.”