Formal launch of CRC-ACS

Friday 25 February 2011 saw the formal launch in Melbourne of the Cooperative Research Centre for Advance Composite Structures, which was re-funded from 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2015 in the latest Commonwealth Government CRC Round.

Under revised corporate governance arrangements for the CRC it has a skills based board with two independent directors, of which I am one.

I have placed a full post on CRC-ACS on the AADI Defence Pty Ltd blog – access it here.

Bill Schofield to deliver Hargrave Lecture

This year’s annual Hargrave Lecture is to be delivered to the Melbourne Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society (Australian Division) by my friend and colleague Dr Bill Schofield AM.  Bill was in charge of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) labs at Fishermans Bend throughout my time as Secretary, Department of Defence.

The lecture

The subject of the lecture will be David Warren, the Scientist, the Black Box Saga and the lessons learnt.

The impact of David Warren’s invention of the black box flight recorder has been immense -  in a world where the volume of air travel continually increases yet the number of air accidents has gone down over the years because we can find out what causes aircraft to crash, David’s invention must have saved tens of thousands of lives. Not many scientists can say that about their work.

And yet he faced overwhelming opposition and indifference to the  introduction of his black box. Recognition of him and his  inventiveness came very late in life after he had finished regular employment and to this day there are many in Australia, let alone the world, who do not know that the black box was invented a few miles from the Melbourne CBD by a combustion chemist.

Soon after graduation Bill Schofield worked for David as an assistant, later as a colleague and became his admirer and friend. He was an extraordinary and unconventional man who went on to work on fuel cells and the world’s future energy supply long before others saw these as important scientific topics.

This lecture will recount some anecdotes that illustrate David’s unusual  attitude to science, work and authority. It will also draw out some lessons from the Black Box story about the acceptance of disruptive technology.

The lecturer

Dr Bill Schofield is one of Australia’s leading scientists with a career spanning forty years in the Department of Defence and as a consultant on aeronautical and defence technology for Australian Industry.

He was the Director of the Aeronautical and Maritime Research Laboratory for six years where he was responsible for all science and technology for the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. Before this Dr Schofield held the positions of First Assistant Secretary Science Policy, Chief of Air Vehicles Division and Chief of Flight Mechanics & Propulsion Division in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

He was a co-author of the ‘Kinnaird’ report to cabinet into defence acquisition practices which now sets the guidelines for all Defence acquisitions. Between 1996 and 2006 he has served on a number of advisory panels for the Victorian Government. He has led reviews of Australian defence industry for both the Federal and Victorian governments and was appointed by federal cabinet to the Board of the Australian Submarine Corporation [2006-2009]. He is Chairman of the CRC for Advanced Composite Structures and the board of another four defence and aeronautical related companies.

His achievements have been recognized by his appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia for “For service to the Australian Defence Force’s aviation capabilities as a research scientist and administrator, particularly through the Aeronautical and Maritime Research Laboratory” and the award of a Centenary Medal for “outstanding contribution to science and technology particularly public science policy”. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and a Member of the Institute of Company Directors.

Venue and timing

The lecture will be delivered at a dinner at the Crown Entertainment Complex at 6.00 for 6.30 pm on Monday 6 December 2010. Registrations close on Friday 26 November 2010.

Further details and details of how to register may be found on the RAeS Melbourne Branch’s website here.

Future submarine: long lead-time items

In Future submarine: no time to waste I suggested that the project to design and build a submarine to replace the Collins class from 2025 is starting to bump into some very stringent timelines.

Fifteen years might seem like a leisurely timetable for building a 4,500 tonne boat, but consider the following major contributors to the leadtime:

(1) Time to design and build

- The Collins class took 6 million man hours to design and 2 million man hours to build.

- The new United States Virginia class attack submarines took 18 million man hours to design and 10 million man hours to build.

- From cutting steel to delivery of the first of class was 6 years in both cases.

- There is a limit to the number of people than can be engaged productively at the one time on design or build, even if there were no limit to the number of people with the appropriate skills. We cannot halve the design or the build time by putting twice as many people to work.

(2) Research and development

Aside from the R&D task that will flow from the evolution of a whole range of technologies relevant to submarine and anti-submarine warfare, there is a huge R&D agenda directed to more prosaic matters which will drive the design and performance of the new submarines.

There will be a need to find a large production diesel and generator which can be utilised with minimum modification, suitable batteries, and a snort induction system from head valve to exhaust.  These will all be new, because no-one else in the diesel electric submarine world has our requirement for power, and they are all critical to the submarine’s noise signature.

These basic technical issues will take time to resolve, and until we resolve them we cannot design the submarine.  The laws of physics as they apply to submarines impose very rigorous constraints. The length to beam ratio must be in the range 1:7-10. Anything which adds weight must be offset either by removing an equivalent weight or by increasing the internal volume, which in turn requires an increase in the diameter of the pressure hull to maintain the required length:beam ratio.

Until we know the size, weight and performance of the main elements of the onboard equipment, we cannot begin to design the submarine.

This work must commence as a matter of urgency. It must be undertaken by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and it must be funded in 2010-11. In order to set the scene, we must have the decisions outlined in Future submarine: no time to waste.

(3) Qualified submariners

While the size of the submarine workforce might have little direct impact on the time required to deliver the first of class, the size and skills of the submarine workforce are critical to the future submarines becoming a military capability – if we cannot crew the submarine fleet with submariners who have the skills and training to take it into harm’s way, why have it?

The history of the crewing of the Collins Class is not a good story. We have never been willing or able to crew the fleet, and the lack of available sea time has had a critical impact on our capacity to train additional crew – we are in a downward spiral in which we cannot put more than two out of six submarines to sea because of lack of crew, and we have trouble expanding the submarine workforce because we cannot put enough submarines to sea.

In Managing the submarine workforce, I described the measures being taken to address this problem and provided a link to the Submarine Workforce Sustainability Review which was undertaken by Rear Admiral Rowan Moffitt, now Project Director for SEA 1000, the future submarine project.

The Chief of Navy is addressing the problem, but I am not convinced we are doing enough to put ourselves in a position to crew twelve new submarines as they are delivered from 2025. On current plans, five years from now crew limitations mean we will still be operating only three out of six submarines, of which we could expect to put a maximum of two to sea at any one time. We will have to learn to do better at matching manpower to platforms than that, and we really need to accelerate the program to redress the crewing problem.

Inventive Australia

Australia Post has issued a new set of 55 cent stamps celebrating “Inventive Australia”. The inventions commemorated on the five stamps are:

- the Esky and the wine cask

- the ute and the B&D Roll-A-Door

- the Victa rotary lawnmower

- the Hills hoist

- Speedos and zinc cream.

These are great innovations which benefit us in our everyday lives, and are no doubt viewed with some affection by most Australians, but how much more inventive are the following:

- The “black box” Flight Data Recorder, developed in 1956 by Dr David Warren and his team at the then Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, now a part of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). These are standard equipment on airliners worldwide, and the prime source of information for all post-crash investigations.

- The Mills Cross radio telescope. The Mills Cross was built by Bernard Mills at CSIRO’s Fleurs field station in the Badgery’s Creek area west of Sydney in 1954, in the very earliest days of radio astronomy. The explanation of this innovation is somewhat technical, but it was a very cost-effective way of simulating a large parabolic dish (such as was subsequently built at Parkes), and producing higher resolution scans of radio sources than had previously been achievable. Each arm of the cross was 1500 feet (450m) long, running N-S and E-W, and consisted of two rows of 250 half-wave dipole elements backed by a plane wire mesh reflector; the individual dipoles were aligned in an E-W direction. The beam could be steered in the sky by adjusting the phasing of the elements in each arm.

Subsequently Professor Wilbur Christiansen of Sydney University used the same principle to establish the Chris Cross, a cross built of steerable dishes.

A second and larger Mills Cross, with arms approximately a mile in length, was built at Hoskingtown near Canberra. Following the discovery of the pulsar, the researches of this Mills Cross between 1968 and 1978 yielded 75 per cent of the then known pulsars.

The linking of dispersed elements to simulate very large arrays is now standard practice in radio astronomy around the world.

 - Atomic absorption spectroscopy, a technique for determining the concentration of a particular metallic element in a sample, which was developed in the 1950s by  lan Walsh and his team at the CSIRO Division of Chemical Physics in Melbourne.

- The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), the unique over-the-horizon radar network, with arrays near Longreach in Queensland and Laverton in Western Australia, which provides wide area surveillance of the northern approaches to Australia. JORN was developed by DSTO, building on fundamental research into the physics of the ionosphere undertaken at the University of New England in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was one of the world’s leading centres for ionospheric research. The key researchers at UNE at that time were Reg Smith (my honours supervisor), a specialist in radio wave propagation in the lower ionosphere, and Frank Hibberd, a specialist in ionospheric fading.

Perhaps at a time when we are concerned to promote the “national brand” we should be celebrating these great achievements rather than the Hills hoist and the Victa mower, much as we love ‘em.

It would be remiss of me to fail to mention that these particular innovations were all the product of government research laboratories, and that they proceeded without the necessity for the researchers to obtain co-funding from industry. This flies in the face of the Howardesque ideology that if industry is not prepared to contribute to a research program, that is a sign that it is not worth undertaking. I look forward to the day when government research establishments can pursue their research without the requirement to raise industry co-funding.

Defence Materials Technology Centre

The Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) was established in June 2008 following the Commonwealth Government’s decision to establish technology development joint ventures, Defence Future Capability Technology Centres (DFCTCs), to combine expertise and resources from defence industries and research providers.

Launched in February 2009, DMTC is Australia’s first DFCTC and focuses on developing and delivering superior technologies to Australia’s defence industry.

Its purpose is to develop and deliver advanced materials technologies and manufacturing processes across four program areas – Aircraft Platforms, Maritime Platforms, Armour Applications and Propulsion Systems.

Projects within these programs will deliver new materials technologies that will increase strength, payload capacity and operating range while improving performance and durability in Australia’s defence industry. New manufacturing processes will increase efficiency in production, reduce costs and waste, customise equipment for specific Australian conditions and provide access to new markets.

The business structure of DMTC is modelled on the successful Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program. Its core and supporting partners from defence industries, universities and research agencies are already experienced in providing a wide range of industrial and technological disciplines within the supply chain that supports Australia’s defence industry capability.

Partners provide DMTC with access to their skilled personnel, materials and manufacturing facilities and work with the company to ensure that all research is focused on delivering to the end-user – the Australian Defence Force.

DMTC operational funding is drawn from several sources with an initial underwriting in excess of $85 million in cash and in-kind contributions. The Commonwealth contributed $30 million with the State Governments of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales putting in a combined $9 million. Collaborative partners are responsible for providing the remaining resources.

DMTC operates as a private company, and is funded for an initial seven-year term. Its Chief Executive Officer is Dr Mark Hodge, a professional engineer who prior to his recruitment in June 2008 had been for three years the CEO of Australian Aerospace and Defence Innovations (AADI).

Please make a decision about Mr Combet

What a messy reshuffle it is. One of the foundations of good administration is a clear chain of command, yet the Government seems determined to make the arrangements as messy as possible. With senior and junior Ministers operating in multiple portfolios we will have Departments or major organisational units competing for the decision-making attention of Ministers, and Ministers competing for the advisory and follow-up attention of Departments. Some of the arrangements make the Government look indecisive – Ministers are asked to move on, but to bring some baggage with them.

In the case of Defence, where the Government has expressed its determination to fund a major part of its expansion of capability through the design and implementation of major reforms, Mr Combet has been appointed Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, but will also be expected to sustain his climate change role, as Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change.

Mr Combet will have Ministerial responsibility for three major Defence domains:

- Defence Personnel, in which, for example, he will have to figure out a way to achieve a significantly larger Defence Force without resorting to conscription. To take just one example, we currently have three Collins class submarines, at more than $1 billion apiece, tied up alongside because we cannot crew them, but we plan to introduce twelve new submarines from 2025. We desperately need to increase crew time on the current submarines in order to have sufficient crew with the training and experience to man the new fleet, and setting up a sustainable recruitment, training and retention framework will be a major challenge.

- Defence Materiel, in which there are many issues to be resolved and, in my view, a number of flawed frameworks that require careful and sceptical attention.

- Defence Science, in which we have a new Chief Defence Scientist, and there is work to be done to improve the Defence-wide understanding of the contribution which the Defence Science and Technology Organisation can make not only to defence capability and the sustainment of our equipment, but to the identification and management of the technological risks involved in major acquisitions.

Any one of the above would represent a demanding program for a talented and hard-working Minister. Together they represent a very large portfolio of responsibilities. To expect Mr Combet to manage this workload and at the same time continue to compensate for the lacklustre performance of the Minister for Climate Change is quite extraordinary. There are at least two jobs here; someone needs to decide which one they want Mr Combet to do.

Prestigious award for Defence scientist

Dr Bruce Hinton of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) has been honoured by the U.S.-based professional organisation NACE International (formerly the National Association of Corrosion Engineers) as the 2009 recipient of its prestigious F.N. Speller award. He is the first Australian to win the award.

The F.N. Speller Award, which is named after a U.S. pioneer in metallurgy and corrosion engineering, recognizes significant contributions to corrosion engineering. Recipients of this award have made an international contribution through education or work promoting development or improvement of a method, process, and type of equipment or material that facilitates control of corrosion or makes the process more economical.

Dr Hinton received the award in recognition of his sustained and insightful application of corrosion science and engineering to the solution and prevention of corrosion problems on Australian Defence Force aircraft over a period of 40 years.

In the course of his career, Dr Hinton has conducted research in numerous areas including atmospheric corrosion, corrosion inhibition, conversion coatings, stress corrosion cracking, corrosion sensors, corrosion fatigue, and hydrogen embrittlement. This work was carried out not only at DSTO, but also through collaboration with both industry and academia in Australia and overseas.

His work has increased aircraft availability for operational use, and significantly reduced the time and money spent on aircraft maintenance. A program to proactively manage corrosion in Australia’s Black Hawk fleet in the 1990s was one of Dr Hinton’s most significant contributions to Defence.

On 25 March Dr Hinton delivered the 2009 F. N. Speller lecture at the Corrosion 2009 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on ‘Prevention and Control of Corrosion in Aircraft: Changes Over Four Decades’.

Dr Hinton has also received the Defence Minister’s Award for Achievement in Defence Science for his work on corrosion control and management.

More detail of Dr Hinton’s work may be found here.