A key element of the massive defence expansion is collaboration with higher education, under the federal government's Next Generation Technologies Fund.
Developing a larger and more skilled workforce is crucial to creating and maintaining a modern defence force.
How universities are remaking themselves under a new phase of defence industry, is illustrated by Adelaide-based Flinders University.
It refers to its direction as "defence-oriented", across disciplines as diverse as maritime engineering, nanotechnology, energetics, forensic and analytical science, robotics, systems engineering, control and imaging and cybersecurity. And the university is developing Autonomous Marine Vehicles for the Royal Australian Navy.
Karl Sammut, director of the Centre for Maritime Engineering, Control and Imaging (CMECI) at Flinders, oversees several projects that are bound for navy deployment, including Autonomous Surface Vessels, Autonomous Marine Vehicles and underwater vehicles.
"Defence industry is very important for our work," says Sammut. "Our role is to contribute by being aware of the needs of the military, and to facilitate what they need."
Sammut's teams comprises of three academics, as well as post-doctoral and Ph.D candidates, and undergraduate students.
The vehicles made by the team are in partnership with BAE Systems, Thales, Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), ASC and the Royal Australian Navy.
"We can build models and do the testing and simulations of our technologies in the lab," says Sammut. "But being part of defence projects gets our technology into the world, and that's where the universities and the defence companies benefit – we all learn more."
Increasing collaboration
All of the Flinders marine vehicles have an autonomous capability, and are also rich in sensor and monitoring technologies. The underwater vehicle is a 2.5-metre long torpedo-shaped vessel that is having its algorithms developed for specific work in monitoring the sea bed, looking for mines, listening posts and other underwater craft.
"Once you go underwater, you can't use GPS," says Sammut. "So autonomous systems come into their own. We're building vehicles that can map the sea bed, locate mines or just sit still and listen."
The inspection vehicles are spider-like machines that can be deployed in bilges of ships and ballast tanks of submarines, to do inspections known to cause injuries to sailors. They have magnetised "feet" so they can climb steel walls.
The Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) is a sophisticated monitoring and reporting platform that can be loaded up with monitors, sensors and cameras and programmed to cover routes and grids.
Minister for Defence Industry, Christopher Pyne, says universities continue to play a vital role in research and development to build defence capability.
"It is important that universities are able to develop the skills needed by the workforce of Australia's burgeoning defence industry," says Pyne. "Defence has a well-established Defence Science Partnership program with 33 Australian universities, to collaborate on defence research projects. And the Defence Science and Technology Group is fully engaged with universities in developing game-changing capabilities under the Next Generation Technologies Fund."
He says 22 universities were allocated $5.7 million under the NGTF last year, to deliver 59 projects on research priorities identified in the 2016 Defence White Paper. The projects range from autonomous systems and sensors to advanced materials, space capabilities and quantum technologies.
"These early research projects will lift the level of collaboration between Defence and academia, stimulate innovation and provide a solid foundation to build future capabilities for the Australian Defence Force."
'It's the future of manufacturing'
Flinders University received $100,000 for a project in cyber technologies under NGTF, and even business studies has been influenced by the needs of defence industry, says Professor John Spoehr, director of the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute at the university.
"The engineering and science faculties are combined in the College of Science and Engineering," says Spoehr. "We also include business management and leadership because the defence programs are also industrial programs."
Flinders' wide embrace of the defence industry opportunity might seem obvious given the $90 billion worth of navy projects in warships and submarines, based predominantly at Adelaide's Osborne shipyards. But at Finders the opportunity extends beyond smart research and reaches into industrial application: advanced manufacturing, and in particular a future of digital manufacturing platforms and what they are calling Industry 4.0.
"One of the exciting developments in the shipbuilding projects [at Osborne shipyards] is the digital capability that comes with them. Modern shipbuilding now uses the 'digital twin' philosophy, where the entire ship or submarine exists in a virtual space. You can model and test components, sub-systems or the entire ship, on this digital platform. It's the future of manufacturing."
He says this kind of technology is an opportunity for Australian industry, and Flinders University is one of the partners in the Tonsley Manufacturing Innovation Hub, located within Tonsley Innovation District on the site of the old Mitsubishi plant in Adelaide's south.
The district is devoted to high-value manufacturing, Industry 4.0 practices and brings together education and research, established businesses and start-ups, incubators and accelerators and government.
There are now over 1200 people working at Tonsley Innovation District, more than when the last car rolled off the Mitsubishi production line in 2008.
Spoehr says the university has 32 labs operating at the TMI Hub.
"It's important for our approach that we take the engineering and science teams out of pure R&D; and open them up to industries that need to increase their capability, especially their digital manufacturing capability," he says.
Spoehr says the reigniting of domestic defence industry has forced a rethink on advanced manufacturing. It necessitates a progression from IP-centred innovation – which can be exported to large manufacturing nations – and towards a fuller capture of Australian intellectual property.
"Defence industry means advanced manufacturing," says Spoehr. "And this has profound implications for universities. Australia needs a manufacturing industry capable of digital PLM [product lifecycle management], digital simulation and visualisation software. It's a steep curve, so we've changed our curriculum in engineering, science and business, so our students understand Industry 4.0."
He says the TMI project has included government-sponsored exchange visits to Germany – a pioneer in Industry 4.0 and a benchmark for advanced manufacturing. The university teams at TMI interact with SMEs and large defence companies, and start-ups are supported through a TMI program called Venture Institute.
The TMI includes a cyber-physical factory - Future Factory - made by the German Festo company, which opened in February. It is an education and training platform for students and manufacturers, to explore the convergence of AI, robotics and cloud-computing with manufacturing, and the place that manufacturing will have in the Internet of Things.
Spoehr says one of the advances of manufacturing in defence industry is the inclusion of sensors in military hardware which will alert the manufacturers and operators to faults in equipment before they are actually experienced.
"Industry 4.0 is not just about how you design and build things – it's about how you monitor them. This is crucial for the new generation of military hardware."
Modern manufacturing sees machines monitoring machines through global AI computing systems and Australia has to make itself relevant as Europe, the United States and China invest heavily in Industry 4.0.
"Australia starts from a low base but we're developing rapidly," says Spoehr.
