Page 63 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2023

APRIL 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FROM THE SOURCE JIM MCDOWELL 63
veloped for the most part in the United States and Europe. So, we now are post-COVID when supply chains got a real battering and post the realisation that the Indo-Pacific is no longer a benign region where we’re going to get a 10- year warning of major conflict, and there’s the possibility of conflict between our major trade partner, China, and our
major security partner, the US.
What is our answer to that? And as the only buyer in the
market, how is the Department and government going to use its monopsony position to shape the industry?
The one part of the defence industrial architecture that is quite different from anywhere else in comparable coun- tries is a lack of middle-sized companies with scale – $1 billion or above.
Nova Systems is halfway there, but there’s nobody else anywhere close. You have the big guys on top, a lot of SMEs, and this is an SME economy; and an almost vacant middle. In a previous From the Source interview, Minister Conroy recognised this as a problem.
But the question is, how do we get a company like Nova Systems up to $1 billion or more, where we have a solid core
LEFT: Nova Systems’ Test and Evaluation Centre of Excellence
ABOVE: Nova Systems CEO Jim McDowell speaks at a recent SME summit
centre and don’t always have to rely upon supply chains to Europe and the US?
ADM: Is the MSP model maturing and settling in? MCDOWELL: On the MSP, I recently saw an article in the media talking a load of nonsense, saying that this program gave all the work to four companies. First of all, it’s four consortia and not four companies. Secondly, Nova subcon- tracts 70 per cent of the work it has won under MSP, to our partners, or the 400 companies in our supply chain. It’s an absolute misrepresentation to say it stays with four compa- nies. MSP is a very worthy mechanism if it is executed in the way originally envisaged by its creators. Having had the first five years we need to take stock and continue what has been successful and tweak that which is inefficient.
ADM: What is the long-term plan for the Space Precinct in South Australia?
MCDOWELL: Space is an exciting, growing area for us. The Nova Systems’ Space Precinct is located in Peterborough in South Australia’s Mid-North. It’s an area which happens to be a very good place to have a set of ground stations, because it’s electronically very quiet, it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s not near the coast and satellites pass over it many times a day.
We have four customers with ground stations there at the moment, one of whom is the Australian Space Agency and the other three are international customers. But we want to grow that customer base. It’s about 52 acres at the minute but we can certainly expand the space.
This year, we’re focused on the passive space domain awareness technology we’ve developed with Curtin Uni- versity, which gives you a horizon-to-horizon view of what’s up in space, essentially detecting objects and ac- tivities of interest.
NOVA SYSTEMS
NOVA SYSTEMS