Page 54 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2020

54 FROM THE SOURCE JOE NORTH
APRIL 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
LEFT: The performance of the JSF continues to improve globally.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 58
cia Research, L3 Ocean Systems, L3 Oceania, Flinders University, University of Melbourne and 3D at Depth.
In October 2019, Safran Electronics & Defense Austral- asia was awarded $37.77 million contract to provide key system designs. As part of its delivery of this work, Safran will subcontract two Australian companies, Acacia Systems and Thomas Global Systems, for the design and develop- ment of software and hardware, respectively.
There are just a number of other contracts we’re work- ing right now where we’re actually having similar suppli- ers in Australia build what I’m calling demonstration units. That’s really to give them the capability to make sure that the processes, quality processes, financial processes are fit for purpose. This gives us an opportunity to fund them, to do those demonstrators. It also gives us an opportunity as we develop the specs and the drawings to make sure that our specifications and our drawings are up to scratch for industry to be able to take and then turn into hardware and deliverables to us.
We’ve created a register of 380 suppliers with the Aus- tralian companies so far. There’s 86 RFIs that have been issued to 36 individual companies and of the RFQs there’s 58 RFQs that have been issued to 26 Australian companies.
We still have a number of contracts that we’ll be letting throughout the year. We’re in a competitive phase right now where we’re undertaking a lot of evaluations from multiple RFQs that have been issued over the last year plus and we’ll be making those down selects and announcements throughout the entire year.
ADM: What kind of tasks are we talking about here? NORTH: As an example, under the functionality require- ment within the combat system, we actually have a small
business that’s been developing that capability. I won’t get into the specifics of the requirement because of the sen- sitivity and the nature, but some of the things that we’re doing from the R&D. There’s really novel methods for reli- able communications undersea, so unlike an aeroplane or a surface ship because we’re in a different medium – water – being able to communicate reliably and effectively here is a very challenging technology. So we have some R&D activities undertaken with small business and academia in that regard.
There’s always a challenge with managing power on a diesel-electric submarine, so that may be in the materials or fabrication. We have a number of contracts researching different materials, different power management schemes that will then eventually be integrated with the combat system. It gets into the engineering areas - real time pro- cessing, human behavioural aspects of the system. In oth- er words, we’re designing a system that could be operated well beyond the 2050s, so are we putting those features and capabilities in the system that will be fit for purpose for the generation next and the generation after that. We need to be mindful of the human factor and the future needs of ADF personnel who’ll be operating the subma- rines in years to come.
ADM: Because the combat system touches every part of that boat, how do you draw the line between what Naval Group does and what you do as the CSI? Do you have clear lines of responsibility?
NORTH: We have very clear lines and we worked those very early on the program with Naval Group making sure that we define those boundaries between the platform and the combat system so that there were no gaps or overlaps. Once we’ve defined those clear boundaries it’s Lockheed Martin’s responsibility to provide Naval Group with those interface points. They can design the ship to accept our combat sys-
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