Page 48 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2021

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JULY-AUGUST 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
LEFT: Rob Sutton (Mirragin MD),
Sue Osborn (Chief Pilot), Mirragin, Andrew Watson (Shiebel Pacific),
and Andrew Crowe (Defence & Security Director Mirragin).
To do this, Mirragin draws on the experience of the ADF as one of Australia’s largest drone operators and feeds it into industry, and then draws on that experience to com- plete a feedback loop back into Defence.
“We’re seeing that there’s a degree of value in taking the technology and the lessons learnt from the Defence environ- ment into other industry sectors,” Sutton explained. “What we’re seeing through projects like Land 129 Phase 3 or Sea 129 Phase 5 that the ADF wants to do a range of different things; using drones for communications relay, using drones to drop search and rescue equipment, using drones to carry effectors like electronic warfare sensors, using drones to
“We’ve also done some work around the use of drones to detect wartime remnants, on counter-unmanned aerial systems in a domestic sense, and on overall drone strategy.”
What problems is Sutton seeing in the commercial world that might be a learning for the ADF as it expands drones across the organisation?
“One of the things that’s really obvious to us in the com- mercial space is that people jump straight to an answer and they’ll buy a particular air vehicle, and then it won’t meet their needs,” Sutton answered. “It won’t meet their needs be- cause they haven’t looked at that whole business problem. But it’s starting to get to the point where companies want larg- er systems, they’re wanting the systems to do more, they’re wanting them to be more suited to their broader businesses.
“They also put a lot of value on responsive local indus- try. So the value of having an organisation that can help them very quickly, that’s valuable from a commercial indus- try perspective,” Sutton added. “I think that’s also valuable from a military perspective.”
And what does Sutton see as the future of drones in the military?
“In Australia at the moment there’s about one drone for every hundred people, and in a very short period of time that number is going to flip,” Sutton said. “It’ll be 100 drones for every one person. I think from an ADF perspec- tive that kind of thinking really shifts what is possible in terms of the ability to generate combat mass.
“Drones can be operated in what’s called a heterogeneous swarm, meaning there’s multiple different capabilities all embedded in a single swarm,” Sutton explained. “For ex- ample, some of the swarm carrying defensive countermea- sures, some of the swarm carrying electronic attack, some of the swarm carrying sensors, some of the swarm carrying kinetic weapons - the power of that swarm is incredible. And I think that is closer than we realise.” ■
“THERE’S BEEN EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN THE USE OF DRONES AND A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF DRONE LITERACY”
carry more advanced sensors that en- able a hydrographic survey or mapping or gathering of geospatial information.
“Defence is leading in adopting some of these applications, and then the tech- nology is being developed and enhanced and pushed into the commercial sec- tor. Then it returns to the military in a smaller, more energy efficient, more ef- fective package - so you’ve got this nice reinforcement loop,” Sutton said.
In the defence world, Mirragin is involved with Major Service Providers (MSPs) and more specific consulting work on using drones more widely within Defence.
“We’re providing resources in through the MSP into areas that are, if not directly related to drones, then related to the technology that drones enable,” Sutton said. “So the way we think about it is that drones are a 5th generation technology - what they’re really enabling is a separation of the sensor, the effector, and the decision node, and all of those three things then operate over an operational network.
“From an MSP perspective we’re interested in all four, particularly in the operational networks as a key enabler.
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