Page 66 - Australian Defence Magazine March-April 2022

66 FROM THE SOURCE MATTHEW JONES
MARCH-APRIL 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
the capability locally can do that without having to seek permission or authority from an overseas sovereign power or parent company.
I see the best model for this as the US model. EOS has some significant experience here, through our subsidiary in the US. The US does not allow foreign control of a defence entity delivering defence capability into the US market. There must be a local board and a firewall from the remain- der of the organisation. So, EOS Defence Systems USA is a fully owned subsidiary of the EOS Group of companies and EOS Defence Systems Global, but the control is very clearly executed by Americans, in America, for the American mar- ket and in the American interest.
I am very much of the view that sovereignty in the Austra- lian context is not clear. It is about control: we can’t find our- selves in a situation where a foreign power can say, “No, you can’t use that technology in a particular operation because we do not agree with the Australian Government’s position.”
This is one of the motivations behind the Australian Army sponsoring the C4 EDGE program. They found that when they were doing humanitarian operations in the South Pacific or during the bushfire crisis two years ago, the communications technology that they deployed across the Army could not be shared with firefighters or police because of the constraints on the deployment of those sys- tems from the US. In the international domain, we could not share them with the Fijians, or the Solomon Islanders, or the Papua New Guineans or the New Zealanders who were actually operating the same equipment as we were; because the systems were brought under bilateral arrange- ments, the US had to approve the extent of the access of that particular entity to that particular system.
It sounds like it’s easy and simple to just buy something off the shelf from overseas, but it does come with con- straints.
ADM: What does the next year look like for you?
From an EOS Defence Systems Australia perspective, we’ve been through a reorganisation and we’ve stood up the Aus- tralian entity for Defence Systems, very much with a focus on establishing a better partnership with the ADF.
I go back to my original point: EOS has grown off the back of nearly 90 per cent revenue off exports and 10 per cent in the local market. We’re very much focused on grow- ing the local market now. We will be looking at how we build and develop things in Australia so that we can offer enhanced capability options to the ADF.
We also see a lot of opportunities in emerging markets around the types of technology that we can offer. We’re now offering the ability to engage threats like drones (that are travelling at 100 km/h) with a vehicle-mounted ma- chine gun.
There are emerging threats that are going to require changes in thought process about how we do things. I think it’s an exciting time for the development of transformational technology like directed energy systems. I think you’ll see this year the deployment of this type of technology to offer significant benefits in an operational context and comple- mentary value to more traditional systems. EOS is leading that transformation. ■
BELOW: A dismounted soldier demonstrated as part of C4 EDGE
EOS