Page 27 - Williams Foundation Integrated Force Design Seminar

Designing the Integrated Force: How to Define and Meet the Challenge?

Chris Jenkins: This clearly means that government needs to work with industry as interactive sector, and not just
put industry at a distance. The position emerging from government is that “We want industry and defense to
work very collaboratively, constructively together."

There are very clear actions being taken to support that by the service chiefs and by the people in the Capability
Acquisition and Sustainment Group, you're actually seeing industry gaining confidence that industry should be
working more collaboratively together, forming the team sets that can deliver not only platform but also systems.
Companies are starting to work together to share workload because of the complementarity of those skill sets that
one company might have compared to another.

You're starting to see companies working more constructively together to create teamings that can better deliver
the whole ownership system, or the whole of a vehicle system, or the whole of an air capability and to thereby
develop and keep key skill sets in key sectors.

Time will tell but industry is responding to the opportunity to engage in a collaborative set of partnerships
between defense and industry.

Prior to these government initiatives, Australia has been one of the lower end performers on collaborative
development. Reshaping this relationship is crucial to get the kind of success Australia wants with shaping
integrated forces.

Question: Clearly, this means that even when platforms are bought abroad, there needs to be a working
relationship where that platform evolves over time within an ADF context, not simply replicating whatever has
been done to modernize the platform in the originator’s home market.

How will Australia do that?

Chris Jenkins: There's a smart buyer approach in the market now, which is looking for the elements that will go
onto the key platforms that are specifically focused on the Australian defense requirement. Rather than buying a
complete platform and system from overseas off the shelf, is I think the realization is Australia does have some
unique operational requirements, and so building into the procurement process a way of evaluating how best to
bring those teams together that can meet those requirements through the life of the vehicle, or the ship or
whatever it might be, is being done more sensibly.
The customer is helping shape that market or the way the market responds to the requirements more effectively. I
think that is a fundamental change.

How well projects deliver as a consequence of that overall change, again time will tell, but I think all signs are
actually quite positive. The first principles review made strong recommendations, and it looks like, to me at least,
that the actions that need to underpin those recommendations are being taken.

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