Page 50 - Williams Foundation Future of Electronic Warfare Seminar

A New Approach and Attitude to Electronic Warfare in Australia

It changes the whole way in which you think about multi-function capabilities, different applications, and how
those applications interact with one another.

Question: The US Navy is starting to move forward with procuring a new frigate. I have written about
the significant opportunity for the US forces to leverage allied investments and capabilities in
accelerating the modernization of US forces as well.

It would seem to me that the frigate is an ideal case not only in terms of taking a foreign design but most
certainly with the outstanding and combat tested frigate equipment already deployed on the frigates of
our allies.

It would seem to be a no brainer to look seriously at your radar for this program so that the US Navy can
ramp up the time when they could get a functioning frigate at sea.
After all, powerpoint slides for potential systems kill audiences, not adversaries.

What are your thoughts along these lines?

Ian Croser: It could make sense for the US Navy on several grounds.

Cost is a clear advantage and risk is contained by having operational systems already in place.

Shared investments with a core ally can also accelerate joint capabilities.

Interoperability is built in and the Australian Navy is already shaping the Conops of the system at sea.

It is only in the past decade that navies have looked beyond the organic role of radars onboard ships to think
of fleet interactivity among radars at sea.

CEAFAR certainly is designed to do this and with the inbuilt multifunction capability and commonality there is
significant enhancement to distributed lethality.

Question: With the shift in focus towards, high tempo and high intensity operations, mobilization
becomes as important as modernization to combat success.

It is clear in walking around the plant and looking at your approach, mobilization capabilities are built
in.

Could you highlight this aspect of the inherent potential of your manufacturing process?

Ian Croser: The key to ramp up is to embed high functionality and high performance at printed circuit board
level.

Because now, component reliability has far outstripped system availability, it is possible to provide
programmable and function rich systems with wide and inexpensive growth factors.

If you put all the effort into embedding rich functionality into the board itself, the flow on sustainment costs
also benefit, that's the really key process.
Now once you've got the board, if you've designed it right, it can be manufactured on standard automated
production lines at very low cost.

Because of the modularity and building lots of a small number of configuration items, you can now build the
synergy in manufacturing to push through large volumes of work, very quickly.
Second Line of Defense

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