A Canberra firm has caught the attention of generals in the US military and been invited to showcase locally developed technology in field tests next year that could open it up to a global market.
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It's been the dream of the Australian government's sovereign defence industry ambitions to have local companies export technology to the largest overseas markets - with profits and capability remaining in Australia. But there are still many hurdles as Kord Defence has seen in a journey that began more than 20 years ago - and they've realised that it can be more difficult to get innovative technology into Defence in Australia than overseas militaries.
Before founding Kord Defence, Dr Peter Moran's original team were trying to solve a problem for marine scientists: how do you control a computer underwater. With only one hand free and keeping your eyes on what you were doing, they settled on the idea of a push button interface and developed an underwater computer that the divers could use eyes free, without diverting their attention.
Then, as entrepreneurs do, they turned their minds to how to use the technology in other markets and realised soldiers were now being given many electronics as part of their kit - radios, thermal sights, and other targeting, surveillance and communication devices.
After building early prototypes with funding support from the ACT government, they caught the attention and began producing units for the Australian Army, and for the last four years developing and testing technology for the US Marine Corps.
Neither compare in scale to the US Army, with its more than a million soldiers. So when it announced that Kord's technology would be demonstrated at next year's Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment with potential for rapid acquisition, Dr Moran realised what this could mean for a small Australian company to get around the kind of hurdles they face back home where their size, relative to the foreign-owned primes, is seen as a risk to the Defence Department.
"The Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment have a mandate to get technology into service within a year. They use these events to get feedback from soldiers, to learn by doing, and then say 'this is the technology we need, we want this, we can buy it' ... You can't do that here [in Australia]."
The introduction of the Defence Innovation Hub has helped get new technologies into Australian government's programs, Dr Moran said, but there was still a gap because these programs take years to get off the ground.
"The military and the department need to think about more innovative ways of procurement and getting new technologies in. Because by the time they make a decision, either we've gone bust, because we can't afford to stay around, or we've gone overseas.
"With the big opportunity with the US Army, we'd be stupid not to."
Harley Dennett
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
Former federal politics bureau chief for the Canberra Times, via a career that's taken me from rural Victoria to Washington DC. Telling the stories of my local LGBTI community brought me to political journalism, where I've covered eight budgets, four national elections in two countries, Defence, public service and international governance.
