Why Defence needs to think more like a startup
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By Mark Fortugno, WithYouWithMe
This year has taught us that we cannot be complacent in funding our defence sectors—one need only look at the invasion of Ukraine to see how possible global threats are on any shore. While a globalised economy has its many benefits, we now know that it does not mean harmony will endure between nations—not everyone will always follow the same rulebook.
Defence spending has always been somewhat of a political battlefield—despite it being very well known that countries are only as protected as they have paid to be—and the pandemic has only intensified the complexities surrounding budgeting decisions.
FILE PHOTO: Cyber warfare analyst Leading Aircraftman Netani Tukana and cyber warfare officer Squadron Leader James Haddy from No. 462 Squadron at RAAF Base Edinburgh, South Australia. Photo by Leading Aircraftman Sam Price, digitally altered by CONTACT.
In a post pandemic world, governments are now faced with a set of new and very difficult challenges including navigating unprecedented economic uncertainty, deeply concerning geopolitical shifts, and relying on electorates that have only every experienced “the good times”. How governments will tackle allocating budgets in the context of these rapidly evolving complexities will be interesting to see.
And while budgets have been increased across NATO governments (or are at least earmarked to) the full extent at which these governments will truly increase spending and what this will mean in relation to rising inflation and falling or static GDP, remains to be seen.
In good news however, signs are pointing to investors being more inclined to back Defence. NATO’s recent announcement of its launch of a €1bn fund to attract VC funding illustrates this appetite shift towards Defence from investors. The fund, called ‘Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic’, has an aim to spend €70m annually over the next 15 years investing in early-stage tech start-ups however it will only be operational in 2023.
Traditionally investors have been hesitant to invest in Defence, with many in the past claiming conflict with ethical beliefs. Whether their change of heart comes down to them now seeing Defence to be a good investment, or them caring more about national security, it should be encouraged regardless.
Continued investment in Defence is not only vital for safeguarding and growing our sovereign capability, but it’s also crucial to filling the skill gaps that have been crippling innovation for some time now.
The case for engaging entrepreneurial minds
While funding is absolutely fundamental to ensure our nation’s safety and the industry keeps moving forward, if Defence doesn’t have the bandwidth or right partners to deliver upon the critical capabilities needed to get the job done effectively, everything comes undone. And as technology continues to advance, we’re seeing more of this unravel.
This is in part owing to the external providers Defence has typically partnered with. Historically Defence has leaned towards engaging multinationals to deliver upon critical services, however it’s a strategy that is now failing them more often than not. As our world continues to evolve so rapidly, multinationals are finding it harder to keep pace with changes in technology, digital transformation, and market demand—they’re simply not nimble or flexible enough.
If Defence is to be successful at warding off potential threats and protecting our country’s safety, it must contemporise its outsourcing approach and be more entrepreneurial in partnering with industry to achieve our sovereign’s strategic outcomes.
Providing greater opportunities for SMEs and non-traditional partners to deliver their services to defence is key to driving modernisation, innovation, and cutting-edge solutions.
By engaging nimble businesses that are driving the digital evolution forward, namely start-ups and SMEs, Defence will be able to meet its strategic objectives a lot faster. The right start-ups and SMEs—those who have an intrinsic understanding of how Defence works—are very well placed to quickly and reliably deliver the critical services Defence requires, without compromising the integrity of operations or protocols. What’s more, they can also provide Defence with important inroads into the corporate world and investors.
But while Defence talks a lot about innovation and entrepreneurship, it doesn’t consistently encourage or adopt the right behaviours needed to drive this type of culture. A reluctancy to challenge boundaries like budgets and permissions—along with being too comfortable with the old way of doing things—has instead cultivated a culture of accepting that real digital transformation within Defence ‘just won’t happen’.
It’s no secret that the most skilled and dynamic digital talent are attracted to well-funded SMEs and start-ups, rather than more budget conscious Primes. And it goes without saying that the most cutting-edge software solutions will be developed by this talent pool and these businesses.
Despite the glairing obvious benefits of tapping into SMEs and start-ups to drive innovation, Defence decision makers remain scared of contracting them—no matter how well backed and talent rich they are—fearing that if something were to go wrong, their reputation could be damaged. Primes on the other hand, present much less risk, despite the little reward they bring when it comes to digital innovation.
Collaboration barriers
High procurement barriers can unfortunately hamper a start-ups ability to thrive. The innovative nature of start-ups means they are often creating capabilities that do not yet exist and therefore in theory, Defence has no stated requirement for the tech. Without a partnership, the start-ups take on all the financial risk in many instances.
While procurement rules are in theory required to ensure taxpayer’s money is used appropriately, in practice they greatly hinder entrepreneurship and do not allow Defence to make advancements in necessary areas and often effectively incur higher cost and delay to keep our country safe from real threats such as cyberwarfare.
I’m not suggesting it is easy for Defence to adjust strongly embedded processes to take advantage of the opportunities start-ups and SMEs have to offer, but it is necessary regardless. Establishing a partnership ecosystem that considers start-ups and SMEs to be viable and valuable will require a mindset shift across the entire industry.
Until Defence practices the innovation it preaches, and adapts its rules and culture to reflect the uncertain times we live in, progress will continue to be hampered and we will remain vulnerable to outside threats. The only way we can compete with the rest of the world is if we get serious about collaborating with the best entrepreneurial minds.
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“Why Defence needs to think more like a startup”
by #MarkFortugno, WithYouWithMe
03/08/2023 Posted by #BrianHartigan of #CONTACT
Sorry Chasps, but I just wrote the following, knowing on starting it that I wouldn’t send it to you.
But, purely to not let ASIO and other spooks be the only recipients, due to their monitoring my every move, etc, if this fits in your comments window, regardless of whether my views incite your anger, for being, as described, “Alternative” to most mainstream Military assessments and opinions, other than getting bamboozled by my writing style, here are some, yes, basicly “unqualified” thoughts in or around the Australian Military Forces issues…, for you to try and ponder;
And, as I’m too cold and tired to go thru it to edit, please excuse me if it appears a bit crazed?
Cheers,
JaRD
JUST Rogue DEFIANCE
aka Max Cook.
Sth Gippsland.
Hi.
As skeptical as I am of my own cred, to say anything on the issues you write on in this article, and whether it being written in August 2023, so if or not it remains “relevant”, I put the following thoughts to you.
I haven’t served in any military force, have been a – Rogue – but very ‘Political’ Dissident most of my 50 year adult life. My only “attachment to any military was that my Father ended his Service with the Australian Army a Sergeant-Major, having Served in Greece, Palestine and other places in WW2, in the Royal Australian Engineers’, 1st Australian Paratroop Batallion, or thereabouts.
My brother joined the Army in the late 1960s, and mum also Served in the “WAAFs” or so in WW2.
I struggled, due to my height, in my school’s Army cadets, “Signals” section as I recall.
However, all those – under-qualifications – aside, I’ve long been drawn to study politics, economics, all very casually, but apparently possessing some intuitive intelligence to discern primarily important, therefore not-mainstream, affairs, from personal to family to social to international political psychology, and all-up, their underlying and overall mental health.
All things, like how Dad raised me, considered, military issues can’t but be included in those, now primarily-focused-upon affairs I give a lot of my time to.
So…?
“Defence budgets, spending, innovations, contracting ‘outsiders’ as in from the private sectors” etc, have been recognized by myself as being important to get correct, for any nation to achieve political good and sustainable, sovereign health.
Sadly tho, my general views and broad conclusions, after reading this article, differ some.
In truth, having “been where life has led me”, into very non-mainstream lifestyles, “Hippies”, Cannabis smoking (until 2013), and “Hard Left politics”, motorcycles, Outlaws, “Greens” Environmentalism (since 16y/o) and happily-admitted “Extreme-Left” Socialist Sciences, etc etc, my views on those issues of “Defence spending etc”., I maintain ATC completely verifiably credible, serve to marginalize me from all mainstream and possibly many “Alternative, cum-REALPolitik” Organizations and Parties.
But, having “seen the writing on the wall” about where humanity generally is heading, for some 40 years now, which, with “subtle and not-so-subtle prompts”, by the mid-1990s I saw I did not fit in my hometown Melbourne’s world, so mounted my trusty Yamaha 650 and rode into the Sunset, to Nimbin actually, to escape a failing society, and to smoke myself to death, on Pot.
For as long, since 1998, I’ve “existed” solo “on the road”, and in forests, for some 18 years in a Holden Rodeo with my homemade camper on back.
Life’s taught me to handle and to enjoy my solitude.
But knowing we all need “sommit to do”, with my interests in politics, economics, psychology etc, the arrival of the internet coincided with my lack of a social life, wherewith I could stay somewhat up-to-speed on political, cultural and other societal affairs.
However, once bigtech invented “algorythms”, I wuz doomed, to further exile!
And, long story around, “bigtech and me”, aligns with a few issues your article’s author touched upon, which I’ve learned.
Defence outsourcing to forprofit contractors?
However, not to separate Defence from what, and who, Military Services – supposedly – exist to Defend, as-in “We The People”, nor to separate Defence from what and how The People make and sustain their lifestyles, work, it’s seen indeed it’s proven that what people do to honestly safely, sustainably earn their incomes, very very often, in fact most often, creates the most unethical “relationship/s” between any nations’ Military and their Citizenry’s forms of employment and income.
(Still there?)
Because…, all the political spin, media fakery, anti-economics economics and mainstream propaganda done, the amounts of credible, honorable, lawful, sustainable jobs of work, done by Australians, who your Defence Forces Commit to Serve and Protect, is pretty-much “single-digit” in percentages of the overall workforces and resultant societies Australians exist within.
Therefore, with plain-as-day conclusions possible to draw from such – suggested statistics (citations gladly accepted here) – firstly, defending “the majority of Australians, and Australia” the vadt majority of whom “earn their livings” from terminally corrupt and totally (long term) unsustainable jobs, basicly makes Defence Personnel, traitors.
But, maybe defending a traitorous culture, society and citizenry, makes Defence Personnel, at minimum, patriotic to it’s citizens, but more so, culpable of aiding and abetting the mass-extinction of some, estimated, “90%” of life on Earth.
Because that is precisely what such a corrupted social, political, economic culture always causes – extinction.
But, if the large part of our people are traitors too, our Military Services are – “doing OK”?
No, sorry, not OK.
Getting back to the issue of Defence department’s contracting projects out to the for-private-profit sectors,
…. any commentator, but especially any department advisor, committee member, decision maker, et al, on how, where and to whom, government military personnel, equipment but crucially, munitions productions are contracted to, it is vital that as little “outsourcing” to privateers is assigned as possible.
For evidence of the most terminal dangers of doing so, is right now resounding on every news bulletin worldwide, with near-endless reports of the risks of the west’s and other, “corporate military industrial complex” the “CMIC” having for some 7 decades since WW2, become “endebted” but in psychological terms “addicted” to profiting from endless, mass and unregulated production of weapons of war.
So, “endless wars” is their cashcow, purely, to stay in business?
Why? Because generations of dangerously-badly indoctrinated populations in these our laughably “free market” nations, have been programmed to “belieeeve” that profiting from making weapons, be they “civilians’ handguns” up to nuclear bombs, is good for “the economy”, therefore must be good for us the citizens!
Yaye! (No, wait?)
And to extend that – casually-arrived-at conclusion, ask yourselves how many very popular products, invented, mass-produced and marketed to being integrally part of any regions’ culture, invented and developed by “our best scientists”, etc, which of only very recent years have been proven to contribute enormously to the pollutions, diseases and mass-extinction of life on Earth?
Then! Ask where all our best scientists were schooled?
And by whom?
Academia, universities, exclusive cult, “private” colleges.
So? Given my above paragraphs have credence, two questions arise;
1; is any nations’ Defence Force, correct in outsourcing any aspect of the procurement of military personnel, equipment but ordinance especially, from for private profit sectors?
And
2; Are Defence Personnel correct to risk their own lives to protect industries, thus workers, which and who are doing the most, to send humanity and other life, extinct?
Apologies for that long walk around my expansive considerations going to the lack of sanity, lack of veracity, lack of plain economic, logical, sustainable, common sense in contracting most any military procurements out to the private forprofit arenas of any nation.
But, you get that, when too long away from – the private sector….
JaRD
Unedited 21:50AEST, 250622.