Ep.232 - Plane Crazy Australian Defence

Well, let's get on to aerospace and defence.

And as I said, it feels much more visible now, Australia, to us.

You're very much more in the news here.

And obviously AUKUS is a big deal and it seems to be getting a lot bigger.

I know you recently had a really interesting programme, actually, on the Defence magazine, which reflected on some of the growth and the challenges there.

for that.

But what's changing in Australian defence? Why am I seeing so much more than I ever have done?

Well, AUKUS is a really big part of that and the tripartite agreement between the US, the UK, Australia.

There's two pillars to it.

The first is the submarines.

And look, I've got to say, and many of us down here are saying, we're putting a lot of money into these submarines that won't be around until 30s, 40s.

That includes the secondhand Virginias from the US that we might get if they agree to it.

and unfortunately that's ripping capability out of the current world they're taking money out of it so much like the uk we have a funding problem uh but the the pillar two is fantastic pillar one's the submarines pillar two is all the cool autonomous systems ai hypersonics and all the really cool technologies and i've quite enjoyed hanging out with the crew working on all that and There's a lot of stuff going on.

We've also got increased engagement between the UK and Australia.

For instance, the Kinetics Dragonfire, the laser system.

We've been doing a bit of stuff with them on that.

Right.

There's all sorts of things going on.

And, yeah, that would be bringing us up there.

But like yourselves, funding is tight.

Right.

And just jumping around a little bit, Grant, when I listened to the magazine podcast, I think it was a few weeks ago, there were a lot of challenges that your guests were bringing up that seemed very practical to me.

But one of the things I'd never thought through was that whole security issue and the joint security links.

And it just is, it seems so crazy that we're jointly developing things this product and and this operation but we can't even get to share our own security links amongst ourselves to do it it's bonkers

they have they have introduced a license-free environment so that it doesn't get rid of itar and all that kind of stuff but it does give us an environment where the three parts parties can exchange info and things like that and and work together in in those environments but combined or acknowledge security clearances where if you have here in australia that we have baseline yeah whatever basically and then you've got nv1 which is secret nv2 top secret and then you get provisional vetting and so on um if we can at least get acknowledgement that if you've got this here in Australia, that means this level in the UK and that level in the USA and get that level of agreement, that's the next cab off the rank.