Why Test and Evaluation is more important than ever

The Government wants our Australian Defence Force (ADF) to have the most advanced capabilities, as quickly as possible.

This is clear from recently released Defence reviews and strategy papers.

Achieving the Defence aim of “speed to capability” and delivery of “minimum viable capability” requires sufficient Test & Evaluation, Certification and Systems Assurance (T&ECSA), particularly a focus on testing early during the development process to identify and mitigate any deficiencies.?This will only become more important under the AUKUS agreement as we buy more capabilities from our partners.

This means T&ECSA is more important than ever.

Its role is to assure that capabilities are safe and operationally viable from design through to disposal, and at all points in between.

It provides confidence that advanced capabilities, such as the AUKUS Pillar II ambitions in AI and hypersonics, can be deployed and used by our ADF safely and that they will deliver in the field to realise the Nation Defence Strategy of Denial.?

T&ECSA was identified as one of the government’s seven Sovereign Defence Industrial Priorities (SDIPs), which includes a list of capability needs.

All of which Nova Systems has been advancing and leading for the past two decades, as an experienced and trusted provider of T&ECSA to the ADF.?T&ECSA is also arguably the most important of the sovereign priorities because it runs across all others.

Australia’s Defence T&E capability has historically been focused on the individual project and platform level. This has restricted the potential to address fundamental issues of capacity and resilience, including workforce, facilities and technology. Additionally, it has limited options for continuous improvement of Defence T&E to ensure currency with new and emerging systems and solutions across the joint force.

To its credit, Defence has recognised and made significant efforts to rectify this through its Defence T&E Strategy and SDIP 7, which industry supports and stands ready to help implement.

Nova Systems is an Australian-owned company, founded by two veterans delivering flight test services, which has expanded over two decades to be a leader in T&ESCA across all domains.

Today, through Nova Systems’ T&E Centre of Excellence, we have invested in advanced training development, leveraging a combination of digital engineering, model-based systems engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), modelling and simulation and specialised new software tools.??

Being able to digitally model and simulate scenarios supports the need for speed. It supports dynamic changes to new scenarios and consideration of emerging threats in a digital environment, which is difficult to replicate in a physical environment.

An anticipated shortfall in T&E practitioners growing to 1000 by the end of the decade has been identified by Defence.

As Australian industry leaders, we have a responsibility and role to play to mitigate this. We are actively working to grow and scale our own workforce capability, as well as that of Defence and industry through our advanced training offerings, designed to keep pace with emerging technologies and rapid changes.

We also have an established sovereign supply chain of over 500 suppliers, the majority of which are Australian SMEs, and many with T&ECSA specialist skills and experience. Nova is the custodian of T&E capability and capacity for Australia and the ADF.

Dean Rosenfield, CEO Nova Systems?

*Originally appeared in The Australian Defence Report on 31 October 2024