ASC signs 14 Decision Advantage contracts

Defence’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator’s (ASCA) Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) program has signed 14 new contracts worth nearly $40 million to strengthen Decision Advantage capability across Defence domains including air, land, space, maritime and cyber. Decision Advantage is the ability to make better decisions, faster than any potential adversary, and is one of six key capability effects outlined in the 2024 National Defence Strategy.

“The investment of $40 million in the EDT Decision Advantage Program is an important activity to develop future capability and inform potential future ASCA Missions to provide an asymmetric advantage to the ADF,”according to MAJGEN Hugh Meggit, Head of ASCA.

Defence is investing in emerging technologies and artificial intelligence to ensure the Australian Defence Force (ADF) can make decisions with speed and accuracy in an increasingly complex information environment, it says in a media release.

The EDT Decision Advantage Program is not designed to deliver short-term acquisition outcomes – it will deliver discovery, new knowledge, concepts and prototypes to help protect against surprise and build capability to provide an international capability edge for Australia, says ASCA. The organisation released the Decision Advantage RFP in late-2024 and has been looking for cutting-edge, innovative proposals to apply one or more of the following technology areas to the Opportunity Statements for Decision Advantage:

• Automated Data Integration & Interpretation
• Machine Reasoning
• Multi-Modal Data Fusion
• Augmented Human-Machine Reasoning
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents
• AI Multi-Modal Foundation Model
• AI Orchestration

“These investments build long-term partnerships with industry, research institutions and our world-leading universities so we can develop the technology we need faster,” said the Chief Defence Scientist, Professor Tanya Monro AC.

“While the information environment in our region and around the world continues to change, we’re backing Australian researchers, innovators and engineers to deliver home-grown solutions to emerging challenges.”

Each contract rewards innovative proposals in areas including machine reasoning, automated data integration and artificial intelligence, which help drive Decision Advantage capability across the ADF.

A total of 123 submissions were received through this call for EDT proposals, reflecting the breadth and depth of Australia’s sovereign capabilities in science and technology.

ASCA’s EDT program is designed to shape and future-proof Australia’s defence innovation ecosystem to provide the ADF with asymmetric advantage, Defence says.