It looks like a good story, seems like a lot of money, but is it? I’m not so sure. That’s $2.2m per company.
If you want the best engineers, the best researchers doing leading edge work you’re competing in a limited pool. Salaries are $200kplus, a slice of the business (albeit small), or some other incentive. You need facilities, the costs of employment (add workers comp, payroll tax liabilities) plus some money to keep the owners going.
Still haven’t included tooling and consumables.
So, $2.2m might get you 3-4 people plus the ones you’ve got for a year. There won’t be “accelerated” outcomes if we don’t give innovators the freedom and resources to innovate.
The money looks too small for “accelerated”. It’s a penny pinching, salami slicing, choke on what could be “rapid development”. It looks like “innovation” the same way we’ve always done it through government.
We can’t afford to do it all, nor can we afford to to treat innovation as a slow drip feed. Resource starved, pedestrian, without pressure. Next Friday can’t look like last Friday. This looks a lot like government procurement, and why wouldn’t it?
Capability quickly, refreshed, is better than something sometime. This isn’t going to get us inside the speed of development of a potential adversary.
We need to start doing this very differently, if we do want a different outcome. We need to challenge the traditional.
What would it really take to accelerate some of these into fielded capabilities, where it will make a difference?
@kiah
📣 ASCA SIGNS $6.6M IN DRONE CONTRACTS 📣
Three Australian Companies - AMSL Aero, Boresight Pty Ltd and Grabba Technologies, have signed contracts with #ASCA_Aus worth $2.2M each to further develop their drone prototype in the next stage of ASCA's Sovereign UAS Challenge for #YourADF
Read more at ➡ https://lnkd.in/gtjpWERK
#Soverign #defenceindustry #accelerate #innovation
