In a recent ASPI report, Robert Clark and Peter Jennings argued for the establishment of an Australian version of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Conceptually, it’s a very good suggestion. However, we need to think deeper about how to take advantage of Australia’s pools of private capital, which are among the largest in the world due to compulsory superannuation. The problem isn’t just about overcoming current budget allocation issues in universities. We need to industrialise innovation and marry it to our strategic purposes.

The need for a new approach to domestic innovation was also raised in a Strategist post by Charley Feros that posed a very relevant question: ‘Why is it so hard for Australia’s innovators to win acceptance by Defence?’

The same question has been asked by innovative Australian companies over decades. To answer it simply, the Department of Defence sees local innovations as carrying a higher risk than those coming from traditional providers overseas. The DARPA proposal advanced by Clark and Jennings is unlikely to overcome this dynamic. Nothing turns the private capital tap off faster than when the pathway of technology development and commercialisation is obscured by opaque and uncertain bureaucracy.

The 2016 defence industry policy statement recognised the problem highlighted by Feros, promising that ‘Defence will change its culture and business processes to systematically remove barriers to innovation’. But not much has changed. In fact, no substantive improvements have occurred since the Howard government’s 1998 strategic policy statement with its claim that ‘Defence and industry will create a culture of one team—Team Australia.’

The strategic environment, however, has changed, and it is becoming increasingly less forgiving. In the past we could promote technological superiority over potential regional adversaries to offset our obvious lack of numbers, but now we are likely to have neither qualitative nor quantitative advantages.

So, we have two significant challenges in addressing this innovation problem. The first is the Defence Department’s culture. The proposal to form an Australian DARPA is correct, but to house it within the Defence Science and Technology Group, with its department-oriented organisational structure and reporting lines, is unlikely to produce the outcomes that the nation needs.

The other challenge is developing asymmetric capabilities to help balance the operational equation, for which we need rapidity and risk-taking. Hans Ohff and Jon Stanford have also highlighted the need for asymmetric capability development.

The answer to both challenges is to establish an Australian DARPA, but to bypass Defence’s culture and bureaucracy. We need an organisation that fosters innovation through constructive risk-taking that addresses the highest potential payoff and develops the most forward-looking technology, not just research. This means a focus on technology readiness levels 4–7.

It also means bringing in people from industry who understand risk in an organisational structure that is agile and not burdened with process-oriented bureaucracy. At the very least, such an organisation would have to have independence from Defence, with its own budget and its own staffing arrangements outside of the Australian public service. It would need to be free to set its own goals and it should have direct reporting lines to the defence minister or an appropriate junior minister. Everything will flow from getting the right people in place.

An Australian DARPA could also take advantage of the immense pools of private investment capital in Australia to augment public funding. Public funding can still provide the backbone of the activity, but private investment could be sought on a case-by-case basis to increase the capital available, or to potentially accelerate the process. Private investors typically have a considerably greater propensity for risk-taking than public-sector organisations, and private investor funding would conceivably be available if innovation projects were likely to result in commercial returns in commercially attractive timeframes.

A public–private partnership approach is therefore necessary, with clear terms and a framework that recognises that it won’t be the usual master–servant relationship, but a partnership with mutual recognition of each other’s needs. Agreements would need to be reached about how and for how long private capital would be tied up, and what the rights for use would be on conclusion.

This type of Australian DARPA could be tasked specifically to investigate and develop asymmetric technologies within a sovereign construct so that we have maximum flexibility to address a rapidly changing strategic environment. Given the strategic nature of sought-after ends, potential developmental projects that could provide asymmetric effects could be regularly sought from academic institutions, research organisations and the private sector.

Collaboration with alliance partners would need to be judiciously assessed. In this increasingly dynamic regional environment, we want to avoid being restricted in what we can do by the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations and US policy more generally.

The benefits of a DARPA-esque organisation in Australia during this time of increasing regional tension would be immense. We would be able to identify projects and technologies that would provide asymmetric effects of direct relevance to our force structure and our modus operandi. We would be better placed to take control of our own destiny rather than relying upon external parties. The Australian Defence Force would directly benefit from being in an improved operational position.

We could use these projects to build the nation’s industrial capability and capacity, not only in the defence industry but in our wider industrial base.

In addition, we could harness the largely untapped funds of private investors for the national good and the development of national capability. And we could potentially contribute to the efforts of our allies by being a source of innovation rather than just a consumer.

ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

Australian naval shipbuilding has a long history. Calling it a chequered history only just captures the drama and the dollars of the determination to make our own ships and submarines.

More than any other area of defence procurement, shipbuilding consistently captures the nation’s attention, Hugh White, ASPI’s first executive director, observed in 2002, ‘from the troubled Government shipyards of the 1950s and 1960s through to the Collins submarine project of the 1990s. Naval construction is a challenging, and at times risky, billion-dollar business’.

After selling off its defence factories, the federal government spent the final two decades of the 20th century insisting on arm’s-length competition for all defence contracts.

Then, in 2001, the government announced a new approach. It would reduce competition and instead build long-term relationships with major defence suppliers. Shipbuilding—‘the jewel in the defence industry crown’—would be the testbed, and an ASPI report offered proposals for ‘modest but valuable’ reform:

• Do not force an outcome on the industry as a whole. Let commercial forces decide how many shipbuilders we can support in this country.
• Smooth out the shipbuilding workload later in the decade, so the industry does not face a boom and bust cycle.
• Reform naval repair and maintenance, to better support the ships at sea and the industry.
• Sell ASC [Australian Submarine Corporation] to the highest competent bidder, allowing new firms to enter the industry which might be able to bring non-defence work to the corporation.
• Avoid buying Australian-unique systems which seldom offer operational advantages to offset the very high costs and risks they impose.

Reviewing the Collins-class submarine in 2006, Patrick Walters called it Australia’s most ambitious and controversial defence project:

No major defence procurement project in Australian history has generated such an extraordinary saga of strategic, commercial and bureaucratic rivalries, technical snags, cultural misunderstandings, political interference and genuine national achievement as the building of the Collins Class vessels.

Walters concluded that the Commonwealth’s $5 billion investment in Collins had given Australia a key strategic asset and greatly boosted the skills of our naval construction industry.

In Keeping our heads below water, Andrew Davies in 2008 advocated going from the six Collins boats to 12 future submarines:

The project risks arising from the ‘stop start’ approach to building submarine classes could be mitigated by a rolling production model of continuous building. That would require a fleet of probably twelve boats to sustain, but the unit cost of each would be brought down and industry sustainment would be much more manageable. This approach would require a sustained government funding commitment beyond the usual forward estimate period.

The desire to load the new design with high-end capabilities at the leading edge of submarine technology, Davies wrote, must be balanced against the need for a design that could be delivered close to schedule and budget.

Davies gave the 2009 defence white paper a tick for announcing 12 new submarines, but also a kick for a significant omission: it gave no cost estimate for the project. To fill that hole, Davies and Sean Costello offered their estimate—$36 billion (in 2009 dollars)—a controversial calculation, subject to much argument, that eventually became the benchmark figure.

At $3.04 billion each, the most expensive conventional submarines ever built would be large, complex and expensive—and a bespoke Australian design. Because ASC had been retained under government ownership, Davies and Costello wrote, the Commonwealth would be better placed to evaluate the designs, but ‘ASC should not be handed the build contract as a fait accompli’.

In 2010, ASPI went Naval gazing to consider the future of Australia’s shipbuilding and repair sector, drawing views from the federal and state governments and industry:

Some common themes emerged: the challenge of delivering the Defence White Paper’s planned expansion of the naval fleet, the need to manage the workflow for industry to avoid a ‘boom and bust’ pattern, and the need for Australian industry to be competitive in a global marketplace.

At the end of 2011, Andrew Davies lamented that the nation’s biggest ever engineering undertaking, Subaqueana australis, was listing. The saga of the Collins fleet made Canberra uncomfortable about ‘throwing good money after bad’ on the future submarine. The principals in charge of the project weren’t making an authoritative case to steer ahead.

Treating Collins and the future submarine as stand-alone problems, Davies said, increased the chance of a future capability gap between the two classes. Fixing the Collins’ problems and developing technologies to go into the future boats could be the same activity. Davies’ judgement was that an ‘evolved Collins’ looked the best bet.

In 2012, Davies and Mark Thomson pronounced that the promise of the 2009 defence white paper for 2030—a force of 12 new, highly capable, long-range submarines—wasn’t going to happen: ‘We’re already past the point at which a force of that size and capability can be in place even by the mid‑2030s.’

Mind the gap explored the options to fill the gap, to get serious about subs: ‘The government needs to ratchet up the priority of the project and marshal the resources needed to accomplish the task.’

After the election of the Abbott government in 2013, ASPI held a conference to discuss Australia’s submarine choice. Feedback from the 220 attendees pointed to a striking message: ‘the lack of agreement from Defence, the Navy and the Australian Government on design, capability requirements and numbers for the Future Submarine project’.

The Abbott government turned towards a version of Japan’s Soryu-class submarine (dubbed ‘Option J’), setting up a competition with designs from Germany or France.

The battle over the new boat bounced in many directions, from the billions to the battery technology. Why should Australia build its own submarines? What were the benefits of deepening the Japan defence relationship? In Japan versus Europe, would Prime Minister Tony Abbott would do a ‘captain’s pick’ for Japan. The sub was a wonderful case study of defence acquisition, Davies observed:

Because of its scale and time frame, it spans every aspect of defence decision-making from long-term strategic crystal ball gazing, including the possible impact of future technologies, through military strategy development and force structuring, all the way to robust politics of shipyard jobs.

For The Strategist, the submarine has consistently generated headlines, with arguments for big submarines, little submarines, conventional submarines, nuclear submarines, no submarines, and the protest that Australia’s ultimate choice was a preposterous submarine.

The Turnbull government’s 2016 choice of France’s DCNS (now Naval Group) as the international partner for the design of the 12 subs merely ended one stage of the saga.

The dollars being fed the boat made it ‘the very hungry future submarine’.

Submarines: your questions answered, published in November 2020, had nearly 40 significant questions to answer. The specialist world of defence procurement could provoke argument at an Aussie barbecue, Peter Jennings noted:

Why are they so expensive? Why do we need 12 of them? Why build them here? Why not nuclear propulsion? Why a French design? Why not an American, German, Japanese or Swedish design? Aren’t submarines obsolete, to be replaced by drones? Won’t technology make the oceans transparent?

Australia set out on a multi-decade undertaking to build ships and subs, but in 2018 Andrew Davies worried that we were making it up as went go along in a high-risk enterprise, with inadequate governance, and a piecemeal approach to managing risk.

Reflecting on ASPI’s two decades of worrying about the cash–kit–capability nexus, Davies lamented:

I think we’re still paying too much, both in dollar terms and in broader opportunity costs, for our defence capability. And we’re being too patient about getting it. I haven’t won many friends in defence industry with my views on local procurement versus off-the-shelf purchases, but that’s something I’m unrepentant about. What we have today is an uneasy amalgam of defence capability development and defence industry sector support, hiding behind a veneer of ‘sovereign capability’ or ‘jobs and growth’.

If Australia’s strategic circumstances looked more benign, Davies wrote, this would be only a misuse of resources, ‘but it runs the risk of also being a dreadful strategic oversight’.

Since Vietnam, Michael Shoebridge wrote in 2018, Australia had had a small defence force with a clear technological edge over potential adversaries. That had given governments confidence that Australian forces would prevail—and suffer minimal casualties.

Unfortunately, Shoebridge noted, that edge had dissipated because of military modernisation across the region. Regional militaries operating near-peer capabilities would inflict combat losses on the Australian Defence Force:

Ships, aircraft and vehicles that are lost in combat with their ADF operators are almost impossible to replace in a timely way given their complex nature. The lead time for getting a new ship is at least five years. For an F-35, it’s a matter of joining a global queue.

But even if a new platform was available, the bigger limiting factor to sustaining combat of this type is that replacing skilled military personnel takes years, and, in some cases, over a decade. That means we might be deploying a force that’s unable to sustain itself against losses long enough to prevail. That’s a fancy way of saying it would probably lose.

The changing risk equation meant the Defence Department should focus beyond the low-number, high-capability formula it had used for decades.

As well as protecting advanced kit from loss, Shoebridge said, Defence needed lots of complementary consumables that could be deployed, lost and replaced in numbers.

Australia’s chequered history of shipbuilding faces a crowded and complex strategic chessboard.

Australia is currently undertaking the greatest peacetime recapitalisation of its defence force in the nation’s history, and if the prime minister, defence minister and Home Affairs secretary are to be believed it couldn’t come a moment too soon. The surging program of investment includes a dizzying array of highly complex, short- and long-term projects that will require significant specialised support to deliver. That requires hard-to-come-by technical, tactical and management skills for the wide array of tasks facing the organisation, from cutting steel to cutting code.

As ASPI’s Marcus Hellyer points out, Defence already relies on a pool of contractors and outsourced service providers, at a price tag that runs into the billions. Many fill roles that aren’t viable or economical for service personnel (such as mowing lawns and manning gates). But many provide skills that Defence can’t attract, can’t retain or simply doesn’t need on a long-term basis. And while contractors may be expensive, so are service personnel. The former, however, are a highly flexible resource readily moving between projects and taking with them knowledge that is not lost in the posting cycle. On top of this, a very large percentage of the contractor workforce appears to be veterans.

Defence members hang up their uniforms for many reasons. Some leave dissatisfied with the service and never want to look back. But many more leave for reasons including family, financial and medical factors, while remaining deeply committed to the defence of the nation. Those veterans bring an intimate understanding of the organisation, military capability and, in many instances, specialised technical and managerial experience. Those are valuable skills that the ADF has spent years and a large amount of money developing (although these individuals have almost invariably gained additional skills through further study, often in their own time).

It begs the question of how many veterans currently work for Defence. The probable answer is that the department itself doesn’t know. Unlike the United States, where the government actively prefers to employ veterans, it seems that Defence has simply never asked the question in a formal or systematic way when hiring or contracting.

But perhaps the most significant reason for the lack of data is that the department itself almost never directly employs veterans (with the exception of members of the Defence public service workforce who are themselves veterans). Current procurement mechanisms create barriers to individuals (and many small enterprises) to supplying services directly to the government. Instead, structures like panels of major service providers are used, which are typically restricted to a small number of very large firms who often subcontract work to the individual or small business best placed to deliver the service. For some veterans that process may be advantageous. Large multinational firms may offer security, professional development and tools to help the individual deliver outcomes.

Certainly, when the government is buying a product or service, such as building an armoured vehicle (often referred to as ‘below the line’), it makes financial sense to buy from the manufacturer themselves. But often the department just needs the skills of a particular individual or small firm to deliver ‘above the line’.

Currently when the government wants to buy knowledge and experience, often from people that it has spent years training, it must do so via third parties who provide limited ‘value add’ but who charge additional and sometimes significant costs. That not only creates barriers for veterans and veteran-run businesses but increases the cost to Defence of accessing the skills it needs. Fortunately, the government already has a model which can be adapted to make it easier and cheaper to access veteran’s skills.

Using the highly successful Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) as a model, the government could establish a veterans procurement policy, or VPP, which could create significant cost savings, opportunities for veterans and more agile enterprise outcomes.

The IPP, in place since 2015, has generated more than $3.5 billion, with over 24,470 contracts awarded to more than 2,140 Indigenous business. Exemption 16 of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules allows portfolios to procure directly from Indigenous small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The mandatory set-aside requires that Indigenous businesses be given an opportunity to demonstrate value for money before there is a general approach to market. That proven framework could readily be adapted to create a VPP that allows Defence and all other Commonwealth agencies to directly access the expertise they need.

A VPP would also reduce subcontracting (and often even sub-subcontracting) premiums by enabling the government to access the individuals and businesses they want directly, without involving a third party. And it would even reduce risk (commonly invoked as an argument against contracting directly with SMEs and for the need for major service providers and labour-hire companies), via proven structures, polices and process.

A VPP would demand a minimum 51% veteran ownership and require a percentage of profits be returned to veteran support initiatives. That in turn could help reduce the pressure on the Department of Veterans’ Affairs  by providing additional funds to support those in need through the profits made by veterans in the private sector.

But a VPP wouldn’t only benefit veterans. Defence has more than 7,000 individuals providing ‘above the line’ services, at an annual cost in excess of $1 billion. The majority of those people are contracted (or subcontracted) through a major service provider. And, as one of the biggest departments, Defence’s procurement panels are utilised by numerous other government departments. Cutting out the ‘middle-man’ could put more veterans into relevant roles while saving the government tens to hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

The Prime Minister’s Veteran’s Employment Program states that ‘veterans represent a unique, diverse and high-performing source of talent’. That’s very true. Perhaps the government, starting with Defence, might take advantage of that.

Have you ever heard of Combined Joint Headquarters (CJHQ) Top End? Before you go racing to Google, it doesn’t exist! Yet Australia and its partners need such an arrangement. It’s time to leverage our strategic geography and make a bold commitment to maritime security and multilateral military cooperation by establishing just this kind of headquarters. At the very least, a CJHQ in northern Australia could help to coordinate humanitarian assistance and disaster responses in a region facing more frequent and intense weather events.

In the 2020 defence strategic update, the government committed to invest ‘approximately $270 billion over the coming decade in new and upgraded Defence capabilities’ in order to ‘project military power and deter actions against us’. Unfortunately, there’s little mention of how the Australian Defence Force will command and control all these new capabilities.

The strategic update also says that ‘defence planning will focus on our immediate region: ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland South East Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South-West Pacific’.

As one would expect, there’s scant detail in the update on the command-and-control structures to coordinate and synchronise these defence planning activities with our non–Five Eyes partners. Hard-won experience reveals that this sort of cooperation doesn’t just occur and is a perishable commodity requiring continuous long-term commitments.

Technology permits command and control to be done remotely, so some will argue there’s no need to create a new headquarters in the Top End—be it the Northern Territory or northern Queensland. This perspective does have a ring of truth, but strategic geography and proximity still matter, and so does people-to-people cooperation.

Establishing a combined headquarters with joint capabilities across the armed services would afford Australia an all-new opportunity to help meet one of the strategic update’s primary aims: shaping our strategic environment by being an ‘assertive advocate for stability, security and sovereignty in our immediate region’.

Placing a coalition headquarters in the north would be a firm step towards ‘strengthening international engagement, particularly with the United States, Japan, India, ASEAN and other allies and partners in our region’.

A northern CJHQ would lend itself to the disaster-response operations that Australia and its partners have routinely found themselves conducting in the past eight years: Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013; the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in March 2014; the Nepal earthquake in April 2015; and the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia in September 2018. These operations were civil–military, involving whole-of-government efforts by the nations engaged. Still, the combined defence components provided the planning and command-and-control expertise that led to their success.

A CJHQ in the north could become the focal point, not just for Australia, but for our coalition partners, for combined and joint operations that would support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions, as well as the planning and execution of operations in support of police and coastguard forces to counter human and drug trafficking.

It would allow Australia to host this combined effort with India, Indonesia, Japan and other partners in an area of interest common to all. In doing so, those involved would develop and practise the kind of planning and communications protocols that support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.

A CJHQ would also relieve some of the burden on the ADF’s Joint Operations Command, whose primary focus is defence and combat operations.

There can be no doubt that establishing this kind of arrangement will be a monumental undertaking involving several countries, from our near neighbour Indonesia to our ANZUS and Quad partners.

One of the first challenges, though, will be far closer to home.

Getting agreement on this from Defence will be no easy task. The headquarters once responsible for all the planning and conduct of operations in northern Australia during peacetime and wartime, Northern Command, has been in a steady state of decline for years. Most of its functions now sit with Joint Operations Command in Bungendore, near Canberra. So, a commitment to returning at least some command-and-control arrangements to Australia’s north will involve revisiting some planning assumptions.

Interestingly, while the ADF’s command and primary headquarters lie beneath 26° south, the United States’ Indo-Pacific Command maps tend to show only the north of Australia.

Regardless of type and composition, all headquarters are challenged with anticipating and determining viable command-and-control structures that accomplish specific operations while retaining the agility to plan and execute other ongoing or new missions.

A CJHQ in the north would provide Australia and its partners with a responsive, agile and inclusive headquarters that answers an operational need and sends a powerful signal to potential adversaries and criminal groups operating in one of the most contested areas in the world.

As most military leaders, regardless of nationality, know, if you get the command-and-control right, the rest of the mission is straightforward. A combined joint headquarters in the Top End of Australia will not only get us and our allies on the right foot, but will place us on our front foot too.

The Australian Defence Force and all three levels of government should work together to establish and maintain ‘mounting’ bases in Australia’s north from which overseas operations could be launched.

The ADF has home bases, mounting bases and bare bases, which serve specific purposes. Home bases are used for force generation and maintaining preparedness. Bare bases are there to be activated when needed, and mounting bases are established for specific operations and contingencies.

Mounting base infrastructure required for operations to secure Australia and its interests could be enhanced throughout northern Australia by closer linkages to planners and decision-makers within the three levels of government.

While it seems that there have been some attempts by Defence to consider mounting base requirements, they appear to be based on existing infrastructure, with no plan to integrate ADF requirements into future developments.

By comparison, in each state and local government area, significant effort has gone into the infrastructure developments required to support and develop communities and regions.

Defence improves the home bases of the army, navy and air force, generally without much consultation with local or state and territory authorities. This is to be expected given the permanency and purpose of home bases in training forces.

Mounting bases are different. Real attention is generally only paid to them when their potential operational use is considered. As highlighted in a previous post, mounting bases are employed, given operational security considerations, for their proximity to potential operations, accessibility by road, rail, sea and air, and the suitability of their infrastructure and logistics for the training, deployment and sustainment of the deployed force. Given Australia’s geographic location, these bases are normally situated in the country’s north.

The commander of a joint force with an assigned mission has a different perspective on the infrastructure at a mounting base than the base commander. The base commander seeks infrastructure improvements to support the training function and day to day barracks living, and is focused on preparing for possible future missions. The force commander has eyes on the mission at hand.

There are two good reasons to pay attention to this now—the rising instability in our region and the increasing realisation of the benefits of developing northern Australia.

The recently released defence strategic update and force structure plan address the heightened imperative to meet emerging national security threats. For Defence planners, these documents point to the contingencies that could require mounting bases for ADF operations. If there was ever a time to get this right, it’s now.

There is also an increasing focus on the economic benefits of investing in northern Australia, especially since the 2015 Northern Australia audit, and around $12 billion has been allocated to the national Defence estate and infrastructure program over the next four years.

The Commonwealth guidelines are set out in Our north, our future: White paper on developing northern Australia and managed by the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund and the Office of Northern Australia. The Queensland government has the North Queensland Regional Plan and the North Queensland regional office that has a dedicated defence hub. The Northern Territory and Western Australia have similar plans.

Local governments naturally pursue infrastructure that enhances economic development and liveability of their areas.

Informed decisions made at local and state government level could strongly support Australia’s national security. Without knowledge of Defence’s needs, however, uninformed state and local government decisions could, at best, fail to optimise the conduct of ADF mobilisation and sustainment missions. At worst, not collaborating effectively now could directly impact on future deployed operations.

Improved knowledge, linkages and coordination among the three levels of government about mounting base operational requirements and infrastructure, would make best use of the taxpayers’ dollar in northern Australia, while enhancing national security and improving prosperity.

All three levels of government invest in infrastructure. Where their interests meet, the costs could be shared to realise a national security effect, provide economic prosperity and jobs, and enhance the liveability of communities. In some cases, making choices that don’t involve additional costs could make the difference in whether infrastructure that better supports ADF mobilisation operations is built or not.

A simple example of effective coordination could be a planned port redevelopment. With a more informed understanding of Defence’s mobilisation requirements, a berth might need to be extended only slightly to maximise Defence’s use, for little cost.

Similarly, knowing the weight load and surface material requirements for armoured vehicle movements in a port, might be easily and cheaply addressed at the development stage rather than at some later date in order to meet an urgent contingency.

Simple inputs by Defence could make a significant difference to ADF mobilisation capability with no material effect on the operations of a port and at minimal cost.

Places in northern Australia where mounting bases for operations offshore are likely to be established are constantly being developed by state and local governments. A keener interest by Defence in this development work would likely find that a few simple contributions to the local development plans could yield significant benefits.

Providing advice to state and local government on mobilisation support adjustments would improve ADF capability now and in the future. Bearing in mind the characteristics required of a mounting base, some engagement and attention paid now, could save time and money when we really need both.