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What is Defence Industry?

First, Defence Industry is not the Australian Defence Force. Defence Industry is the private-sector businesses that employ talented people, who develop and produce the products, services and technology that the Australian Defence Force require. That is everything from vehicles and equipment, to Artificial Intelligence technology and robotics, to Information Technology and administration. With increased Government funding and more opportunity than ever before, there has never been a better time to join this growing and dynamic industry.

A growing workforce

Demand is increasing for Australian businesses and their employees, to have the trade and technical skills to build and maintain fleets of new naval vessels, armoured vehicles, infrastructure and facilities. There is also increasing demand for Australian contribution to intelligence, reconnaissance, cyber and other information based capabilities.

There are more than 15,000 small and medium businesses (and counting).

Thousands of talented individuals

Our direct workforce is made up of thousands of individuals, with diverse skills and backgrounds.

175 active projects

Right across Australia there are 175 major and minor projects, to an approved value of $121 billion dollars as at 27 November 2021, with many more in the pipeline.

Government Investment

$270 billion

The Australian Government is investing a historic $270 billion in Defence spending as outlined in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plans.

$3 billion

Invested in innovation, science and technology through the Next Generation Technologies Fund and the Defence Innovation Hub as of mid October 2020.

Grants for defence industry

If your small or medium-sized business is looking to invest in its defence-related capabilities, you can apply for a grant to fund between 50 to 100 % of your costs depending on the grant.

Growing your business

The Office of Defence Industry Support provides a range of services to support businesses in defence industry. These services aim to help small to medium-sized Australian businesses grow their capacity to meet Defence needs and to join global defence industry supply chains.

Skilling Australia’s Defence Industry Grant

A grant of up to $500,000 to help your business with skills development and training in defence industry.

Defence Global Competitiveness Grant

A grant of up to $240,000 to help your business invest in projects that address barriers to exporting and build your defence export capability.

JSF Industry Support Program

Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Industry Support Program - Sustainment Grants provide Australian businesses with between $50,000 and $250,000 to fund up to 50% of eligible projects to win work in the sustainment phase of the JSF Program.

AUSMURI Program

Up to $1m per year over three years are available to Australian universities involved in a successful submission to the Australia-United States Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (AUSMURI) program.

Getting involved as an individual

Companies in Defence Industry need employees all across Australia with a wide range of skills.

Getting involved as a business

A business can tender for Defence contracts directly, or supply to an existing Defence contractor or sub-contractor.

Some of the skills needed in Defence Industry

Some of the skills Defence needs in Defence Industry are: engineering; design; manufacturing; program management; logistics; and support services.

Engineering

is fundamentally important to the design, construction and maintenance of the Australian Defence Force’s complex systems. Sub-disciplines of engineering have varying levels of relevance to defence technology and include systems engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and electrical engineering.

The discipline includes degree-qualified engineers including specialists, such as aeronautical engineers or marine engineers; as well as those with vocational training in technical skillsets. Systems engineering is particularly relevant to complex defence projects and is in very high demand.

Design

assists with establishing the requirements for a project, creating a picture of the project’s complexity and build process. It includes a number of sub-disciplines, such as computer-aided design (CAD), systems design, interface design and software design. Design has significant intersections with engineering.

Design professionals typically operate closely with engineers to reduce project risk. In some areas of defence industry, designers are also trained as engineers. This can be a particularly effective practice in large-scale and complex projects such as naval shipbuilding.

Manufacturing

skills are those which support industrial production methods, particularly those which involve the scaled production of goods. Associated skills include fabrication, welding, production design, and boiler making.

Defence Industry manufactures military platforms and systems, such as armoured vehicles, as well as the spare parts for systems.

Program Management

includes a variety of skillsets which support the delivery of goods and services through effective planning and coordination. Specialists employed in program management can include contracting officers, project managers, project schedulers and cost estimators.

Defence Industry in Australia places particular importance on project management skills, due to the project-driven nature of defence.

Logistics

are required for every operational or training activity the Australian Defence Force undertakes and is absolutely critical for the management of Australian Defence Force vehicles and assets. In the defence sector, logistics refers to the practice of planning and organising complex activities in support of defence capability, which could include arranging transport of people and materiel, or the maintenance of military systems.

Support Services

Support to Defence can include a wide range of services, such as long-term maintenance for complex systems, training and simulation, and information and communication technologies (ICT) support. Support services intersect with other disciplines in various ways; this is particularly true of ICT services. Computers and digital technologies are increasingly critical to every piece of modern military technology. Without the skills needed to support this digitisation, the ADF’s technological advantage over potential adversaries would be eroded.

Find out more in the Defence Industry Skilling and STEM Strategy

Watch here to learn more about
real life jobs in defence industry

The exposure you get as a younger engineer jumping into this opportunity would provide me a good wide variety of areas to work on. My name is Liam Dorward and I'm a graduate engineer at Daronmont Technologies. I was always keen on learning math at school, always wanting to do it as quick as possible and be really efficient at it. I loved uni. I think it was you know, one of the, you know, most memorable times in my life made a lot of friends along the way. In my opinion, we all brought each other up. Some of us were good in one area, some of us were good in other areas and we’d help each other become, you know, the best Engineers that we could be. There was one seminar that I got invited to which talked about working in the defence industry, but I do remember sitting there and going what a cool opportunity it would be and those directed me towards working in the defence industry. I've been a full-time graduate engineer since the end of January so about four five months now, it's been a very fast pace and very in my opinion unexpected saying that I've really enjoyed the opportunities I have had. Daronmont’s Comms Seeker project is a Maritime Communications Direction finding system. It's to help navigate and determine signals out at sea and determine which direction they are propagating from. I got to go on a trip to New Zealand where I was part of a crew to help calibrate the New Zealand Navy ship. So the drone project is where we actually want to place the transmission site to be done by a drone. Instead of having the ship maneuver around from a constant antenna signal we want to fly the drone around to actually calibrate a Navy ship or the Comms Seeker device. If you're, if you're curious if you want to work on, you know, a variety of different opportunities and different projects, it's definitely been a great opportunity for me personally and something that I would highly recommend to you know, anyone who's graduating.
I think it’s just a great aspect of working here with being able to learn so much from your peers because we all do work on such a broad variety of things being only the small company we are. My name's Ryan Marple. My role at Cyborg is just the Mechatronics Engineer, but I was also here as a Founder. So when I was a kid, I picked up a lot of the passion I have for Robotics and Engineering through robotics programs I did at school. It's really much like a real engineering project there’s a tight deadline. You've got a strict budget. You've got to manage a whole team to try and get the whole thing done. For about five years as I was learning engineering I got to actually apply some of those skills just in mentoring and learned a lot about leadership and doing that because it was still sort of like leading our engineering team. Most of the students I work with a lot of them are still deciding what they might want to actually do when they finish high school. It's really good to get them in the project and get them involved and seeing what it is actually like to do engineering work. Feels really good to be able to point them a direction that will lead them further in that field. At Cyborg, I'm more of a member of the team rather than a manager. I think the skills I learned are more so relevant to just maintaining relationships with other people in the team who you have to work on different areas. We occasionally run into issues where something's just not working. So it's always quite a process trying to whittle down to just one solution or what the next course of action should be when there's just so many you could choose from. The thing I love most about my job is being able to get involved in a wide variety of things. So I get to work on essentially different things every day. For someone who's thinking of getting into defence industry, they should try and get involved in things that they really enjoy. There's just a wide variety of things they can work on, so whatever they're interested in, I think they'd be able to find it.
Despite technology growing and building and being able to do all these wonderful things technology will never replace the creativity that people have. My name is Megan Hungerford. And I am the technical programs manager at XTEK. When I was 18, I moved away to do law and took a gap year and during my gap year I got my first design job. I realized I love that so much that there was no way I was going to go back and do law. My first job was working for a company that makes football jerseys. It was my first exposure to textiles and physical design of components that go on a person. I'm intensely curious about the physicality of things and how people interact with them. Being a designer wasn't enough and that's when I chose to go into engineering I was self-conscious that. I wasn't a “real” engineer and I was still maintain that I am a designer that speaks engineering XTEK has two divisions in the business. One of the divisions is armor and composites and the other side is technology systems. I have recently started the process of trying to redesign armor equipment for women in the military. It's never been addressed the right way. There's always been problems at some point. We won't have to think about it as male equipment and female equipment. It will be customized to the individual. I think I'm most proud of the fact that I've been able to champion human systems and human engineering. There was always quite a defined line between the human centric design and then the engineering side. My advice for anybody who's thinking about moving into defence industry. Don't get caught up in traditional thinking try and find strengths that you haven't seen before. Champion your strengths.
Being able to work closely with defence has meant that we have been able to push the boundaries of the products we develop. My name is Mark Sproule. I'm one of the co-founders here at Blueprint Lab. I'm the Director of Operations. So one of my influences as a child was sailing. I was learning how to refurbish and get the boat back into sailing working order. I developed a love for engineering having that passion transpire into your career you can go a lot further and take more risks in what you do. So we very much specialise as an accessory manufacturer of robotic arms for underwater vehicles. Our robotic comes a quite different and they're designed to be used in very complex unstable unknown environments. Throwing Electronics underwater in subsea conditions, it's not an easy problem to solve. There hasn't really been technology that's provided these industries the capability that we've been able to provide. Yeah, I think for the most proud about is developing a team that's highly effective at what they do and seeing people being able to innovate not just an engineering but also in production and in terms of commercial development of the business as well. Seeing people upskill and seeing people being able to innovate without any guidance. Sometimes I'll walk into a meeting and be blown away by what people the concepts that the teams coming up with by themselves and executing on those things. Yeah what I think I find incredibly interesting in working in the defence Industries is their appetite for technology the applications that they use technology in means that they can really push the boundaries of what technology can deliver. To someone entering the defence sector you can create opportunities by working on your own projects. It will provide you practical skills that are incredibly beneficial for, for coming into companies like ours if you're passionate about something you can take it very far.
Focus on the things that get you the most excited focus on those things that you're passionate about bring that passion into your career. I'm Russ Osborne. I'm the Chief Engineer at SYPAQ Systems. Throughout my childhood I always had an interest in aviation building and flying model airplanes and my father, failures with RC airplanes were always spectacular and usually ended in a spectacular crash with a huge mess. Trial and error was a super important part of, of learning it and when I look back on it was a great thing to be able to do and enjoy. I've got an opportunity to do an intern program with a large aerospace company here in Australia that gave me some great experience and ended up in a job offer as a graduate engineer. So one of the great projects we've worked on here at SYPAQ is PPDS Project, Precision Payload Delivery System or more affectionately known as our cardboard airplane. This is a system that we, we developed here to address a need for Army around Logistics and Supply. We've found so many applications and so much interest from across a wide range of Industries. It's been a fun project something really out of the box got my team thinking about how can we do something unique and innovative? The thing that I'm most proud of is the engineering team and the engineering capability that we've been able to build here and I'm excited to see what the, this team can do into the future. Yeah, if I was thinking if any young students these days some advice coming into our industry I'd say don't be shy, reach out to the companies these people in my team who've joined us through cold calling our company and, and asking if we have opportunities it's a fantastic time to be looking to join the defence industry here in Australia. There is gonna be lots of really great job opportunities available for not just engineering roles, but a whole range of different roles in defence industry. For me, my career in the defence industry has been fantastic. I've got to travel the world. I've got to work on some interesting projects with the absolute latest in technology and honestly couldn't see myself in any other industry.
Your mind is always engaged with what you are doing or what you want to do tomorrow. I'm Dr. Navid Mahaja, I'm a research fellow within Institute for Intelligent System Research and Innovation at Deakin University. As a mechanical engineering student, I was trying to find a high level and great University and I was awarded scholarship for doing a PhD at Deakin University other researcher. You always have a lot of opportunities to experience new things innovation and experiencing designing analysing new systems. My supervisor is suggested me. Okay, there is a chance for doing a cool project with Australian Air Force. We came up with an innovative design for cyclone. Cyclone is an innovative centrifuge system. The structure is quite low cost low maintenance. The motor sits is on top of the other side of the arm. So we are using the motor as a counter weight to balance arm actually and the structure that increase the lifetime of the system and it was quite exciting when I saw the system is running for the first time. In my career, I'm already supervising some PhD students. Quite enjoyable working with young researchers like myself. So we do some brainstorm. We try to resolve issues and different projects as well. And that's quite inspiring. I strongly recommend young engineers and researchers to work with Australia defence. There are a lot of opportunities for doing projects with them in different domains. I believe research brings a bright future for engineers and scientists.

Priority Capabilities

The Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities are (in no particular order):

  • Combat clothing survivability and signature reduction technologies;
  • Munitions and small arms research, design, development and manufacture;
  • Land combat and protected vehicles and technology upgrades;
  • Aerospace platform deeper maintenance and structural integrity;
  • Collins class submarine maintenance and technology upgrade;
  • Continuous shipbuilding program (including rolling submarine acquisition);
  • Enhanced active phased array and passive radar capability;
  • Advanced signal processing capability;
  • Surveillance and intelligence;
  • Test, evaluation, certification and systems assurance;
  • Robotics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence;
  • Precision guided munitions, hypersonic weapons, and integrated air and missile defence systems;
  • Space;
  • and Information warfare and cyber capabilities.
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