Professor Andrew Neely
Associate Dean for Research Engagement, UNSW Canberra
UNSW Theme Lead for the Defensive Hypersonics & Countermeasures
Accelerating ideas into commercial-ready products, the Defence Trailblazer is strengthening Australia’s sovereign capabilities through the rapid translation of disruptive new R&D technologies.
Leading the UNSW team for Hypersonics & Countermeasures, one of five key areas aligned to the Defence Strategic Review, Professor Andrew Neely is passionate about addressing important challenges in high-speed flight and propulsion and improving diversity in aerospace and academia.
“Our research group is closely aligned to industry, addressing structural and performance challenges for hypersonic vehicles. Work in this area is critical to ensuring the robust and efficient design of future vehicles.”
What are you working on with the Defence Trailblazer program?
The theme I lead with a counterpart from the University of Adelaide is Defensive Hypersonics & Countermeasures. From a defence point of view, this is looking at uplifting industry capabilities that will inform the development of long-range, hypersonic deterrents, all the way through to how we protect ourselves from similar potential threats (countermeasures).
By working with industry partners through the Defence Trailblazer, we provide opportunities for a broad spectrum of organisations to test their technologies in representative flight environments – both on the ground and in the air – and around planned flight events.
There are industry players who already have capabilities, from defence Primes who work in high-speed systems and have pedigree in these areas, as well as SMEs and start-ups with emerging ideas in sensors, computing, manufacturing technology and other areas that could be appropriate in hypersonic systems and countermeasures.
A key part of the Defence Trailblazer is to develop sovereign capability for the Australian Defence sector. The engagement of local teams is key to developing such capabilities on-shore and to reduce the reliance on the importation of sensitive technologies.
What are you hoping to achieve under the Defence Trailblazer?
Defence Trailblazer is about uplifting people and capabilities within Defence industry, including adjacent industries that could contribute to the ecosystem but who may not already be doing so.
Hypersonics is really just flight at very high speeds, including onboard systems and offboard vehicles for tracking, as well as for communication, command and control. However, designing hypersonic systems, actual airborne vehicles or parts of the system isn’t an easy task. If you take an airliner, for example, you can design this on a computer pretty confidently and test in a wind tunnel, and then confidently go and spend billions of dollars building the prototype and it will be almost exactly the same as what gets sold to the airlines. This is even true for military aircraft.
On the contrary, this isn’t the case with hypersonics. Limitations in wind tunnels both domestically and internationally, along with current computer design tools, means we are unable to competently test everything. Although we can test in various wind tunnels and try to provide methodologies and opportunities to test technologies in more representative environments, there is still excessive uncertainty in the accuracy of those tools. The resulting limitations on flight environments that the wind tunnels can reproduce mean limited ability to effectively test hypersonic systems.
One of the challenges for industry in the development of hypersonics is therefore access to testing infrastructure to trial new technologies, approaches and build experience in representative environments. These systems have often been the domain of Defence, and were traditionally developed behind closed doors. There have been some flight programs reported in the public domain like DSTG/AFRL/HiFiRE, but even those were tightly controlled, so a start-up company could not just come along and say: “I want to fly my sensor or computer or new material on board.” Hence, what we are currently trying to achieve is to get defence industry involved in flight experiments where this was not easily accessible in the past.
Investing in workforce skilling and talent attraction
The work we perform through the Defence Trailblazer has become a key part of what we are doing in the larger UNSW research group. UNSW has a long established strength in hypersonics, particularly around hypersonic aerothermodynamics and hot structures. We are expanding these capabilities by bringing in colleagues and researchers from other areas of the universities who can bring expertise that may not have been used on hypersonics before, such as advanced manufacturing (AM). CSIRO is a key technology partner here, and we’ll be working with them on AM processes that can ease the manufacture of vehicle structures, alongside additional industry partners.
At CSIRO’s Lab22 in Melbourne, a large robotised manufacturing cell has been commissioned for the Defence Trailblazer – to experiment with the 3D printing of large-scale structures for hypersonic vehicles. Now operational, this will benefit the wider ecosystem of defence, aerospace and space.
The ability to perform flight experiments will provide opportunities going forward with other research collaborators, all the way from our very own PhD students, through to other industry, university and supporting partners.
Why do you think the Defence Trailblazer is significant?
As universities, we were already pivoting towards a greater focus on research translation. UNSW is a prime example of a university that has worked closely with industry for many years.
New incentives and funding have made it more attractive for organisations to work alongside universities and once we start working together, we each realise the value proposition is there. The relationships we build with industry partners will last beyond the Defence Trailblazer program, and as we start to achieve success, it will strengthen the value of industry-acamedia collaboration efforts. On the university side, this also has the potential to open the eyes of university colleagues who hadn’t previously considered working with industry as an attractive option.
This is especially true in the engineering field, where I work. In university, we undertake fundamental research (expanding knowledge and understanding, exploring theoretical concepts and underlying principles) but also perform applied research (practical problem-solving and finding real-world solutions). You are never going to be able to apply research without the fundamentals to develop new capabilities for the ecosystem. By applying research in a practical context, you can also understand and identify what is important, influencing where you go next in the fundamental research. What are the fundamental questions that need answering to assist in the applied research? The Defence Trailblazer is a compelling opportunity for universities to get involved in applied research and inform fundamental research to help strengthen the overall capabilities and contributions towards a sovereign Defence ecosystem.
A new model for IP and commercialisation
There is an enormous opportunity for R&D to get involved in the Defence Trailblazer. For researchers, it’s not until you are offered a challenge like this that you may consider the opportunity. The establishment of the Defence Trailblazer, with a mandate to work with industry partners, is helping to drive that conversation and identify where the challenges and bottlenecks are, so we can figure out better ways to do things. Together, we are highlighting issues and charting a course to enable a strong future workforce, nurture innovation in defence startups, as well as cultivate stronger working relationships between researchers and industry.
Background
Professor Neely has worked closely with defence agencies in Australia and the US, with projects that have supported flight experiment programs for DARPA, DST Group and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
His expertise is critical to defence in Australia, partnering with industry to bring momentum for advanced hypersonic capability from universities and test environments into the hands of the military.
With a stellar career to date, Professor Neely has contributed to international technical committees for the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) as well as the Australian board member of the International Society for Air Breathing Engines (ISABE). He has served terms as the President of the Australian Division of the RAeS and as the Vice President of ISABE. He has a passion for STEM outreach and established the Cool Aeronautics program in Australia for the RAeS.
