Australia’s spending on military research and development still lags behind other nations, according to university researchers.
Chris Mills, director of the Defense Research Institute at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), said the Defence Department committed just 2.73 percent of its budget to innovation and research in the current financial year, up from 2.6 percent last year.
Despite the increase, Mills said it was insufficient for Australia to keep pace with key allies.
“Japan has been increasing its percentage of R&D spending over the last few years and aspires to achieve 5.8 percent by the end of this year,” he said at a parliamentary inquiry hearing on defence.
“The UK, in the financial year 2022-23, reportedly spent 3.9 percent on military R&D of its entire military budget for the year.
“In terms of U.S. budgetary documents, they’ve committed $143 billion this financial year out of a budget of approximately $850 billion–that equates to nearly 17 percent. I would note, though, that those figures include testing, so it’s not an exact apples-to-apples comparison there.”
Mills also further said that Australia’s relatively low spending on military R&D was compounded by 15 years of reduced R&D spending nationally and in all sectors of the economy.
Risks of Losing Access to Cutting-Edge Technology
Amid Australia’s low R&D spending, Mills said there were risks that the country could miss out on leading-edge research.“We'll only get access to the second and third tier of technologies because we actually won’t know where the leading edge is anymore, because we’re not into that tent,” he said.
“There are examples where our closest partner and ally, the U.S., precludes us from some technologies at the leading edge so that they maintain a clear advantage.”
Andrew Neely, associate dean for research engagement at UNSW Canberra, also pointed out that it was not possible for Australia to expect allies to share technology if the country does not contribute.
“We’re in these alliances, but I think we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can just access any of the technologies from our alliance partners. What do we bring?” he asked.
“Yes, we bring geography, and we bring bases and we bring all those other things, but we want to bring more than that.
“We want to bring unique capability, not necessarily developed by ourselves, but developed in collaboration … with our key partners.”
Neely said such an approach had been successful in certain areas, such as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, of which Australia is a member.
A Balancing Approach to R&D
Due to Australia’s geo-strategic environment and the challenges the country faces, Mills said there had been an emphasis on “medium to high” technical readiness research, which could result in actual military capability in the next one to three years.The director also said there needed to be a balance against ongoing investment that could create newer capabilities in the next 10-20 years.
“There’s a couple of good examples of the value of that ongoing investment to basic and foundational research,” he said.
“University of New South Wales has two world leading quantum computing companies. Both [are] world-leading in their own rights.
“Their capabilities in those companies would not exist if it were not for government, both federal and state investment 10 to 20 years back in time.”
Moreover, Mills said Australia needed to be cautious about where the next technological breakthrough was going to be to avoid missing out on opportunities.
