Fed: Defence scientists helping out in East Timor

AAP General News (Australia)
12-23-1999
Fed: Defence scientists helping out in East Timor

By Max Blenkin, Defence Correspondent

CANBERRA, Dec 23 AAP - Not long after the first troops landed in East Timor, the defence
scientists arrived.

There they remain, overseeing trials of new equipment, making sure the older stuff
works properly and seeing how things could be done better for next time.

Although the East Timor operation was essentially low-tech by the standards of the
Persian Gulf War, involving no use of laser guided bombs or other advanced weaponry, it
has relied on technology for key elements of its success.

Chief defence scientist Dr Richard Brabin-Smith said it all came back to how advances
in electronics were driving the revolution in military affairs.

"Electronics is now touching more and more aspects of defence capability," he told AAP.

"At any one time any defence force is going to have new equipment that is on the brink
of being brought into service. That is what we have found with East Timor."

Of all the technology employed in East Timor, there is one brand new all Australian
piece of kit: the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) developed theatre
broadcast system (TBS), funded earlier this year for three years of trials.

It would have made its operational debut at the proposed Crocodile 99 exercise at Shoalwater
Bay but was smartly tasked for East Timor as deployment plans matured.

Dr Brabin-Smith said TBS provided a reliable means of transmitting a vast amount of
information, including video, imagery and text, from Canberra to East Timor. It does so
using a secure satellite link.

"We have deployed this. It is in operational service. It carries all kinds of information
and intelligence data to the areas of operations and it has been a great success," he
said.

"This is not a case of gizmos looking to find problems. This is a solution to a genuine
need developed in close collaboration with the ultimate Australian Defence Force user.

"This is very central to the revolution in military affairs. This is exploiting highly
advanced rapidly moving technology to give the knowledge edge, to help commanders make
better decisions more quickly."

DSTO deployed four TBS units to East Timor along with the scientists to operate them.

Next step will be development of a soldier-proof production version.

The success of TBS has highlighted another issue - how to make a comparable system
available to all partners in a future coalition.

Dr Brabin-Smith said this was easy to propose but technically very difficult because
of the need permit material to be shared, so it would reach all users while restricting
national information, such as AUSTEO (Australian eyes only) to authorised recipients.

"We knew this was an issue before East Timor came up," he said. "This exercise has
given a fair degree of extra impetus to that. The whole issue of interoperability has
been on the agenda for some years."

DSTO has six to eight scientists currently in East Timor at any time, some operating
TBS and others assessing other technologies and capabilities.

One is GPS (global positioning system), the invaluable navigation tool now widely used
throughout the ADF but which has potential to be inaccurate in equatorial regions.

"It's a good system and when it works well, it works very well," Dr Brabin-Smith said.

"But there is potential for it to be a bit inaccurate. It depends what you are using
it for. If you want to get into the right grid square it doesn't really matter.

"If you are wanting to get GPS to give you a metre accuracy and the ionosphere is playing
silly buggers, it's not so good. I am not quite sure whether there are specific lessons
we can learn from East Timor. There might be some operational lessons."

DSTO also has an interest in assessing what works, what doesn't and how it could be
done better next time. That includes logistics and supply of POL (petrol, oil and lubricants)
and amphibious operations.

"We know the theory of amphibious lodgement and transport but how does it work in practice?"

he said.

"The best way to do that is send operational analysts both military and civilian to
the operation to have a good look and help learn the lessons."

AAP mb/cjh

KEYWORD: TIMOR SCIENCE

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