Defence Technology Conference 2002

Speech by Prof Su Guaning, Chief Executive, DSTA, at the Defence Technology Conference held on 25 Sep 2002 at 2pm.

Guest of Honour, Mr Peter Ho, Permanent Secretary (Defence) and Chairman DSTA, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

The Defence Science and Technology Agency was formed on 15th March 2000. In one stroke, MINDEF shed half of its manpower into a new self funding statutory board. This was a transformational move. Instead of worrying about technology management issues, MINDEF can now concentrate on longer term issues of transforming the SAF, allocation of resources and ensuring optimal output from DSTA. Most important, DSTA can be used to experiment with ideas which can then be tapped by MINDEF.

Much has happened in the two and a half years of DSTA's existence. DSTA has built a more bottom up and customer oriented culture. We manage a large part of the defence budget on behalf of MINDEF and the SAF. This includes the acquisition of weapon systems, engineering and maintenance support, procurement, research and development, information technology and construction.

DSTA has also played a central role in expanding our international space in defence science and technology. Today, we collaborate with the United States, France, Israel, Sweden and many other advanced countries. We have defence technology offices in Paris to cover Europe, and Washington D.C. to cover the United States and Canada.
Our work on defence science and technology has gone way beyond our main research and development establishment, DSO National Laboratories. We work closely with our universities and our research institutes. Our defence industries play a key role and bring in their own international partners.

Although there is a lot going on, we have not communicated much. A lot of what we do remain shrouded in secrecy. This is a big impediment to collaboration and progress.

The idea for this Defence Technology Conference came from Mr Peter Ho. Today, we have all the parties involved in our defence science and technology efforts coming together to share what we are doing. With 1300 participants in the audience, this conference is certainly starting off with a big bang. But we can do better.
As many of you know, I was in the United States for a three month DSTA fellowship programme centered on Stanford University and Silicon Valley. During this period, I had the privilege of attending the DARPATech conference in Anaheim, California. This was a four day conference that explored the entire range of technologies managed by DARPA, probably the most advanced and innovative research and development agency in the world. DARPA is well known for fathering the Internet and Stealth. It is also unquestionably the greatest asset for the United States in military technology.

Fresh with the uplifting memories of DARPATech, I reviewed the agenda for this inaugural Defence Technology Conference two weeks ago. I groaned to myself when I saw that I was scheduled to speak to you on defence science and technology. Partly, of course, because I have to speak, but mainly because I would have liked a somewhat different agenda.

Let me contrast our agenda with DARPATech. Here, we have lectures from the bosses. In DARPATech, the Programme Managers take center stage talking about dreams and future technology being pursued in real programs. Here, I speak to you as Chief Executive of DSTA with a high level view of Defence Science and Technology in Singapore. At DARPATech, we heard from programme managers exploring remote control of systems using merely our thoughts, and dramatically denser computer memory with a single nanometer-sized molecule per bit, to be available in 2004 in quantity.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on the speakers lined up today. All our speakers are key people driving the development of defence science and technology in Singapore. But we need to engineer a culture change to release the creativity of the people who actually work on the research and technology. We have to celebrate them, not the bosses, if we are to realize our full potential in science and technology. We need to transform our culture to be more like Silicon Valley.

During my stay in Silicon Valley, I spent much time looking for the magic formula for creativity and innovation so that we might apply it to Singapore's defence science and technology. I looked closely at In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture fund, and the Small Business Innovative Research, or SBIR programme. Both are attempts by government to tap the energy and vibrancy of start-ups typical of Silicon Valley. Interestingly, many people inside and outside defence circles tell me DARPA is the ultimate defence science and technology venture fund because they are so good at tapping innovation from everywhere, particularly small, innovative companies and individuals.

Silicon Valley is an entire ecosystem. There are the technology generators in universities, small companies, research institutes, corporate laboratories. Each technology generator comes down to an individual person working for a variety of motivations. There is a much greater diversity of motivations. Pure greed is not a driver. The most important driver is passion for technology and for creation of knowledge.

There are the entrepreneurs who link the technology generators and the business world. They feed off the venture capital industry and provide the returns that make it self sustaining. There is the supporting infrastructure - lawyers, landlords, sub-contractors, who make it so easy to start a business. There is of course the venture capital industry that acts as insurers to minimize risk by spreading it over many companies. Finally there are the capital markets that provides the exit opportunity for venture capital and founders, and generate great companies.

The most critical feature of this ecosystem is their unique culture. It is a culture that does not care what is your skin colour, what is your religion, what country you come from, what schools you went to. The only thing that matters is what you can do - your results. It is a culture that believes small is beautiful, that individuals count more than organisations, that anything can be achieved if the dream is there and the hard work is put in. It is a culture that taps the innate passion of people to create. This culture is the critical competitive strength of the United States that allows it to flourish and stay ahead of others. It is a culture that the military in the US would like to borrow, but is having much difficulty in replicating.

Among defense agencies, DARPA is the closest to replicating this culture.
In their manifestation of this culture, DARPA turns much of conventional wisdom on its head.

DARPA is not customer oriented. They dream of things the customer cannot even imagine today. They pursue out of the box ideas even against opposition from parts of the defence establishment. They have no fear - they have the protection of their track record. The DoD and the military leadership sing their praises. Even the establishment acknowledge that having such an innovation engine separate from the regular bureaucracy is a great advantage.

Similarly, the technology generators in Silicon Valley are not customer-oriented. They focus on breakthroughs that have major impact on mankind and derive great satisfaction from pursuing their passion. It is up to the entrepreneurs, many of them graduate students who participated in the research, and the venture capitalists, to work out the business models that will take them to success and IPO.

For DSTA, the research and development side of the house has to be our mini-DARPA. They must not be constrained by prevailing wisdom in applying their creativity and innovation. So far, they have exercised this through investment of the MINDEF R&D budget. We have now added to their tools by creating an innovation fund that will network with venture capitalists and provide research and development contracts and investments to small innovative companies. This separate engine of innovation must provide the solutions that will ultimately delight their customers, the armed forces.

To bring innovations to the real world, we need our entrepreneurs, the acquisition management people and our defence industries, to turn the innovations into real products and capabilities. The trick is how to ensure they are engaged while not dampening the innovation and creativity of our mini-DARPA. Silicon Valley and DARPA holds lessons for us.

I felt great coming out from DARPATech. The whole event was a celebration of the achievements of the American defence science and technology community.
It was an inclusive event, just like this one. All those who had an interest in contributing to US defence science and technology could register. One thousand eight hundred people attended. The 200 DARPA program managers were out in force. But more important were the people working on DARPA programs, and those hoping to win grants. There was also a sprinkling of foreigners including my colleagues from DSTA and DSO.

There were inspirational speeches from key leaders in the defence community and stories of how stealth, ARPAnet and unmanned air vehicles programmes came into being through the unconventional approach of DARPA. But the most important part of the conference was the presentation of future directions and goals from the program managers. Futuristic and inspirational exhibits accompanied the conference.
As a friend of the United States, we came out of the conference feeling inspired. But if Saddam Hussein had attended the conference, he would be shaking in his boots.
Can we organise a DARPATech equivalent in Singapore?
DARPA alone has over 2B US dollars to spend. This is half our entire defence budget.

The United States leads in most technology areas. Singapore is just striving to be a small player in the top league.The United States has a gigantic defence industry to deliver the products to be realized from innovative technology described at DARPATech, funded by the largest acquisition budget in the world.
Singapore is a small country. We must buy most of what we need. Our defence science and technology strategy is to selectively enhance our edge.

So, if we are looking for our Defence Technology Conference to give attendees the same out of this world feeling as DARPATech did, the answer is no.
But there is an equally important, if less obvious effect of DARPATech. And that is to bring all the contributors under one roof and to celebrate their success.
The potential contributors get a macro view of what DARPA is looking for. At the same time, they can follow up with the DARPA programme managers in "sidebar sessions" and perhaps get a contract awarded very quickly. Innovation really provides direct rewards.

Then, everyone gets the feeling that they are part of a larger community working for the national good. Passion and patriotism combined is a most powerful motivator.
Finally, the conference provides a great marketing tool for DARPA in establishing their brand image and feeding back to their funding source, the US Congress and DoD, that they are doing great work.

I think this second set of effects we can achieve.How would I like to see this conference next year? Let me throw the challenge to my good friend and colleague, Quek Gim Pew. He attended DARPATech this year and he knows what I mean.
Let us share more in the broad technological, not organisational directions. For example, talk about the drive for unmanned and robotic vehicles. Talk about the military applications of communications, data links, networks and information processing tools. Talk about the fundamental scientific research on materials and devices that provides us the basis of interaction with advanced international partners.
Let us celebrate the achievements of the programmes. There is always a black part that we have to celebrate in private. That we should do. But we want a broad base of contributors in this small nation of ours to support defence science and technology. We should celebrate those who have reached the standards such that we can trade and collaborate with advanced countries.

Let us celebrate individual projects that demonstrate our industrial prowess. Give our industries something to shout about. Talk about some of their unsung heros who support the SAF, and their engineering capabilities attracting interest from international players.

This should be a conference organised by technology people, for technology people. There is a place for top leaders to be here helping to celebrate the technological achievements and to be inspirational. But let us not spoil the show for the real heroes and heroines in our technology development.

Hopefully, I can fade out gracefully and leave the stage to them.

Thank you.