Self defence
by Vincent Ciccarello
Tall,
trim and well-groomed, Ian Falconer (pictured) has the demeanour of a
military man. But while his days are taken up with electronic warfare,
Falconer’s not a member of our defence forces. He is both a UniSA
student and senior systems engineer with defence industry business BAE
Systems, which has teamed up with SAAB, ASC and the University to
develop the new Masters Degree in Military Systems Integration (MSI)
program.
Falconer is one of 20 employees from the three companies in the first student intake of the program designed to fast-track systems engineering skills – which turn a customer need into a functioning system – in the military environment.
"If I describe systems engineering as people, processes, tools and the environment in which it all happens, that’s my day-to-day job," said Falconer, who is currently working on the Defence Materiel Organisation’s Project Echidna to equip Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters with electronic warfare self-protection systems.
Every Tuesday, Falconer and his fellow students meet at Mawson Lakes for lectures and to work on assignments aimed at boosting their existing engineering experience.
"While I have a very good empirical background in practical systems engineering in the automotive industry, I need the formal ‘wrapper’ of the MSI program so that I can go into a project as a senior systems engineer," he said, adding there is a synergy between the way the MSI is delivered and the nature of the defence business today.
"It is very rare for one company to do a whole project," Falconer said. "We have to partner in business. So the MSI does two things. It encourages informal networks and it promotes consistency across the businesses, so that as we work together and these people doing the MSI think alike. It gives us efficiencies in partnered projects."
Associate Professor David Cropley said the MSI program is concerned with the process of creating complex systems in a military environment and is a response to the federal government’s substantial investment in defence projects.
"There’s basically a very long shopping list worth in the order of $10 billion over the next 10 to 15 years where the federal government has identified the need for new destroyers, armoured vehicles, aircraft and the like," Prof Cropley said. "All of those things are good examples of large, complex systems that involve people, hardware and software."
While the program is currently open only to employees of BAE, SAAB and ASC, Prof Cropley said the program partners have agreed to make it available to the public in 2007.
"The companies that bid for these projects are always under pressure to have enough of the right people to be able to do these things," he said. "Because of this bow wave of projects which have been approved by the Federal Government, there’s a distinct shortage of skilled engineers who are able to do this work.
"The Masters in MSI aims to take engineers who have a few years experience in that sort of environment and accelerate their development. Under normal circumstances, when they join a company, do the work and learn through experience, it might take 10 or 12 years for those people to reach a level where they can function as a systems engineer. We hope to compress that period of time to maybe half."