ASCA Pitch day 2024

In July 2024, the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) announced the launch of its first Pitch Day to take place during the Australian Defence, Science, Technology and Research Summit (ADSTAR).

The ASCA Pitch Day 2024 theme is Innovative Asymmetric Advantage.

  • Asymmetric Advantage: This refers to military capabilities that pit strength against weakness and disrupt a potential adversary’s decision calculus.
  • Innovative: In the context of ASCA and this activity, it is to be interpreted as unique, novel and non-obvious advancements that could lead to achieving a game changing advantage to a published Defence priority.

While ASCA intends to focus on Defence’s established priorities, the Pitch Day will serve as a market scanning activity to ensure Defence remains aware of new capabilities and innovations.

As outlined in the Defence Industry Development Strategy, pitch days allow industry to submit and be short-listed to showcase their innovative ideas to Defence. This can potentially lead towards further development with a Defence sponsor through ASCA.

Industry and academia were invited to respond to an expression of interest through an Approach to Market which closed on 22 July 2024.

Pitch Day invitations

The below table lists the Pitch Day submissions invited to provide a 3 minute pitch in front of senior Defence personnel, industry and academia at ADSTAR on Wednesday 18 September 2024.

Finalists for best pitch presentation will be announced at the ADSTAR gala dinner.

Following the Pitch Day presentations, ASCA will invite successful participants to respond to development contracts valued at up to $750,000 each through a competitive process. The total value of the development contracts on offer is up to $4 million.

Company name Pitch name State
Australian National University Fully Hybridised integrated Optical chip for Defence applications ACT
Arc Professional Services Raspberry Jam - a distributed, modular RF jamming system ACT
Blue Ocean Marine Tech Systems Autonomous Mobile Undersea Networks for Mosaic Warfare WA
Breaker Industries CRUX OS: Cognitive Reasoning Unit for X Operating System NSW
CSIRO GriffinView - compact airborne surveillance and communications ACT
Cytophenix FloCAST™ antimicrobial susceptibility test platform WA
Daronmont Technologies Single-channel Covert Detection and Ranging (SCODAR) VIC
Davison Aerospace Hard-Kill Anti-Torpedo System (HARKATS) NSW
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Silent Sentinel – In-orbit Space Domain Defensive Cyber Operations Payload (DCOP) NSW
Department 13 Euclid – ML Trained 3D Drone Locator ACT
ecoJet Engineering Lightweight Adaptable Microturbine Generator Power System SA
GPA Engineering Modular Integrated Deployable Energy and Renewable Fuels (MIDERF) SA
Kea Aerospace Solar-Powered Stratospheric Platforms QLD
Macquarie University Wavelength-versatile Ocean LiDAR for Maritime Surveillance and Anti-Submarine Warfare NSW
mProtect Maritime Target Sensor VIC
RHEA Space Activity MANTA: Marine Advanced Navigation and Tracking Asset NSW
Rice Satcom Dual use satellite messaging beacon system for Defence and Emergency Services SA
Silicon Quantum Computing Quantum processing to improve Defence Machine Learning capabilities NSW
Spiral Blue Stardust: Multisensor system for efficient off-earth navigation and sensing NSW
Stratoship Configurable payload high-altitude airship QLD
The International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems, Western Sydney University High-speed/low data-rate 3D imaging for situational awareness NSW
The University of Sydney Photonics-enhanced RF Sensor for Electronic Warfare NSW
UBIQUT Integrated OLED Magnetometer WA
University of South Australia Optical Fibre undersea sensor SA

Resources

ASCA Pitch Day - Frequently asked questions (PDF 144.54 KB)