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 |