As fighters streak towards ‘Sydney’, scientists in war lab game way to victory

This is Australia’s secret war lab, otherwise known as Lockheed Martin’s STELaRLab, an Australian branch of the defence contractor’s US research department.

In a beige concrete office block in Melbourne’s inner-city, behind locked doors to which only eight people have access, a scientist sits watching two fighter jets marking a path towards their target – Sydney Harbour.

It was launched a year ago with $13 million investment, as a collaboration between the multinational, Defence and the University of Melbourne.

Within, huge computer monitors cover one wall, like something out of a disaster movie.

There is a flight simulator, virtual-reality equipment, and a drone, disassembled on a table like a toy for a particularly gifted child.

This is the cutting edge of Australia’s defence science. Here, a small group of scientists are working on the software that may be part of Australia’s last line of defence against a direct strike by a hostile power on our shores.

On the big screen today sits a map of NSW, centred around Sydney. The map is dotted with commercial flights. Passengers on their way to Melbourne and Japan.

Sitting off Sydney’s east coast, flying slow and sinister arcs across the South Pacific, are two red fighter jets. In today’s simulation, rolled out for the benefit of a not-so-secret press tour with Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, these are labelled “hostile”.

In this simulation our shores are far from unprotected. Two Aegis destroyers – heavily-computerised warships designed for surface-to-air combat – weigh anchor offshore and a mobile surface-to-air missile battery had been deployed to leafy Helensburgh, south of Sydney.

In the sky, two Australian fighters streak across the screen.

One fighter was flown by a pilot using a flight simulator in the corner of the room; his wingman was a purely virtual concept, a computer-generated airframe flown by a bot.

The software showed the jets’ radar cones as they patrolled inland NSW. At the tug of a joystick, the human-operated jet swung towards the hostiles, its computer-wingman calmly following…

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