The South African defence industry will need to pilot new projects and adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in order to grow the defence sector and create jobs in the process.

To do this, however, Engineers Without Borders founder and CEO Wiebke Toussaint suggested the industry adopt the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence and Big Data for the defence industry to create opportunities in the sector.

All of these areas, she told delegates at this year’s Aerospace, Maritime and Defence Conference, were of “tremendous interest to young people at the moment”, and, although these areas were of a highly specialised nature, this assortment of skills was needed within the defence space.

The defence industry needed to advance in this respect, Toussaint elaborated, explaining that these areas of interest provided an opportunity for the defence industry to step forward and allow the youth to explore and better understand the sector.

She pointed out that, for the defence industry to ready itself for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it would need to consider that other industries, such as manufacturing, would change, and that a renewed focus would be needed in terms of what the security risks would be, and whether the defence industry was positioned to deal with them.

To position itself accordingly, the South African defence industry would need to integrate data protection and a potentially new view of security, together with hiring the correct people, and acquiring the knowledge that would drive South Africa forward.

“I believe that [the defence industry has] the capabilities . . . and I think we have the potential to operate within that space. But, so far, I haven’t seen the defence industry play in this space,” Toussaint lamented, noting that the defence industry had “all of the metrics to optimise and use something if it is applied for civil security”.

Additionally, while there were several concerns surrounding the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as the loss of jobs, Department of Science and Technology chief director Beeuwen Gerryts encouraged industry members not to “be overwhelmed” by the negative aspects.

Instead, he suggested the industry needed to consider the benefits the Fourth Industrial Revolution would bring in terms of IoT and services.

Companies were struggling to adjust to the changes this revolution brought, he stated, explaining that “companies feel like they have something to lose in the change, which pushes the adoption and social and cultural and technical changes, but it also helps with the partnerships between government and industry”.

Using mining as an example, Gerryts explained that, while adapting to the Fourth Industrial Revolution might initially result in job losses, it would extend a mine’s life by a number of years. This, he pointed out, meant longer periods of employment for workers, and created an opportunity to employ again, and even more people at a later stage.

A key opportunity for the defence industry, he added, was to have pilot projects and to focus on basic education, while adapting to the new dynamic that the revolution brought.

However, Gerryts said the biggest challenge in the revolution, or the convergence of technologies, was the ability to forecast or anticipate changes.

To this end, he told delegates, the building blocks to adapt to the revolution were available, but that “industry needs to find a way to integrate it”.

“What we see is that there are a lot of inherent building blocks in the system already. But the problem is that we’ve not linked them to respond to these rapid changes and see how [industry] can be a part of that,” he lamented.

According to Security and Defence Technology Consulting CEO Zane Cleophas, the Fourth Industrial Revolution would create new jobs and new fields of study.

Despite the defence industry’s disparity in its approach to the “inevitable disruption within the defence and aerospace industries”, he said the solution lay in the optimisation of the so-called “alien environment”.