Fact Sheet: Defence Technology Prize 2023 Award Winners

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Individual (Engineering) Award Winner

MR CHAN SU WEE

DSO National Laboratories

CITATION

Mr Chan Su Wee, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff from DSO National Laboratories, has played a crucial part in the build-up of indigenous technical capabilities in the design and development of Advanced Electronics Systems for Electronic Warfare for the SAF. The capabilities built-up have also been exploited to support other air, land and sea domains. In recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions, Mr Chan is awarded the DTP 2023 Individual (Engineering) Award.

PROFILE

AWARDS

• DTP Team (Engineering) Award – Advanced Electronics Systems Team, 2020

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Individual (Research & Development) Award Winner

PROFESSOR NG GEOK ING

Nanyang Technological University

CITATION

Professor Ng Geok Ing, Programme Director, Centre of Microsystem Technology, Temasek Laboratories at NTU, has made significant contributions in building up Singapore’s indigenous R&D capabilities in Gallium Nitride (GaN) MMIC technologies for defence applications. As the founding Director of the Microsystem Technologies Development Centre (MTDC) in NTU since 2005, Professor Ng has helped to transform a basic university R&D laboratory into an ISO-certified wafer fabrication facility capable of producing GaN MMICs with world-class performance and field-robustness. In recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions, Professor Ng is awarded the DTP 2023 Individual (R&D) Award.

PROFILE

AWARDS

• DTP Team (R&D) Award – Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Research & Development Team, 2007

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Team (Engineering) Award Winner

INVINCIBLE-CLASS SUBMARINES TEAM

Defence Science and Technology Agency, Republic of Singapore Navy, DSO National Laboratories

CITATION

The Invincible-class Submarines Team, led by the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) with members from DSO National Laboratories and the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN), has delivered Singapore’s first custom-built submarines, which incorporate advanced automation and sense-making systems. The integration of indigenously designed systems will give the RSN a strategic edge in defence capability. In recognition of its outstanding achievements and contributions, the team is awarded the DTP 2023 Team (Engineering) Award.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The team comprises members from DSTA, RSN and DSO with expertise in areas such as naval architecture, sense-making systems, advanced sensors and operations. DSTA provided multi-disciplinary expertise to spearhead the design, construction and delivery of the submarines. RSN provided the operational requirements to ensure that the submarines would meet the demands of our unique operating environment. DSO provided its suite of indigenous strategic capabilities, such as advanced sensors and decision-making tools.

TECHNICAL AND OPERATIONAL IMPACT

A holistic approach was taken to design the Invincible-class submarines to meet the mission needs of the RSN. The Invincible-class submarines are technologically advanced and have been customised to operate in the warm, shallow, noisy and crowded waters of Singapore. These customisations have resulted in better mission capabilities, allowing our submarines to sense better and act faster in the following ways:

a)  Improved Mobility

The Invincible-class submarines have been equipped with significantly improved capabilities, including Air Independent Propulsion systems to stay submerged about 50% longer compared to conventional diesel electric submarines. The fuel cell technology also makes the submarine more silent for greater stealth. The team took a bold step to co-develop a new rudder drive system with the submarine builder to replace the traditional hydraulic driven system. Coupled with an advanced autopilot system, the submarine has been designed for higher manoeuvring precision and better responsiveness.

b)  Improved Warfare Capabilities

Modern combat systems and more capable sensors – together with advanced automation and indigenously developed sense-making systems – will provide the new submarines with enhanced situational awareness and sharper decision-making support. For instance, an indigenous combat management system enhances the operator’s awareness of their surroundings. The team had also worked with DSO to enable better detection, and make use of sensors and automation to help the crew manoeuvre effectively in Singapore’s shallow and congested waters.

c)  Improved Habitability

Factors such as ergonomics were considered to optimise the submarine’s design for Asian physiques as well as facilities for a mixed gender work and living environment. Modelling and simulations were conducted by DSTA to determine equipment placement, such as height of valves and tilt angles of console screens to accommodate our operators.

PROFILE OF TEAM MEMBER (INTERVIEWEE)

PROFILE OF TEAM MEMBERS

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Team (R&D) Award Winner

DSO ADVANCED ELECTRONICS TEAM

DSO National Laboratories

CITATION

The DSO Advanced Electronics Team has, for almost 30 years, built up deep design and manufacturing capabilities in high-speed digital electronics as well as the capability to custom design digital and analog-mixed-signal chips. These capabilities are crucial for indigenous development of miniaturised and energy-efficient solutions for the SAF. In recognition of its outstanding achievements and contributions, the team is awarded the DTP 2023 Team (R&D) Award.

ABOUT THE ADVANCED ELECTRONICS TEAM

Electronics is a critical enabler to many military systems. The electronics employed by SAF secret-edge systems cannot be bought as the stringent performance requirements often cannot be met by commercial off-the-shelf items. The team comprises engineers with skillsets in high-speed digital design, analogue-mixed-signal integrated circuit design, signal processing, firmware design, and electronics fabrication and assembly. With ever-increasing system demands, the team has deepened their capabilities over the years, which enabled the team to harness their deep expertise to develop miniaturised and low-power electronics with real-time computation capabilities.

TECHNICAL INNOVATION AND OPERATIONAL IMPACT

The DSO Advanced Electronics Team began their capability build-up in through the development of high-speed electronics for a ground-based system, then progressing to airborne systems. The range of applications for their systems includes radar and communications. In the area of high-speed digital electronics, the team built up several key capabilities, including designing compact electronics with real-time processing and high-reliability electronics assembly. In the area of hybrid digital and analogue mixed-signal electronics, the team conducted research into novel integrated circuit design techniques that offers drastic reductions in power consumption and size.

The DSO Advanced Electronics Team has several successful innovations that resulted in the indigenous development of multiple secret-edge systems for MINDEF and the SAF. These innovations include:

a)  High Speed Digital Electronics

The Team developed the capability to design very compact electronics with real-time signal processing. Using neural edge processing architecture, this enabled the intelligent processing of data to efficiently make use of memory bandwidth. In addition, the team harnessed advanced printed circuit board technology to implement a very compact design. These resulted in an advanced electronics system that is as small as a 50-cent coin, but almost twice as fast as an i7 computer that enables real-time automatic detection of fast-moving targets.

b)  Hybrid Digital and Analog Digital Chip Design

The Team innovated a hybrid analogue-digital processing architecture as opposed to a conventional fully digital implementation. The outcome is drastically reduced size and system power consumption, and real-time computational performance. The hybrid architecture exploits the efficiency of computationally intensive operations in the analogue domain, which in turn drastically reduces the hardware resources required for subsequent digitisation and processing in the digital domain. This novel approach has enabled the miniaturisation of sensor systems used in SAF, thus allowing them to operate with longer endurance on battery.

c)  Low Power Secured Cryptography Chip Design for Cryptography

Electronic devices that process sensitive data are vulnerable to hacking, which can result in the leaking of sensitive information. The solution is cryptographic electronics. The team innovated a secure electronic cryptography chip design that encrypts information, and has an added layer of secure electronic design to protect the chip.

PROFILE OF TEAM LEAD (INTERVIEWEE)

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Team (Engineering) Award Winner

ADVANCED IMAGERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS TEAM

Defence Science and Technology Agency, DSO National Laboratories, Digital and Intelligence Service

CITATION

The Advanced Imagery Management Systems Team, led by the Defence Science and Technology Agency with members from DSO National Laboratories and the Digital and Intelligence Service, has delivered an end-to-end capability that leveraged best-of-breed technologies such as resource optimisation and computer vision algorithms. This has allowed more effective management of large data volume. In recognition of its outstanding achievements and contributions, the team is awarded the DTP 2023 Team (Engineering) Award.

PROFILE OF TEAM LEADER

Defence Technology Prize 2023 Team (Engineering) Award Winner

ADVANCED PROTECTIVE BUILDING AND INFRASTRUCTURE TEAM

Defence Science and Technology Agency, Republic of Singapore Air Force, Sembcorp Specialised Construction Pte Ltd

CITATION

The Advanced Protective Building and Infrastructure Team, led by the Defence Science and Technology Agency, with members from the Republic of Singapore Air Force and Sembcorp Specialised Construction Pte Ltd, has indigenously conceptualised, designed and constructed an advanced protective building with capabilities to increase the survivability of SAF assets and personnel. The team has also developed an innovative performance-based design and engineering solution to validate the safety of the infrastructure. In recognition of its outstanding achievements and contributions, the team is awarded the DTP2023 Team (Engineering) Award.

PROFILE OF TEAM LEADERS

More Resources

Defence Engineers and Scientists Honoured for Excellence and Innovation in Defence Technology

Keynote Address by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the Defence Technology Prize Award Ceremony on 19 Oct 2023