DSTG – Supporting ADF operations on home soil

ADF supporting Australians

Joint Task Force (JTF) 629 was stood up shortly after Australia’s catastrophic 2020 bushfires. Responsible for all the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) domestic operations, JTF 629 assists with high-risk weather events, supports COVID-19 measures, and undertakes broader national security activities.

Science and technology advisor, Brendan Pell from the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) was part of JTF 629, providing science and technology advice on high-risk weather season events, and supporting a broad range of other activities. Brendan’s advisory role was a part of DSTG’s Distributed Operations Analysis Capability (DOAC), one mechanism that provides direct science and technology support to ADF operations.

During his six months in the role, Brendan enabled scientific and technical support to a number of lines of effort in support of domestic operations.

This included creating and analysing a JTF 629 survey with Shoal’s David Hughes and DSTG’s Mark Bottger. The survey assisted the task force commander to understand how effective ADF support is, and how it has been received by emergency services, state government departments and other supported agencies.

Image caption: DSTG’s Brendan Pell (centre) and Shoal’s David Hughes (right) pictured against a background of some of the ADFs recent domestic operations.