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In June, the Ministry of Defence opened the Uncrewed Systems Centre (USC), Europe’s biggest drone testing centre, in Swindon. The centre will work with British companies and support SMEs in helping the UK’s armed forces ‘stay at the leading edge of innovation and take advantage of constantly evolving technologies’, as the government put it.

Among the companies exhibiting at the launch was Malvern Optical, a research and development provider and test house in the electro-optic and electro-magnetic domains across security and defence. As defence continues to be one of the most compelling industries for photonic technologies, so the developments continue at pace – and drones are rapidly reshaping warfare.

Andy Turner, managing director at Malvern Optical, was in attendance – and speaking to Microelectronics UK ahead of his appearance at the event on September 29-30, Turner focuses on this space when asked about the key opportunities for photonics across land, sea and air going forward. “I think the biggest opportunities are going to come from the increasing use of autonomous and uncrewed systems, particularly in the air domain, where you need increasingly capable sensing, communication and decision-making on relatively constrained platforms,” he says.

“I don’t think you can look at land, sea, and air in isolation anymore,” he adds. “The interesting developments are where different domains come together and photonics becomes an integral part of how these systems sense, communicate, and make decisions.”

The story of how Malvern Optical came into being is an interesting one – and required fate to intervene. Turner started his career as a research scientist at what was, then, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in Malvern, before moving to QinetiQ as a large chunk of DERA’s assets moved over. “I was involved in everything, from modelling and design through to building and evaluating photonic systems,” he explains.

Then, in 2010, QinetiQ went through changes – and Turner was, among others, made redundant. With a few colleagues, rather than see it as ‘the end of the road’, as he puts it, Malvern Optical was set up. While Turner notes that redundancy, understandably, ‘wasn’t part of the plan’, he adds it was probably one of the best things that happened to him professionally.  

“It gave me the opportunity to start something of my own, with former colleagues,” he explains. “On this journey, I’ve learned that people are at the heart of any business and, if you look after them and give them the opportunity to develop, you create a team that wants to stay and succeed with you.”

With this in mind, Turner says he is most proud of the capability Malvern Optical has built as a company, rather than any individual project. “We’ve developed unique test and research facilities and capabilities that allow us to take a technology in an early concept through rigorous testing in representative conditions,” says Turner. “We’ve also developed our own concepts and technologies along the way, which is important to keep the T&E (test and evaluation) teams abreast of technological developments.

“Being able to take something technically complex, work out how to assess it in a quantitative way and then tell the customer the results, together with the relevant implications, is what I think we do particularly well,” he adds.

Photonics has of course been an area where the UK has traditionally been strong. World-leading capabilities in research and development, however, do not automatically translate to industrial scalability. Turner agrees, but notes the real-world impact that is happening. “Photonics is not just an area of interesting research,” he says. “It is already delivering important capability, particularly in defence, and there is a huge amount more that can be achieved if we get better at taking technology out of the laboratory and proving it in the real world.”

TechUK’s recent report on the sector suggested that the UK has three to five years to translate research strengths into economic and social impact ‘before running the risk of losing out to international competitors.’ “The challenge is making sure that expertise doesn’t stop at the research stage,” says Turner. “We need to do more to turn good ideas into products, build manufacturing capability here and perhaps most importantly – and the most challenging – develop and retain the people who are going to take the industry forward.”

What does Turner see as the most exciting technological advancement in the space right now? He cites the convergence of photonics and increased computing potential – whether AI or otherwise – as what interests him most. “Problems we faced 20 years ago due to limited processing power can be easily overcome, and we’re moving towards technologies that can deliver very sophisticated sensing and measurement in much smaller and more practical packages,” he says.

“This means capabilities that previously belonged in a laboratory can potentially find their way onto real platforms and consistently solve real-world problems.”

At Microelectronics UK, where Turner is speaking on a panel exploring optical systems for ground and naval security, he is looking forward to exploring that scalability gap: meeting people from across the industry, seeing what new technologies are emerging, and understanding how to turn that technology into something ‘genuinely useful.’ “Uses extending far beyond what the original designers had in mind and pushing those boundaries are where the interesting things tend to occur,” he adds.