So what exactly are UOW's relaitonship with weapons companies?

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• The University of Wollongong (UOW) is one of the major research contributors to DMTC (Defence Materials Technology Centre), which is a company that organises military research and development between different parties.
• Through it, UOW has helped defence companies like BAESMA, Thales, Civmec, and Bisalloy, make the armour and  power systems for naval vessels as well as military trucks which have been used by Israel in Gaza.

There you go. If you take nothing away from this article, take that. In several different reports and documents, DMTC notes how important UOW is to their efforts.'

In responses to supplementary questions for the 2025 NSW government budget estimates, Vice-Chancellor Max Lu stated that “UOW has no known research partnerships directly with weapons corporations.” This is true – the university does not work directly with BAESMA, Thales, Civmec, and Bisalloy, nor Plasan, Elbit, or Rafael. However, the university self-admittedly does a huge amount of research and development which enters the supply chains these companies operate in. Between about 2013 and 2023, the university spent “more than $18 million in defence-related research,” according to a 2023 pamphlet. This distinction seems almost entirely semantic, only really serving to create confusion and obfuscate the role UOW plays in the military-industrial complex.

UOW research has been essential to the development of Thales’ Bushmaster and Hawkei vehicles. The Bushmaster, a heavily-armoured, mine-resistant truck, has been sold to Indonesia’s special forces, who have been repeatedly accused of abuses by Human Rights Watch. UOW research has also been invaluable to the development of the ‘Hunter Class’ frigates for the Australian Navy, a project which is a notorious money-hole.

Beyond this handful of projects, it is harder to parse the specific role UOW has played in the development of military technologies. The university has had a relationship with nearby company Bisalloy Steel since 2013. Both entities are happy to note how important their relationship is but the specific applications of the work they do together is hard to make definitive claims about. In 2018, Bisalloy entered a partnership with Israeli company Plasan to supply Rafael, another Israeli company, with armour plates which are designed to be added to non-armoured vehicles to enable their use in military contexts. In this case, “military context” is the Gaza genocide, as Bisalloy’s steel plates were shown in a report by Michael West Media to have been used on IDF Toyotas in the Gaza strip.

Noting the importance of UOW’s research to the production of Bisalloy, it seems concerningly likely that university research contributed in some way to the development of these armour plates. In a 2018 report, Bisalloy noted that Quenched and Tempered (Q&T) steel is what Plasan use in their vehicle add-on armour. One of the primary research outputs of UOW’s Steel Research Hub has for several years been iterating and improving Q&T steel technology. A 2021 project by the Hub which set out to “investigate and trial automated/robotic wire arc additive manufacturing to fabricate welded hard-facing overlay on Q&T steels,” was a collaboration directly with Bisalloy.

Even if Vice-Chancellor Lu thinks UOW has no “direct” connections with weapons companies, it's clear the university is an important component of the global military-industrial complex. Worst of all, it seems like it could be a non-trivial part of the supply chain which has enabled Israel to commit its genocide for more than two years. UOW’s involvement in weapons development isn’t a necessity; all the departments which contribute to DMTC also do a huge amount of research into infrastructure and medical technologies. Continued participation in defence research is a choice the university is making. It's not unreasonable for you, as a student, to be uncomfortable with your tuition fees contributing to this research. Don’t let anyone make you feel stupid or unreasonable for demanding these ties be severed.