Mr Allison has made significant contributions to Defence research and development in the fields of guided weapons, electronic warfare and scientific management.

The criteria he developed for ship defence against advanced missiles such as Exocet have had an influence in many Western Navies and the fruit of his work is now a $130M joint development project between the US and Australia.

His achievements in missile modelling led to the development of a precision-guided gliding weapon which features excellent performance at an affordable cost. It is likely to be fully developed into a major weapon system with a large potential export market.

Mr Allison has held key positions in the management of defence research; he is now the Director of the Electronics Research Laboratory (with 550 staff and a budget of $26M), with responsibilities for research in information technology, communications, signals intelligence and electronic warfare.