AUKUS Nations Hone Drones Together

Exercise Autonomous Warrior has seen the three AUKUS nations join forces in Australia's Jervis Bay to put the cooperative capabilities of their uncrewed systems to the test.

Under the wider auspices of the ‘Maritime Big Play’ programme between the U.K, the U.S. and Australia, the three nations collaborated again during October for Exercise Autonomous Warrior. The month-long trials saw hundreds of personnel as well as about 30 unmanned air vehicles, uncrewed vessels, submersibles and submarine-hunting sonobuoys deployed off Australia’s east coast.

As per a recent Royal Navy press statement, the aim of the exercises was "testing 30 autonomous platforms to increase interoperability across the three nations and prove the ability to control assets belonging to each other’s navies."  

The Royal Navy put a system called Strike Net through its paces which allows the U.K. to control remotely-piloted assets of its AUKUS partners, and vice versa.  All three nations sent a variety of systems out to sea and tested them in a variety of simulated operational scenarios.  

The Australians deployed Bluebottle, an all-weather autonomous vessel which scans the environment using cameras and sensors. Its data was analysed and interpreted by all three AUKUS participants, helping augment situational awareness of the battlespace to help with warfighting decisions.  

Meanwhile the U.K. trialled Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) system SONIX. It receives data from sonobuoys — which can be deployed from airplanes, helicopters, and Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) among other methods — which can then be analysed to identify and track enemy submarines. As with Bluebottle, SONIX’s information was shared and used by all three nations. 

The Royal Navy’s Rear Admiral James Parkin, who oversees the U.K. teams responsible for developing its technologies used here, said: “This exercise has unlocked the potential of autonomous and uncrewed systems that will increase the mass, persistence and lethality of the Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy, and the US Navy.  

“Maritime Big Play is giving AUKUS partners the opportunity to accelerate capability development together, learn lessons from each other and our innovative companies, and to develop our concepts of operations for the future.”  

October's successful collaboration follows on from last month's REPMUS exercises in Portugal, during which the Royal Navy was able to control a vessel across the world in Australia.  

Representatives from Japan also joined Autonomous Warrior as an observer as a result of recent  consultations with improving interoperability with its Maritime Uncrewed Systems (MUS) as an initial area of cooperation under AUKUS Pillar Two.

• You can read more details on the Royal Navy website