Teams from Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. have come together on America’s west coast to advance their navies’ uncrewed systems expertise.
The AUKUS Pillar II Maritime Big Play Pacific (MBP-P) demonstration in the Southern California (SOCAL) operating area began last week and will run until October 25. It’s being hosted by Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWCP), the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the U.S. Marine Corps.
More than 40 government and industry technologies from all three partner nations will be put through their paces, including a variety of multi-domain autonomous, crewed, and uncrewed systems (UxS).
MBP is an ongoing experimentation initiative under AUKUS Pillar II designed to rapidly integrate uncrewed and autonomous technologies into the navies of the U.K., the U.S., and Australia.
The three-week Pacific exercise now underway includes live-fire operational tests focused on strike operations, undersea warfare, and contested resupply missions. They will build on earlier work on underwater communications conducted during both the U.S.-led RIMPAC exercise off Hawaii in the summer, as well as the recently concluded REPMUS exercise in Portugal.
This year there’s a particular focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW), maritime strike and seabed warfare. As per a U.S. Navy press statement: “The event will feature live-fire operational vignettes focused on increasing mission effect and delivering force multipliers during strike operations, contested resupply, and undersea warfare.”
U.S. Lead for AUKUS Maritime Big Play Gerry Tighe commented: “We’ve brought together cutting-edge systems from across our shared industrial base, put those solutions into the hands of AUKUS warfighters so they can train together, and removed the technical barriers for integrating those advanced capabilities into no-kidding operations.”
The latest MBP-P demonstration is the latest iteration in a programme stretching back three years. Last August Japan was integrated as an observer for the first time during field trials in Australia, Portugal, and the United States.
There were also further extensive trials of Electronic Warfare (EW) payloads stretching across late 2025 and early 2026 off Australia’s east coast.
Speaking earlier this year Captain Keith Taylor, Maritime Big Play Senior Responsible Officer for the Royal Navy, said: “Maritime Big Play is enabling AUKUS nations to turbo charge the development of robotic and autonomous systems.”
“Working tri-laterally brings together expertise from across the three nations and accelerates the readiness of these technologies to be incorporated within our forces.”
- You can read more details on the U.S. Navy website and the Royal Navy website
