Page 162 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

FROM THE SOURCE
REAR ADMIRAL PETER QUINN
“In the Navy context, we’ll absolutely use AI in remote and autonomous systems but also more broadly in other applications.”
Continued from page 161
remote and autonomous systems to do mine hunting, mine identification, and mine disposal tasks.
So we’ll be doing an initial investment in two mine warfare support vessels and we’re working on a derivative of the Arafura Class offshore patrol vessel to be that multi- role vessel. But the most significant change is actually not the vessels; it is the system of systems, the toolbox approach of remote and autonomous systems that will be used to find and dispose of mines. That’s the big investment and big change for Navy.
We actually already have some deploy- able remote and autonomous mine war- fare systems coming into service. We’ve got a project called Sea 1778 and we’re in- troducing those systems now; included are manned and autonomous surface vessels, UUVs and the control systems that bring them together.
There are three different sorts of UUVs to find, locate, identify and then remotely destroy the mines. Under the Sea 1905 project we will be scaling up the Sea 1778 approach to a larger system of systems
which we will deploy from the mine war- fare support vessels.
Another area is our new approach to hydrography. Under Sea 2400 we have developed a panel of industry partners and from 2020 we intend to outsource the hydrographic data collection role around Australia. As another component of Sea 2400 we will replace our current hydro- graphic ships with a new strategic military hydro capability which will be focused on the collection of hydrographic, oceano- graphic and other environmental informa- tion to support our war fighting functions – amphibious warfare, mine warfare and anti-submarine warfare in particular. The new capability will consist of at least one vessel, which will use remote and autono- mous systems quite extensively to fulfil its broader tasking.
We’ve also been doing a lot of work over the last few years in introducing tactical unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and we’ve been experimenting with a couple of dif- ferent platforms under NMP 1942; a fixed wing version (Insitu’s ScanEagle) and a rotary wing version (Schiebel’s S100 Cam- copter). Over the next few years we’ll build
UAS capacity for the fleet under Sea 129, the Maritime Tactical Unmanned Aerial System.
So there’s a range of things over the next few years that
you’ll see rolling out and you’ll continue to see us investing in our current capabilities, doing upgrades, introducing new weapons systems, continuing to invest in our cur- rent ships, submarines and aviation capa- bilities and unmanned systems as well.
ADM: Do you see a role in the RAN for an unmanned surface warship similar to what’s being developed in the US? QUINN: Certainly smaller unmanned vessels will feature for a range of roles and we’ll keep an open mind to see how those technologies are developing. The rate of change of technology that we see in the civilian world is exponential; you’ll see those sort of things rolling out in the fleet as well. So if we’re going to be flying around in autonomous Uber flying ve- hicles in 5-10 or so years’ time, which is actually a possibility, autonomous vessels of all sizes will be things that we will start seeing populating the oceans.
We’ll also see the size and complexity of unmanned undersea vehicles continue to evolve. You’ve got systems out there now like the Boeing Echo Voyager, a big system at 60 plus tonnes of diesel-electric submarine with several months of endur- ance, that provide complementary capa- bilities to manned submarines.
Those systems are going to become more and more common and they’re the sort of technologies that many modern
The Collins class submarines are operating at better levels of availability and reliability than ever before.
162 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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