Page 31 - Australian Defence Magazine August 2018

concept that was successfully trialled during the Unmanned Warrior 2016 exercise held in UK waters and which will be further de- veloped during Autonomous Warrior 2018.
“We can have half a dozen AUVs com- municating with one another and they can also communicate with the USV, which is really important, given the limitations of the properties of water. That allows us for the first time to detect possible mines with AUVs in real-time, remotely and autono- mously,” CMDRS Hornsby added. “An- other key factor is that it dramatically im- proves your rate of effort within a balanced MCM or REA force.”
The Hunter class frigates being acquired under Sea 5000 will certainly operate some form of unmanned aerial vehicle, whether it is a fixed wing platform, verti- cal take-off and landing (VTOL) UAV, or a mixture of both. The Type 26 design has a dedicated space amidships for USVs and UUVs, with studies underway within DST and Navy to look at launch and re- covery systems which will enable their ef- ficient use.
Further into the future,
Sea 1000 will begin deliver-
ing the first of 12 new sub-
marines in the early 2030’s
and consideration is already
being given to the use of au-
tonomous underwater ve-
hicles, particularly for tasks
such as mine countermeasures. Products on the market today include a lager, submarine launched version of the General Dynamics Bluefin; and two variants of the Saab AUV- 62, the AUV-62MR (mine reconnaissance) and AUV-62AT (target simulation).
“The target simulation vehicle can act like a submarine for training purposes and that has some additional advantages, because it goes well beyond the concept of being a decoy to counter your adversary’s torpedoes,” CMDS Hornsby said. “The best way to describe it is that it can operate for a long time as a submarine’s ‘wingman’, meaning an adversary may be fooled into thinking they are up against two subma- rines, and that’s some of the Artificial In- telligence (AI) we’re working on.”
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“You won’t win hearts and minds by sending in a robot, it’s about being there.”
Who Cares Wins – the ethical
use of Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emotive term for some people and its develop- ment must be handled very carefully to ensure ethics are fully taken into consid- eration. CMDR Hornsby has coined the term ‘Who Cares Wins’ to describe the need for a deep understanding of ethics throughout the development cycle of autonomous systems and the AI which supports them.
“You need to understand what winning looks like and it had better be ethical. If it’s not ethical and it’s not value-based then you won’t win,” he said. “If you approach AI ethically it also allows you decision assurance. For example AI substantially
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