Page 73 - Australian Defence Magazine April-May 2021

APRIL-MAY 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FROM THE SOURCE VICE ADMIRAL MICHAEL NOONAN 73
NOONAN: I would say that we are investing significantly in this space now. Clearly a lot of effort has gone into our thinking around Robotics, Autonomous Systems and Ar- tificial Intelligence (RAS-AI) systems. They’re not new to Navy, there’s been multiple projects that have been lever- aging UAS technologies, and we’ve just spoken about Sea 1778 Phase 1, we’ve spoken about Sea 1905, so the think- ing and planning and commitment around those is well ad- vanced. The future is very exciting and certainly through Sea 1770 Phase 1, the Rapid Environmental Assessment and Sea 2400, Hydrographic Data Collection Capability is well advanced. Both of these projects have a very high level of Australian industry content. As part of driving the industry understanding around the opportunities for and importance of RAS-AI, I established a directorate within Navy early last year, the Robotics Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence Directorate, which sits within the Warfare Innovation section of Navy. My task for them was to provide a unified program of RAS-AI development across the maritime domain, not just Navy, leveraging on S&T industry, academia and the requirements and lessons of all three services and our regional partners in this space.
In terms of some hard figures around some programs I’d like to share with you:
• Future mine warfare and hydrographic vessels, $3.3 – $5
billion;
• Maritime uncrewed aerial system, in the range of $1 billion; • Integrated undersea surveillance systems, in the range of
$5 – $7.4 billion;
• Integrated undersea surveillance system, integrated un-
dersea systems, $2 – $3 billion; and
• Integrated undersea surveillance system, crewed and un-
crewed systems, $1 – $1.5 billion.
So in terms of commitment by government, it’s significant in this space. In terms of focus and resourcing by Navy, it’s growing daily and I was very pleased in October 2020 to re- lease Navy’s first ever RAS-AI strategy. I did that as part of the Maritime Environment Working Group (MEWG) last year and certainly the feedback I’ve had is that’s been very well received by industry. It’s providing them with a clear statement of where Navy needs to go and some of those programs that I’ve just talked about show the commitment of government in terms of funding and resourcing.
The RAS-AI autonomous systems will be a fundamental aspect of every capability that we look at going forward and even around Sea 1000. We’re all focused on submarine de- livery but as a fifth gen capability we will see a networked submarine that can talk to autonomous systems in a way that we’ve never seen before. That thinking is now integral to the work that we’re doing through our Capability Divi- sion in Navy in every capability that we’re looking forward to into the future. ■
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