Page 55 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020

JULY/AUGUST 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
FROM THE SOURCE GABBY COSTIGAN 55
which has the potential to fly for up to a year before need- ing maintenance in partnership with UK company Prismat- ic) but in the ongoing UAS programs, from a military and a civil perspective. Both the Air Force and DSTG have been involved in supporting the PHASA-35 initial flight testing and we’ll continue to maintain close contact with them while that program continues to develop.
Autonomous systems are certainly an exciting part of the future for BAE Systems but specifically to your question at Woomera, we’re not doing anything there right now.
ADM: What is BAE's role in the Loyal Wingman program and can you provide details of work done to date? COSTIGAN: Some amazing technologies. We are really proud to be working with Boeing in Australia to bring what
really is a new defence capability to life, one that is going to offer enormous potential for the RAAF and excitingly, for future export markets.
So what are we bringing? Well we’re drawing on the au- tonomous technologies that BAE Systems Australia has been developing in partnership with the Commonwealth government for more than two decades and the question you asked just before about Woomera, that’s a good exam- ple of that. We’ve done a lot of testing over the years there of some of those autonomous technologies being used on Loyal Wingman at Woomera.
ADM: BAE is also working with Boeing on JP9101, the en- hanced HF program. What is the AIC around that? What is the approach given that Boeing is the incumbent?
COSTIGAN: This is a collaboration between two great Australian defence companies. We’re collaborating with Boeing Defence Australia on JP9101 to deliver world-lead- ing capability to the warfighter by enhanc- ing the Defence high frequency communi- cation capability.
Underpinning this is obviously the use and the development of AIC through our supply chain and then, importantly, maintaining sovereign control over this critical asset.
So what are we doing? Well, Boeing and ourselves propose enhancement of that HF capability network and that’s through re- search and development to education, in- novation and collaboration together. That network will be the focus for sovereign HF
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