Page 50 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2019
P. 50

LAND FORCES
UNMANNED
LOCALLY developed autonomous technolo- gies could enhance the Australian Army’s current armoured personnel carriers, the ven- erable M113s, in a demonstration project that could take soldiers off future battlefields.
BAE Systems and the Australian Army will convert two M113 AS4 Armoured Per- sonnel Carriers at its Edinburgh Parks facil- ity by October using autonomous technolo- gies developed by the company in Australia.
The project will see these vehicles used by Army to conduct experiments to better un- derstand the opportunities to employ auton- omy on the battlefield and implementing its recently released Robotics and Autonomous Systems Strategy. Autonomous vehicles on the battlefield could have a range of uses from intelligence gathering to logistics sup- port to medevac and indirect fire support. This demonstration will see a number of unmanned missions explored plus manned/ unmanned teaming experiments.
The conversion
of the two M113s
is taking place at BAE Systems RAAF Edinburgh facility.
Unmanned M113
Following the demonstration, the option- ally crewed M113 AS4 will also be available for BAE Systems, and other Trusted Autono- mous Systems Defence Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) partners, to use as test and dem- onstration vehicles as the company continues development of world leading autonomous technologies through the CRC program.
demo next month
The Trusted Autonomous Systems CRC was announced by the Australian Govern- ment in 2017 under DST Group’s Next Gen- eration Technologies Fund (see this month’s From the Source interview with Chief De- fence Scientist Professor Tanya Monro for more) to deliver game-changing autonomous systems that ensure trusted, reliable and ef- fective cooperation between people and ma- chines during military operations.
BAE Systems Australia is a founding member of the CRC and is the industry lead for Land Autonomy, working closely with Army and with DST Group to ensure soldiers have what they need to be future ready on the battlefield.
“Autonomous technology will assist sol- diers to respond in an accelerating warfare environment - increasing their speed of initiative to outpace, out-manoeuvre and out-think conventional and unconvention- al threats,” BAE Systems Australia CTO Brad Yelland said to ADM. “The Australian
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
With the various phases of Land 400 well underway, Army is going to be spoilt for choice on the vehicle front in the 2020s. But then what do you do with all the current fleets? Could turning the M113 fleet into autonomous warriors in their own right be part of the answer?
50 | September 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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