Page 28 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2022

28 DEFENCE BUSINESS AUTONOMOUS WARRIOR 22
JULY-AUGUST 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
EXPLORING THE ART
OF THE POSSIBLE
Nearly two weeks of operational experimentation with uncrewed systems under Exercise Autonomous Warrior 2022 (AW22), driven by the RAN’s 2025 Campaign Plan for Robotics, Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence (RAS-AI), were successfully completed in late May across Jervis Bay and the East Australian Exercise Area.
JULIAN KERR | JERVIS BAY
MORE than 40 distinct systems and some 300 military, indus- try and university-linked participants from Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK were involved in a swathe of missions utilising uncrewed surface, subsurface and aerial systems to pursue multiple concepts in a variety of warfare domains.
These included mine countermeasures (MCM); intel- ligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); undersea warfare; geo-intelligence; force protection; and interoper- ability to interchangeability.
Released at the official start of AW22 jointly by the Head of Navy Capability, Rear Admiral Peter
Quinn, and the Chief of DSTG’s Maritime
Division, Professor Emily Hilder, the RAS-
“When you’re working with these more disruptive tech- nologies you have to work through how you’re going to im- plement them because they’re disruptive in their nature. A lot of our big programs are really complex and necessarily take a lot of time to deliver a small number of these exqui- site and expensive systems.
“RAS-AI doesn’t work that way; it moves very quickly, things can be simpler and cheaper so we can afford to lose them, and you don’t have to go through a complex acquisi- tion program that would take you a decade.
“What’s going on in the background of this operational experiment is very much about how we can constructively disrupt Defence to be able to
AI Campaign Plan 2025 sets out the mecha- nisms that the two organisations will use to communicate priorities, share problems and more rapidly integrate RAS-AI commercial technologies into maritime capability.
“RAS-AI SYSTEMS ARE MAKING INROADS COMMERCIALLY AND THERE’S A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR DEFENCE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT”
use these systems at speed.”
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS
Priority was being given to programs already underway that include elements of RAS-AI. Sea 1778 (deployable task group mine counter- measures) was building up towards its operat- ing capability, including the presence at AW22 of HMAS Waterhen’s Mine Warfare Team 16 with Bluefin-9 and Bluefin-12 autonomous un- derwater systems (AUS) and 38 ft Steber sup- port boats, CDRE Kavanagh noted.
The Campaign Plan in turn references
Navy’s overarching RAS-AI Strategy 2040
launched in October 2020, the increased
risk since then of state-on-state conflict and
technological disruption, and the role that
the Campaign Plan will play over the next
four years in supporting Navy’s contribution to trilateral ca- pabilities under the September 2021 AUKUS partnership.
Work was also advancing on the mission systems to equip the mine warfare support/military survey vessels that are to be developed under Sea 1905 as a variant of the Arafura- class offshore patrol vessels.
Timelines have yet to be announced, although an Invi- tation to Register and Request for Information regarding various components of the mission management system, its integration, and the robotic and autonomous systems re- quired for the new vessels, closed early last year.
“This is a very ambitious program which we want in place very quickly, but first we need to demonstrate the autono- my,” CDRE Kavanagh stated.
“For the first time the mission systems are really driving the ship design. But prior to the ships being delivered, we’ll have to demonstrate the ability to clear mines with autono- mous systems in an Australian port, which is one of the
IMPLEMENTING THE CAMPAIGN PLAN
AW22 was headed by Commodore Darron Kavanagh, ap- pointed only in January to the new one-star position of Director-General Warfare Innovation – Navy, reporting to RADM Quinn and tasked with successfully implementing Campaign Plan 2025.
Previously Director General Maritime Integrated War- fare Systems, CDRE Kavanagh was generous with his time in explaining to ADM both the exercise and its place in the wider objectives of the four-year RAS-AI Campaign Plan.
“RAS-AI systems are making inroads commercially and there’s a great opportunity for Defence to take advantage of that,” he commented.