Page 30 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2022

30 DEFENCE BUSINESS AUTONOMOUS WARRIOR 22
JULY-AUGUST 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
intelligence with maritime operations in the 5th Fleet area of operations.
Several Task Force 59 personnel took part in AW22, and an advantage of the T38 and T12 procurement was being able to leverage the US Task Force’s experience with them in RAN testing and experimentation, CDRE Kavanagh noted.
Two Ocius Bluebottle 22 ft wind, wave and solar-powered USVs similar to the four Bluebottles currently undertak- ing surveillance patrols out of Broome for the Australian Border Force, were involved with DSTG in experiments to collect data from REMUS autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)s, CDRE Kavanagh disclosed.
“When you bring these AUVs to the surface to obtain their data you’ve got to get them up on the host boat and it takes a lot of time. So, we’re playing around with things like using the Bluebottle to get the data and provide the AUV with positional data so it stays on a track and keeps us trusting what is going on,” he said.
Along with the T38, surprise participants in AW22 were two US-built 23 ft long, 16 ft high wind-powered Saildrone Explorer USVs similar to those currently being used opera- tionally off Bahrain by Task Force 59.
“They’re similar to the Bluebottle, a very robust capability. Whether it’s a UUV or a USV, if we can keep the cost down the beauty of these types of capabilities is that payloads can be
works’ tropical marine test range near Townsville were live streamed to, and controlled from, the AW22 command cen- tre using BITSCore remote tasking technology.
The missions included detecting objects on the ocean floor with sonar and patrolling an area to detect and iden- tify unknown vessels and escort them to shore.
According to AIMS, this was the first swarm permit for autonomous vessels – a collection of vessels working co- hesively, directed by an operator – to be approved by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
While CCS and MAPLE/QUASAR provided the best of both worlds the intention was not to recreate the systems but to understand them and hopefully harmonise them over time in the move towards a singular command and con- trol capability that met Australia’s sovereign requirements, CDRE Kavanagh said.
“I’m not expecting, out of Sea 1905 for example, for a miracle to occur with a full-blown common control system that the free world can operate off; the intent is for every- one to understand where we’re trying to go.”
However, the UK’s NavyX program, designed to demon- strate innovation in autonomous systems and artificial in- telligence, was making progress in a number of areas, some of which was likely to end up in Sea 1905 bids.
Meanwhile Navy and DSTG have initiated a program of experimentation and rapid prototyping, working col- laboratively with industry on the Anduril, SeaWolf and Speartooth activities to develop a family of uncrewed un- dersea vehicles (UUV).
An example is the three-year collaborative research con- tract signed in May with Anduril Australia to co-develop an Extra-Large Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (XL-AUV) of up to 30 metres long. Initial work will concentrate on under- standing the concept of operations and advancing through aspects such as payloads and commonality including testing with a Large Diameter AUV by the end of the year.
The contract includes design, development, test and val- idation in Australia of three XL-AUV prototypes of high technical readiness level, “and also includes developing a plan to rapidly scale production in Australia,” explained CDRE Kavanagh.
“I think we’ll see more and more of this type of approach for disruptive technologies such as RAS-AI rather than the more traditional approach of first developing your concepts based on what you thought you needed, then develop your requirements, then compete it, then years later you start to see whether it actually works.”
So far as the next iteration of Autonomous Warrior was concerned, experimentation programs were likely to be- come more frequent and more targeted events, CDRE Ka- vanagh forecast.
While an Autonomous Warrior 2024 would be great, the UUV program would involve intensive trials prior to 2024 and there were opportunities to collaborate in RAS-AI ex- perimentation programs of allies and partners.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t spread some parts of the exercises around Australia. I think that’s more and more the way, because at its heart, a lot of autonomy is to do with distributed effects as well,” CDRE Kavanagh said. ■
“ONCE YOU CAN CONTROL FOUR OR FIVE ASSETS AT ONCE YOU CAN DO 30, YOU CAN DO MORE”
chopped and changed as required,” CDRE Kavanagh commented.
Two Australian-designed and built Silvertone Flamingo UAS were used for persistent communi- cations and visual safety through- out the exercise. Real time UAS imagery for AW22 was also provid- ed by the hand-launched AeroVi-
ronment RQ-20 Puma all environment (AE) variant, while the RQ-20 Long Endurance (LE) model acted as a commu- nications relay for various unmanned systems.
Late in the exercise, a maritime target identified by a Puma was reportedly prosecuted by a ship-launched Aero- Vironment Switchblade 300 expendable UAV.
Evolving the command and control (C2) of uncrewed and autonomous systems to move towards a sovereign common control system was a vital element of AW22, CDRE Kava- nagh emphasised.
“Once you can control four or five assets at once you can do 30, you can do more,” he stated.
CONNECTING THE NODES
Connectivity during the exercise involved a mix of the US Navy’s Common Control System (CCS) run in parallel with the UK’s MAPLE information architecture and QUASAR common control system. Links from the AW22 command centre at HMAS Creswell connected to Task Force 59 in Bahrain, systems in the US, and to the UK’s Defence Sci- ence and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in Portsmouth. The DSTL link enabled the simulation during AW22 activi- ty of a system that was operating in the UK at the same time.
Additionally, autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Reef-