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AUKUS Navies Demonstrate Unmanned Vessels Across 10,000 Miles in NATO Exercise

Mike Schuler
Total Views: 2110
October 4, 2024

The Royal Navy and its AUKUS partners successfully controlled uncrewed vessels in Australia from a command center in Portugal, spanning a distance of over 10,000 miles.

The demonstration marks a significant milestone in the AUKUS defense partnership between the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, showcasing their commitment to bringing cutting-edge military technologies to the forefront at an unprecedented pace.

The experiment, part of a series known as Maritime Big Play, took place during NATO’s annual tech exercise, Repmus, in Southern Portugal. It involved a range of missions utilizing uncrewed and autonomous equipment in simulated operational scenarios, including payload drops from drones and the deployment of swarms of uncrewed vehicles for underwater threat detection.

“The successes experienced, including proving the ability of all three AUKUS navies to command-and-control vessels on the other side of the world in a tactically realistic scenario, show how close we are to realizing our ambition of a genuine team of crewed and uncrewed systems, capable of operating and prevailing everywhere on the planet, from the seabed to space,” said Rear Admiral James Parkin, the Royal Navy’s Director Develop.

The exercise also featured trials of advanced technologies such as the Golden Eagle Puma, a large remotely-piloted aerial system with enhanced endurance capabilities. The uncrewed seaboat APAC 24 was remotely operated from the Royal Navy’s experimentation ship XV Patrick Blackett, building upon previous tests conducted in Portsmouth.

Looking ahead, the AUKUS nations plan to escalate their efforts with a large-scale Maritime Big Play demonstration in the Indo-Pacific later this year, involving approximately 30 systems and over 50 industry, science, and academic partners. This upcoming exercise underscores the partnership’s commitment to enhancing military capabilities, deepening interoperability, and strengthening deterrence in the region.

The AUKUS partnership continues to make strides in other areas as well, including progress towards providing Australia with conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines and accelerating emerging capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and hypersonics.

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