The defense ministers of the AUKUS partnership countries last week committed to several activities and timelines for cooperation on Pillar 2 of the partnership, including a series of experiments for autonomous maritime systems.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hosted Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles and British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps for a visit at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) at Mountain View, Calif. They revealed several next steps of AUKUS Pillar 2 in a joint statement published December 1.
While Pillar 1 of the AUKUS partnership is focused on helping Australia secure a nuclear-powered attack submarine capability over the next several decades, Pillar 2 is devoted to increasing cooperation on other technologies like artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, cybersecurity and space systems.
The ministers committed to start a series of integrated trilateral experiments on maritime autonomous systems.
During a December 1 press conference, Austin said that starting in early 2024 the countries “will conduct a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises. They will enhance capability development, improve our interoperability and rapidly accelerate with sophistication and scale of autonomous maritime systems that we can deploy and operate together.”
A joint statement also released that day said the experiments and exercises aim to provide opportunities for the defense industry to participate in capability demonstration, development, and delivery.
“Through these experiments and exercises, the AUKUS partners will also further test and refine the ability to jointly operate uncrewed maritime systems, share and process maritime data from all three nations, and provide real-time maritime domain awareness to support decision-making.”
At the press conference, Marles said this means the countries’ armaments directors will work together on a tabletop exercise in 2024 while the DIUs of the U.S. and U.K. as well as the Australian Strategic Capabilities Accelerator will be “working together on joint challenges, which we’ll see initially that happen in the space of electronic warfare.”
Austin also highlighted in early 2024 they will launch the first in a series of trilateral innovation prize challenges on various common innovation challenge topics, starting with electronic warfare.
“That will mean that companies from across our three countries can compete for a common innovation challenge prize that will help our warfighters improve interoperability, gain decision advantage, and strengthen our deterrence,” Austin said.
The countries also plan to establish and convene a standing industry forum with representatives from the governments and industry of the U.S., U.K. and Australia, with the first meeting set for the first half of 2024. This seeks to “help inform policy, technical, and commercial frameworks to facilitate the development and delivery of advanced capabilities.
Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) President and CEO Eric Fanning said he welcomes the forum, noting AIA called for a forum like this in March
The series of forums “strengthen industry-government collaboration to rapidly deliver capabilities to the warfighters,” Fanning said.
“Industry-government collaboration is vital to the success of AUKUS, which is why AIA has called for ongoing engagement as the partnership is implemented…We look forward to convening key government stakeholders and exploring how our countries’ industrial bases can strengthen the AUKUS partnership amid an ever-changing geopolitical environment.”
The ministers also announced plans to deploy common advanced artificial intelligence algorithms on various systems, including the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft that aims to process data for each county’s sonobuoys.
“These joint advances will allow for timely high-volume data analysis, improving our anti-submarine warfare capabilities,” the joint statement said.
Other Pillar 2 points the ministers mentioned without specific milestones include integrating the ability to launch and recover undersea vehicles from torpedo tubes; accelerating development of quantum technologies for positioning, navigation, and timing in military capabilities to create more resilience in situations where GPS is degraded; a commitment to integrate Resilient and Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Technologies into national programs in 2024 to enhance force precision and targeting; collaboration on cybersecurity with industry partners in the naval supply chain; approving the creation of an AUKUS Defense Investors network to help facilitate targeting international industry connections; and collaborating on trilateral operational requirements.
Marles underscored the final point means they are using the International Joint Requirements Oversight Council to create an architecture to help allow a joint capacity to examine specific technologies to pursue in Pillar 2.
The council is co-chaired by the vice chiefs of defense from all three countries. The joint statement said it is a “key collaborative forum for identifying and validating operational requirements common to our three nations that will contribute to deterrence and our ability to prevail if deterrence fails.”
The joint statement also said AUKUS played a “critical role” in increased trilateral collaboration on the ground-based Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability [DARC] program.
DARC plans to provide 24-hour continuous all-weather sensor detection, tracking and identifying objects into deep space to improve space domain awareness.
In May, Northrop Grumman announced it completed the Critical Design Review and a software demonstration for the U.S. Space Force DARC (Defense Daily, May 30).
Last year, the Space Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $341 million contract to build the first DARC radar, expected to field in the Indo-Pacific region in 2025. At the time, the company said it would ultimately field two more DARC radars in undisclosed locations (Defense Daily, Feb. 23, 2022).
The minister’s joint statement said DARC sites will be deployed in all three countries by the end of the 2020s. It said the first radar site will be operational in Western Australia in 2026.