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Royal Navy controls uncrewed vessels operating more than 10,000 miles away
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4 October 2024
The Royal Navy and allied navies controlled uncrewed vessels operating more than 10,000 miles away in Australia during major experiments in Portugal.
Under the AUKUS defence partnership, the UK, Australia and the United States are working closely together to bring advanced military capabilities to the front-line at ‘an unprecedented pace’.
To that end, the three allies are undertaking a series of experiments – known as Maritime Big Play, with the first completed last month during a tech exercise in Southern Portugal, known as Repmus.
Repmus provided the first test bed for the AUKUS partners to work towards enhancing the delivery of autonomous uncrewed systems and by doing so, improving capability, forging closer ties and increasing the sophistication and scale of technology used.
Personnel from the three AUKUS navies remotely controlled vessels in Australia from a command centre in Portugal, carrying out a range of missions.
Together they pushed the boundaries of modern naval warfare, testing a range of uncrewed and autonomous equipment in mock complex operational scenarios, including dropping payloads from a drone, with the ultimate aim of getting advanced uncrewed technology to those operating on the front line quickly.
Representatives from Japan were present at Repmus to observe Maritime Big Play activity for the first time. This follows consultations with Japan on improving interoperability with Japan’s maritime autonomous systems as an initial area of cooperation under AUKUS Pillar Two.
Simon Lewinton, from the Royal Navy’s innovation expert team NavyX who deployed to Portugal, said: “At Repmus 24, the UK deployed the largest evolution of Team UK, comprising Royal Navy, civilians and industry to achieve experimental objectives across each of the above-water, underwater and Naval Mine Warfare domains.
“Not only were we able to achieve progress in integrated command-and-control systems with our international partners in tactically realistic and representative scenarios, but we were also able to evolve our multi-national mine warfare capabilities with squadded autonomy, sharing responsibility for producing and executing mission plans.”
Maritime Big Play included surveillance and reconnaissance using uncrewed systems operating from land and at sea.
Uncrewed Air Systems dropped 3D-printed mock bombs to demonstrate how the allies would carry out precision strikes, while they were also used to launch smaller drones as a sort of mothership.
Swarms of uncrewed vehicles worked together to detect, deter and fight off threats under the water, including mines.
The exercise also saw trials by the Royal Navy of the Golden Eagle Puma remotely-piloted aerial system. Nearly double in size compared to the standard Puma, the surveillance and reconnaissance drone has a 15ft wingspan and can stay in the air for up to five hours.
Other key moments saw uncrewed seaboat APAC 24 remotely driven from Royal Navy experimentation ship XV Patrick Blackett building on previous tests conducted in the ship’s home port in Portsmouth.
Later this year, AUKUS nations will bring together approximately 30 systems and deploy them for the first large-scale Maritime Big Play demonstration in the Indo-Pacific. Japan will also join this event.
The exercise will include technologies from companies in each of the three nations, with the participation of over 50 industry, science and academic partners.