Navy News
Direct from the front-line, the official newspaper of the Royal Navy, Navy News, brings you the latest news, features and award winning photos every month.
AUKUS exercise sees Royal Navy uncrewed submarine controlled from across the world
11 August 2025
The Royal Navy successfully tested the ability to communicate with Experimental Vessel (XV) Excalibur, the Royal Navy’s Extra Large Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV), while submerged on the other side of the world.
This is the first time UK and Australia, as part of AUKUS Pillar II, have demonstrated XLUUV interchangeability as a single fighting force.
Unveiled earlier this year, the 12m long and totally crewless Excalibur is the navy’s first XLUUV and is the culmination of a three-year long project called Cetus.
As part of AUKUS Pillar II’s Maritime Big Play series, the control of a UK XLUUV in UK waters was executed during Exercise Talisman Sabre in July from a remote operating centre in Australia – more than 10,000 miles from Excalibur’s home in Plymouth.
In addition to the XL UUV experimentation delivered by Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, AUKUS nations also separately worked with Japan in this exercise to enhance their use of underwater acoustic communications.
Building on the successful first year of the series in 2024, AUKUS Pillar II partners have conducted several demonstrations, focused on advancing how they collectively communicate with and employ, robotics and autonomous systems at sea.
The XLUUV exercise was a big step forward in our ability to operate uncrewed systems interchangeably with Australia
Captain Keith Taylor, RN, the UK Senior Responsible Owner for Maritime Big Play, said: “This exercise demonstrates how we are exploiting the learning from our experimentation, by applying it to the Royal Navy’s growing arsenal of Uncrewed Underwater Vehicles; taking experimentation into the hands of the war fighter”.
Commodore Marcus Rose, RN, Deputy Director Underwater Battlespace, added: “The XLUUV exercise was a big step forward in our ability to operate uncrewed systems interchangeably with Australia."
Maritime Big Play is a series of integrated experiments and exercises that enhance capability development and improve interoperability between partners.
Japan’s participation in this exercise follows the announcement in September 2024 that AUKUS partners would explore opportunities to improve interoperability with Japan’s maritime autonomous systems as an initial area of Pillar II project collaboration.