Defense Official Statement on AUKUS Pillar 2 and Exercise Maritime Big Play
The following statement can be attributed to Ms. Madeline Mortelmans who is currently performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities. Her office is lead for both pillars of AUKUS within the department and is in close partnership with all of the DOD stakeholders.
“Secretary Austin has said several times in the past that our alliances and partnerships are our greatest global strategic advantage. Specifically, AUKUS presents a unique opportunity for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to foster a more capable, more combined force of the future. And in so doing, we will strengthen deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
Through AUKUS, we are working across the full spectrum of capability development, generating requirements, co-developing new systems, deepening industrial based collaboration and ultimately delivering advanced capabilities to our forces. AUKUS Pillar 1 focuses these co-development efforts on delivering an advanced nuclear power submarine capability through the optimal pathway.
Pillar 2 focuses on the development and delivery of emerging technology. AUKUS Pillar 2 is designed to harness the combined industrial and innovation bases of the tri-lateral partners to ensure that our forces are equipped with cutting edge interoperable military capabilities and prepared to face down aggression in whatever form it may take.
In Pillar 2, we’re building a more capable combined joint force for the future, working across the full spectrum of capability development and we’re already delivering. This year, we’re advancing our undersea warfare capabilities by expanding our ability to launch and recover uncrewed underwater systems from torpedo tubes on current classes of British and US submarines, that will increase the range and capability of our undersea forces.
We’re integrating the Stingray lightweight torpedo into the P-8A maritime patrol aircraft, which will support our forces in being more interchangeable while providing resilience to munitions stockpiles across AUKUS nations. At the same time, we’re also implementing a fundamental shift to more closely integrate our systems and break down barriers to collaboration at every stage and in every part of our systems.
We’ve welcomed collaboration with the International Joint Requirements Oversight Council or I-JROC, a critical collaborative forum to identify and validate joint and combined requirements. The I-JROC will ensure that we have prioritized combined and joint solutions from the very start and that the capabilities we develop under Pillar 2 address some of the most pressing challenges our forces face.
A cornerstone of AUKUS Pillar 2 remains the opportunity to leverage the best of our defense industrial bases in combined innovation communities. This year we executed the first office innovation challenge focused on electronic warfare. We announced the winners last month and our teams are working to develop a robust two-year plan to increase the collaboration between and among our innovation centers of excellence.
By the end of the year, we’ll have convened meetings with the Advanced Capabilities Industry Forum in each country. Engagements provide an opportunity for representatives across government and industry to exchange ideas and deepen industrial based collaboration.
This week we’re here in Jervis Bay to observe the Maritime Big Play, which is an important demonstration of AUKUS in action. The Maritime Big Play is a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises aimed at enhancing capability development, improving interoperability and increasing the sophistication and scale of autonomous systems in the maritime domain. These experiments address the need to expand the reach, capability and capacity of our forces in the maritime environment through the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been testing and refining the ability to jointly operate uncrewed maritime systems, to share and process maritime data from all three nations, and to provide real time maritime domain awareness to support decision making. The Maritime Big Play allows AUKUS partners to practice fielding and maintaining thousands of uncrewed systems, gaining valuable experience operating in coalitions to solve realistic operational problems such as improving undersea situational awareness.
Our work will inform AUKUS partners’ understanding of how crewed and uncrewed capabilities can be integrated to get an operational advantage, and where we can achieve cost savings and improved efficiencies in acquisition, maintenance and sustainment activities.
Maritime Big Play isn’t just a demonstration for demonstration’s sake. It’s our goal to transition cutting edge technologies into capabilities that give our forces decisive advantage as quickly as we can. This year, Japan joined the Maritime Big Play as an observer. We look forward to deepening their participation in the coming years. All of this together underpins a more strategic approach to ensure that AUKUS and like-minded partners can operate new autonomous uncrewed systems more effectively as a coalition force from the start.
This is only the first in our series of experiments and demonstrations. Over time, Maritime Big Play will grow and evolve to reflect the emerging technologies, new systems and new operational requirements. I want to emphasize that AUKUS is dynamic. It will grow, it will evolve as the world changes around us, and as we break down the old barriers to cooperation and inevitably discover new ones.
AUKUS is building a foundation for deep defense industrial cooperation and delivering advanced capabilities that can and will ensure our defense forces succeed in enhancing peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific alongside UK and Australia partners both now and in the years ahead. Thank you.”
AUKUS Partners Complete Successful Tests of Autonomous and Networked Systems in Maritime Experimentation
In a significant development for maritime security, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS) have completed successful tests of several autonomous and networked systems during a three-week maritime experimentation called Autonomous Warrior 24 in Australia. The event was part of the Maritime Big Play (MBP) initiative and ongoing efforts to develop AUKUS Pillar II capabilities, a trilateral collaboration to improve maritime awareness through networked autonomy, decision advantage, and enhanced strike.
In a significant development for maritime security, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS) have completed successful tests of several autonomous and networked systems during a three-week maritime experimentation called Autonomous Warrior 24 in Australia. The event was part of the Maritime Big Play (MBP) initiative and ongoing efforts to develop AUKUS Pillar II capabilities, a trilateral collaboration to improve maritime awareness through networked autonomy, decision advantage, and enhanced strike.
The Maritime Big Play is a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises that are enhancing capability development, improving interoperability, and increasing the sophistication and scale of autonomous systems in the maritime domain. Australia led the Autonomous Warrior event, the signature MBP event in 2024. Other events associated with Maritime Big Play included the Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping Augmented by Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS); and Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX).
Through these experiments and exercises, AUKUS partners are further testing and refining 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.
“Autonomous Warrior/Maritime Big Play creates a unique opportunity for our three countries to work together, which will ultimately improve operational efficiency and allow us to work more cohesively against common threats,” said Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “This collaborative approach enables us to reduce acquisition, maintenance, and training cost by creating economies of scale.”
The technologies tested during the October event support operations from deep under water to the edge of space. This included software-defined acoustic modems, multi-model autonomous underwater and surface vessels, and low-cost attritable unmanned surface vehicles. The tests also featured a low-cost gondola, which supports operations in the upper stratosphere with minimum manpower or logistics requirements, and T-200 high-altitude balloons, which provide resilient communications in denied environments from the stratosphere.
A versatile and robust software-defined network architecture called Multi-Domain Uncrewed Secure Integrated Communications (MUSIC) was tested for its ability to enable seamless communication and coordination across diverse unmanned systems and operational environments. The Common Control System (CCS) was also featured in the exercise, built on an open architecture to provide uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems. This effort supports future work to create an AUKUS-wide Common Control System, fusing best elements of the three countries’ existing systems.
“AUKUS partners have long histories of working together on defense and security issues, and have deep, enduring partnerships based on shared values, said Shyu. “By investing in novel and innovative capabilities directly aligned to AUKUS mission priorities, as well as making future advancements in emerging technologies like AI and Quantum, we support a more stable region — one where all nations are empowered to make their own sovereign decisions free from coercion — a world that centers on hope for the opportunity and prosperity of the future.”
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