That large-scale modernization affair — Autonomous Warrior 2024 — marks AUKUS’ signature event this year and is part of the alliance’s new Maritime Big Play series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises, two senior defense officials told a small group of reporters on a call Wednesday.

“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,” said Madeline Mortelmans, acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. 

The AUKUS alliance is structured around two pillars. 

While the first of those encompasses the co-development of a nuclear-powered submarine force for Australia, Pillar 2 focuses on the co-creation and deployments of emerging and disruptive military technologies.

Via Pillar 2, Mortelmans noted, AUKUS members are “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 system.”

Broadly, the MBP series is designed to push forward the Pillar 2 objective to rapidly translate cutting-edge capabilities into practical, asymmetric assets delivered quickly to service members in the field. 

Through it, the international partners aim to collaboratively test and refine the alliance’s capacity to jointly operate uncrewed systems at sea, transmit and process intelligence and reconnaissance data from all three nations, and supply real-time maritime domain awareness to strengthen decision-making. 

“What we’ve been doing with this experimentation campaign is to ensure that when different gear shows up in the fight and into theater, it can be included seamlessly to provide common operating pictures and common control systems, and to ensure effects as and when we choose to have them as a coalition,” a senior defense official who joined Mortelmans but spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters on Wednesday. 

DefenseScoop asked the two officials whether any of the autonomous or other combat capabilities were identified by AUKUS participants as a tool that would make sense for more rapid fielding and use in military operations in the near term.

“Some of them already are,” the senior defense official said. “There are some systems — uncrewed surface vessels in Australia  — that have been put out on the ocean. And some of the things that we saw during this experimentation campaign was data coming back from those systems in real-time to maintain a common operating picture.”

They further told DefenseScoop: “Part of doing the Maritime Big Play is to see the realm of what’s available and to make those kinds of decisions. But at this point, we haven’t even completed the exercise, so no decisions have been taken to acquire or rapidly accelerate any system.” 

On the call, the two senior defense officials opted not to explicitly name any of the technology brands or companies that made the sensors, platforms, drones, or network and communications systems the U.S. brought to Autonomous Warrior 2024.

However, in an email from Australia shortly afterwards, Pentagon spokesperson Army Maj. Pete Nguyen shed more light on the exact prototypes and technologies America demonstrated during the event.

The list he provided includes, among others:

• High Altitude Balloons (HABs) that “augment the space domain by providing resilient communications in a denied environment from the stratosphere by carrying a range of mission capable payloads” — from Aerostar, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft (GARC), which are “low-cost attritable [small uncrewed  surface vehicles or sUSVs] that can deploy independently or as a formation … and provide an uncrewed means to respond to Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD)” — from MAPC, in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Sea Stalker sUSV that’s “designed to serve in multiple maritime missions to include reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence collection” — from Swift Ships, a small business based in Morgan City, Louisiana.
• Triton “multi-model Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vessel capable of persistent operation in a contested environment with threat detection and evasion capabilities” — from Ocean Aero, a small business in Gulfport, Mississippi.
• A “Government-Owned, Non-Proprietary Common Control System” that gives “U.S. Navy uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems” and helps process data from sensor payloads.

“This is only the first in our series of experiments and demonstrations. Over time, Maritime Big Play will grow and evolve to reflect emerging technologies, new systems and new operational requirements,” Mortelmans told reporters Wednesday.

Notably, during that call she also mentioned that members of the Japanese military joined this round of Maritime Big Play experimentation as “observers.”

AUKUS leaders have made it clear that they are open to expanding the trilateral security partnership to include other nations — solely under Pillar 2, not Pillar 1 — to jointly strengthen the interoperability of their maritime drone systems. 

“Planning for the next exercise is underway. So the full details of what [Japan’s] participation will be in the future hasn’t yet been determined, but I think that they will move from being an observer to being a participant in the activity. And what a participant means could be bringing Japanese systems and platforms participating in that command-and-control architecture. There’s a wide range of opportunities and we’re really eager to explore those,” the senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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Daley leads Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1), the team that operates the four USV prototypes that recently transited the Pacific Ocean with mostly autonomous navigation via the Navy’s Integrated Battle Problem 23.2. 

While the exercise’s two medium-sized USVs, Sea Hunter and Sea Hawk, are still trailing behind to complete some final routine operations, Daley returned with a small crew and the larger Mariner and Ranger USVs to homeport Naval Base Ventura County in California on Monday. He briefed reporters about the latest updates and takeaways from the exercise during a call on Tuesday, marking its unofficial completion.  

“We’ve learned a lot [about] how we’re going to conduct operations, and then loads of different technical, smaller specifics on how we’re going to not just do the future fight — but how we’re going to develop the technology in a more efficient way, and mature technology in a more efficient way,” Daley explained.

Among other notable events since IBP 23.2 kicked off in August, Daley’s division participated with the robo-ships in the Navy and Marine Corps’ Large Scale Exercise and the Royal Australian Navy’s Exercise Autonomous Warrior. 

The personnel and USVs also integrated with the Japan Maritime-Self Defense Force, Royal Australian Navy, Carrier Strike Group 1, III Marine Expeditionary Force, and several independently deployed surface ships in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations as part of the integrated battle problem. 

“I will tell you that communication — and understanding exactly what manpower is required to do the control of the vessels, and where you do that from — has been tested and pushed to its limit as far as how many vessels, where you control them from, and what the transition of control shifting from point A to point B to point C looks like. I think we have some very good feedback both on resiliency and numbers of personnel required and what that would look like,” Daley said.

For certain portions of the deployment, he also took a small team to embark on different warships to conduct flow control activities with the vessels, which he said introduced “fantastic” feedback for those involved.

The two medium-sized USVs have no running water or toilets — and “other than entering and exiting ports, there were no humans onboard Sea Hunter or Sea Hawk at any point during” the exercise, Daley noted. He also spotlighted how his team experimented with various means to control all the systems from onshore and at sea for this exercise.

Broadly, the Navy has been tight-lipped about the four prototypes’ payloads for this pursuit. 

“One benefit of having an [optionally unmanned surface vessel, or OUSV, model] to test medium and large capabilities is that we have a broad brushstroke of space onboard of Ranger and Mariner to not just test the capabilities that we have today — but find out if the right size and form factor exists in the current state and where it could be applied” or adjusted for systems that make it into future programs of record, Daley told DefenseScoop during the call.

Although the medium-sized USVs were limited in scope because of the size of the deck space onboard to test different capabilities, Daley confirmed that his team “did test, between all four vessels — below-the-water, on-the-water, and in-the-air for sensors and platforms — in addition to the autonomy maturation for the vessels themselves, for all four ships during the course of [the exercise].” 

The commander did not provide explicit details regarding what the next integrated battle problem might entail. 

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Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) represents the Defense Department’s overarching, complex plan to connect sensors, shooters and related technologies across the branches and between domains of battle. Each service is developing and refining its own major contribution — and for the Air Force, that’s the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).

While progress unfolds for ABMS, as well as on other major technology-driven initiatives, Brown and Air Force leadership are operating deliberately to ensure their service’s elements can integrate with U.S. allies’ systems early on in development, the four-star general confirmed during a media roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber conference on Tuesday.

This intent, he noted, aligns with the “integrated by design” framework he has been spotlighting recently, particularly during engagements with air power leaders in other nations.

Last week, at an Air Force-hosted conference with international air chiefs from 49 other nations, Brown discussed how the U.S. and its military can better share classified and open-source information and seamlessly integrate technological assets when necessary.

“As we build these things out, we need to make sure we’re thinking about our allies and partners and breaking down some of these barriers before we get to the end,” Brown told DefenseScoop during Tuesday’s roundtable.

In some cases, that could mean bringing in “some or many of our allies and partners” — and in other cases, just the allies that the U.S. has the tightest ties with — to collaborate on requirements and planning earlier into technical development or co-development.

Although it might cost more money to involve close global partners early into the making of in-development and emerging capabilities, other nations “may bring money to this as well, which is not a bad idea,” he added.

American allies will more likely buy into something, in his view, if they feel like an integral part of the process sooner rather than later.

“What my staff can expect from me is me asking questions — ‘OK, what ally and partner? Hey, we can coordinate this way? Who is on board with this? How are we going to include this in here?’ Because otherwise, you don’t want to have to do it later,” Brown said.

He didn’t go into much detail, but during the roundtable, the Air Force chief of staff also confirmed that there have been “aspects of things” officials have been able to do with ABMS and associated capabilities to support Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February.

“That’s the thing — when you have a crisis like this, all the hesitancy, bureaucracy starts to break down and we were able to take some of the things that we were working on, on the U.S. side, and open it up to the NATO side that we hadn’t had done in the past,” Brown said.

Now, what Brown is “really trying to do” is “derive some of these crises without actual crises” so that military and allied teams are better prepped for challenges that will inevitably surface down the line, he said. “So, that’s the goal as well.”

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Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition Frank Calvelli detailed those initial aims on Friday during his first public speaking engagement in this brand-new position, in which he will help set the long-term direction for Space Force procurement.

“We seem to have a disconnect with space and ground systems where we will want something but the ground system is just not ready yet, or the user terminal is just not ready yet,” Calvelli said during a Mitchell Institute event. One of his top goals will be “to ensure that the space and ground systems come together as an integrated system so that when we launch the systems, we can take full advantage of them.”

Calvelli said reading a lot of federal watchdog reports helped him come to that conclusion.

Integrating America’s space architecture into other warfighting domains to give the military more of an advantage across the spectrum of operations will also be critical, he said.

Improving on those integration issues are two of his top five priorities that align with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s recently shared operational imperatives to help the Pentagon more rapidly deploy technologies to deter adversaries as warfare capabilities evolve. Calvelli first mentioned his priorities at his confirmation hearing last month, but expanded on them during the forum on Friday.

Another aim is delivering capabilities that are already in the works.

“One of my top priorities is executing — I need to deliver on the things that got started over the last couple of years, and I think it’s going to make our Space Force and our Department of the Air Force a much stronger organization in terms of capabilities for the warfighter,” he said.

Getting capabilities into the hands of troops faster, and improving program management and execution are other key focus areas.

“There really truly is a sense of urgency out there. I mean, we have threats against our systems, we have threats from near-peer adversaries. We need speed. We need execution,” he added.

“I think there’s no better way to actually get some speed than to actually deliver on your commitments and actually execute your programs on cost and schedule. So my … priority is to really drive project management discipline across the service,” Calvelli said.

Another top aim is to make the nation’s space architecture more resilient.

“That’s going to be key because our nation does depend on space, both in peace as well as times of crisis and conflict. So, it’s really important that space is always available to the nation no matter what the environment is,” he said. 

Congress mandated the creation of Calvelli’s new position in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. He comes into the job as the military works to modernize its satellites and other key space assets, and buy sophisticated technologies to compete with competitors like China. Calvelli said he spent months preparing to take on the leadership position by reviewing and studying academic papers, government reports, news articles, speeches, hearings and more.

He also brings to the job more than 30 years of experience in the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) — which uses space assets for the U.S. intelligence community — and the CIA.

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