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The Australian Army is preparing to make robotic and autonomous systems a routine part of combat-team operations, with Talisman Sabre 2027 emerging as a major demonstration point.
The details were revealed during a must-see ‘Drone-Enabled Battlefield: Army’s RAS Revolution’ podcast with guest Captain Andy Dunn-Lobban and published by the Australian Army’s professional development platform, The Cove, on 20 September this year.
During the podcast, CAPT Dunn-Lobban from the Land Combat College’s Remote and Autonomous Systems Cell discusses how drones and robotic systems are changing land warfare. CAPT Dunn-Lobban had previously deployed to train Ukrainian forces on Operation Kudu and the UK’s Interflex, and it’s understood that the Australian Army’s drone doctrine will be largely informed by Ukrainian results-based best practices.
“Towards the end of the deployment (with the Ukrainian drone pilots) we took a little piece of paper and sketched it out with a Ukrainian Lance Jack (Lance Corporal) that if we were going to make a continuum (for the Australian Army), it would look like the following. And then by and large, it’s kind of stayed the same this year. We’ve just been filling in the details from that initial sketch of what we thought a training continuum for the Australian Army would look like,” he said.
“(The explosive FPV) it’s the most efficient weapon system on the battlefield today… we’re talking about getting (a drone) for less than $5,000, you can go 20km, hit a figure 11 (target) with an explosive penetrator. That’s unreal. I never want to go in a fight without that weapon system available to me.
“I think people get this (idea) in their head, they’re like, ‘Oh, everyone’s a drone operator’, that’s probably not where we need to be… we need to talk about echeloning. Having a multi-role team that sits maybe at the company level. Then the battle group’s got attack drone teams and surveillance drone teams. Probably the brigade has bombers with those longer range fixed wing strike (drones). And (we need to know that) whatever we choose now isn’t going to be right. We’re just going to have to work it out and it’s going to change and it’ll vary. I reckon it’ll end up varying between each of our brigades… you just got to start doing it.
“(As an example of capability) if you can picture in your mind, the drone teams infiltrating during night. They’ve set themselves up in an urban hide. As they’re setting themselves up, they run remote antennas… you’ve got a four-man team with four key roles (and 60 drones).
“So, there’s the team leader; they command the team… they’re watching the recon feed. They’re talking up to higher up. They’re monitoring the comms and they’re feeding those to the team. They’ll give the game plan to the team.
“You got a 2IC (second in-command) that runs the drones and bombs. There’s deliberate preparation. There’s sequestering them to one side, getting that munition ready, running it out, arming it.
“You’ve then got the operator, who flies the thing. Then a navigator to run the map… (and) also be monitoring the repeater drone if you want that 20 km beyond visual line of sight range.
“In training, there is this rough area with a target. We set up a recon drone team. The recon drone team picks up a recon drone and flies it out to that rough area, tries and finds the target. Once they found the target, they’re streaming that footage to the attack drone team. Attack drone team sees the footage and then there’s cross talk at the lowest possible level between the recon team and the attack drone team.
“The TR writes up a game plan for them; ’this is the frequency. This is the checkpoint etc. All these key details. This is the effect I want on the target and explosive penetrator depending on the target’. Second in-command preps the drone, preps it with the operator to make sure it’s all good. It runs out that drone, arms it and then the drone takes off, the repeater goes up with it at the same time and that drone essentially navigates itself to the point. The operator (has to) try and then pick an attack profile depending on the target just hits the target. Then the battle damage assessment is complete. And then that’s end of mission.
“Almost always a drone team should attempt to do what we call it hunt and kill. You should try and have a recon asset that will find the target and then the attack drone team doesn’t have to burn itself looking. You can absolutely free hunt with an attack drone… but by and large you need that link for surveillance reconnaissance and then strike and you do that at the lowest possible level and that is how they (the Ukrainians) generate the lethality.
“Probably the other important thing to talk about there is the digital C2 (command and control) layer, which is a good point. A Ukrainian drone team, a two person drone team. They would expect to have at least 30 drone feeds available to them in real time. You think about how are they so efficient in generating strikes out of a drone team, that drone team can sit there and have probably better situational awareness than probably our brigade commanders get at times on major exercises because they’ve just proliferated that digital C2. And that digital C2 enables them to push the coordination lower and lower and lower.
“It’s almost Uber for fires for them. Someone will find a target, that’s either the person who initially sees it or someone see it on the feed. They’ll pop it in and say, ‘Here’s the target, who can fire at it?’ There’s a battle captain sitting there that basically approves the job. And then it automatically feeds to an actor. It doesn’t have to be like artillery, any kind of fires just feeds through that central fires network. But that’s how they get so efficient on the battlefield, how it’s become so lethal because you imagine being on the receiving end of that. You’re kicking around the battlefield, something sees you and then almost instantaneously they’re working out of every fire I said what can actually hit you. There’s no lag or latency with getting fires down range against you.”
FPV drones become the new lead-in fighter
CAPT Dunn-Lobban, the inaugural senior instructor for robotic and autonomous systems, confirmed that the purpose of the program is to scale the use of uncrewed systems as quickly and as efficiently as possible for the Australian Army.
“We don’t do capability development. I’d say it’s more refinement… so how do you take what is a capability and then refine it enough that it’s easy to teach,” he said.
“We also have an equipping function. So as people filter through our coursing generally, we’ll hand them the equipment at the end. They’ll take that back to their units.
“We have this employment multi-role drones course which is a five-day course that teaches you to use a stabilised quadcopter. That’s a foundation course. We’ve exported that to almost every brigade now… it’s takes a stabilised quadcopter and teaches you to use as a reconnaissance and a dropper. That course culminates with you fighting another four-person drone team to find them first, drop on them first, you win… the more advanced kind of FPV courses, we’re still working out how to export them because they’re just so technical. I don’t expect anyone to come off a two course on FPV and be able to turn around and then speak with confidence around how to build them.
“(After stabilised drones) You then got modify and operate attack drone FPV. That’s a really fun course. You pass a barrier assessment (30 hours in simulation)… that’s about two weeks of kind of alternating between those two modalities. You end up doing a very simple strike at the end of it.
“Then we’re developing the employ attack drone FPV course which is a four-week course that graduates advanced attack drone FPV pilot, advanced flight profiles, manoeuvre support, live fire and then kind of culminates with we assess you in like 72 hours in the box as an FPV team, and then you graduate and advance attack run.
“We’re using FPV as the lead-in fighter (for scaling training of robotic systems)… hopefully get to the point that we’re doing not just FPV but uncrewed surface vessel, uncrewed ground vehicle, it just depends on what the system can put at scale.”
Mass drones create mass options
The podcast also highlighted specific use cases where drones may become crucial for protecting other military personnel as they complete objectives.
“One of the things we’re really excited about is (the opportunity for) you control multiple drones from a single controller. So, the tactical drone team could stage six drones and then control them one by one,” CAPT Dunn-Lobban said.
“That might not sound like much, but when you’re talking about your platoon commander going in on assault… five minutes before you go onto the assault, you’ve got six precision munitions that hit the target. So that’s a pretty awesome level of firepower that’s hitting it.
“And then as you’re going through the assault, you’ve got a constant drone in the overhead. So if you ever hit a pit or a hard point, that drone comes in. Go back 20 years, that’s kind of SF (special forces) level of enablement… and we’re pretty confident that we can technically do that at about 20 km now.
“Then you add in UGVs. So you might have a UGV on the flank that’s suppressing that position while the precision munitions are going in and then your casualties are extracted by UGV out. I want to run the first attempt at that next month.”
The crucial Talisman Sabre 2027 debut
CAPT Dunn-Lobban also emphasised that future large deployment plans may rest on the results of a possible rollout during Talisman Sabre 2027 next year.
“Really the idea this year was first-person-view (explosive drones) is easy, accessible. Let’s use it as the lead in fighter to see what works, what doesn’t. Then next year as we kind of grow as a cell and so we’re aiming for Talisman Sabre 2027 as when we will have developed a course, delivered the course, equipped a lead unit, and then out of TS27 you can go, okay, let’s scale that across,” he said.
“We’re aiming for a meaningful live fire on Talisman Sabre. So, we intend to live fire (direct attack drone) next month… but Talisman Sabre is where we hope to kind of roll out robotic and autonomous systems kind of across different combat teams.
“Personally, as my professional aiming mark for TS is that every single combat team on TS has robotic and autonomous systems in some way, shape or form. I’m going to lower the bar and say an FPV counts which maybe it shouldn’t, but by the end of the year, every full-time combat unit in Army should have had at least one operator come through the course and gotten issued at least some attack FPV.
“The lead robotic and autonomous systems battalion, what should they be doing on TS next year? They should go into the field with a thousand drones of all different shapes and sizes. They should be flying them everywhere. It should be the primary sensor for the commander. It should be the primary strike asset. They should be modifying them on the go. The drone they start that exercise with isn’t the drone they finish with because they’re adapting it on the fly to counter electronic warfare or counter-UAS. That is the end state.”
Cultural change and responsibility
Crucially, the podcast also confirmed that a cultural change may be required across the Australian Defence Force for the military to make best use of new innovations in drones.
“Once you get that training and confidence that’s when you can achieve cultural change, but we definitely need to be in a position where we’re happy to change our equipment to adapt it on the fly because that’s where adaption occurs,” he said.
“Not everyone’s going to be a drone operator, but everyone needs to know how to fight with them.
“You don’t need to wait for a program or a project to hand you the UGV, people are making UGVs themselves. So just start to be the change you want to see in the Army.
“These things (drones) are effective. They’re the most efficient killing tool on the battlefield. Just start teaching yourself. Get among them. Take responsibility.
“(Currently) there are units that are standing up drone cells. Different battalions are kind of slowly standing up drone cells from the ground up be like, ‘Hey, I want to get involved in this. I want to do that.’
“You can right now download the simulation software that we use, you can teach yourself a lot of this open source stuff to get ahead of it. There’s such a low barrier to entry for a lot of this stuff.”
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