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The Australian Defence Force and United Kingdom’s Royal Navy have collaborated to remotely operate a Royal Navy’s extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle, experimental vessel Excalibur, on the other side of the world.
As part of AUKUS Pillar 2’s Maritime Big Play series, the control of the 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.
This is the first time the UK and Australia, as part of AUKUS Pillar 2, have demonstrated XLUUV interchangeability as a single fighting force.
Unveiled earlier this year, the 12 metre-long and totally crewless Excalibur is the Royal Navy’s first XLUUV and is the culmination of a three-year long project called Cetus.
“The XLUUV exercise was a big step forward in our ability to operate uncrewed systems interchangeably with Australia,” Deputy Director Underwater Battlespace, Commodore Marcus Rose said.
In addition to the XLUUV experimentation delivered by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the AUKUS nations also separately worked with Japan in the exercise to enhance their use of underwater acoustic communications.
“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 warfighter,” UK senior responsible owner for Maritime Big Play, Captain Keith Taylor said.
Building on the successful first year of the series in 2024, AUKUS Pillar 2 partners have conducted several demonstrations, focused on advancing how they collectively communicate with and employ robotics and autonomous systems at sea.
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 2 project collaboration.
