The U.S. Department of Defense has kicked off the Maritime Big Play series to support Pillar II of the AUKUS security pact focused on promoting the advanced capabilities olf Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The defense chiefs of the three countries announced the MBP initiative in December, along with other directives for additional efforts to promote AUKUS defense trade and industrial partnerships.
The initial MBP event centered on demonstrations of next-generation autonomous systems designed to boost naval operations’ situational awareness and defense capabilities.
The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering’s Prototypes and Experiments Office hosted the activity from July 15 to 19. The event included testing the autonomy baseline, a government-owned software suite using standard interfaces of the U.S. Navy’s unmanned maritime autonomy architecture.
Other tests covered communication solutions among command centers, traditional naval assets and autonomous networks, such as the Multi-domain Uncrewed Secure Integrated Communications.
Another demo involved the Navy’s Common Control System for planning and deployment of uncrewed system missions, which was built upon earlier AUKUS technology alignment efforts.
For the MBP’s next step, DOD will select platforms and solutions that will be sent to Australia for follow-up experiments.