Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have jointly tested their ability to communicate with underwater autonomous systems at Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025, as part of AUKUS Pillar II's Maritime Big Play series.
Japan also joined these activities as a participant, for the first time.
Maritime Big Play is an AUKUS Pillar II exercise series to enable Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to rapidly test and integrate autonomous systems with conventional platforms, equipping us to more effectively deter and deny threats above and under the water.
The AUKUS partners and Japan worked together to enhance their use of underwater acoustic communications to task an underwater uncrewed vehicle to conduct activities at sea.
In lifting interoperability between our militaries, we are enhancing our combined decision superiority in the maritime domain.
In October last year, the AUKUS partners demonstrated their ability to remotely control each other's uncrewed systems from great distances using common control technologies.
This effort continued at Talisman Sabre by demonstrating the ability for Australia to transfer mission control of a United Kingdom extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle, located in the UK, back to the UK remotely from Jervis Bay.
The integration of autonomy and greater interoperability between our forces gives our military commanders more options to protect and defend critical sea-bed infrastructure and sea lanes of communication.
Quotes attributable to Mr Stephen Moore, First Assistant Secretary AUKUS Advanced Capabilities:
"Maritime Big Play tangibly contributes to AUKUS' partners interoperability in the maritime domain, supports collective deterrence and stability in the Indo‑Pacific.
"Communicating underwater is no easy feat - but Maritime Big Play is helping make this happen faster.
"The multilateral scale and complexity of Talisman Sabre provided the ideal ground for Maritime Big Play to test cutting-edge technologies, and to advance AUKUS partners operational integration and interoperability in the maritime domain."
