Bluerydge has successfully demonstrated its sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, SierraBlue, in a collaborative project with UNSW Canberra, supported by funding from Defence Trailblazer.
“The Defence Trailblazer program is critical because it bridges the gap between leading edge research and deployable Defence capability,” Bluerydge Co-Founder and Director, Adam Haskard said.
“For Bluerydge, and for our partners in secure robotics, this program enables us to take initiatives like SierraBlue beyond the academic domain and into embodied AI systems that directly enhance Defence readiness.”
Designed for use in secure and disconnected environments, SierraBlue is a custom large language model (LLM) purpose-built to support Defence and other sensitive sectors with mission-ready AI capability.
“Defence Trailblazer allowed us to move quickly from advanced research to a working capability,” academic lead at UNSW Canberra, Timothy Lynar, stated.
“It’s a strong example of how academic and industry collaboration can deliver impact where it’s needed most. The program has been a great pathway to get to minimum viable product quickly and to utilise the resources of the university sector.”
The SierraBlue project is led by Bluerydge Co-Founders and Directors Haskard and Tom Kazan, in close partnership with researchers at UNSW Canberra.
SierraBlue has been co-funded by Bluerydge and Defence Trailblazer’s Accelerating Sovereign Industrial Capabilities (ASIC) program and will be delivered over seven months.
The LLM has been trained on data sources such as intelligence reports, logs and raw databases. It has been engineered for deployment in environments where cloud-based AI is unsuitable or restricted.
Product demonstrations showed its capability across a range of operating conditions including mobile tactical deployments and secure data centre infrastructure.
With product testing and validation completed, SierraBlue will now move into its next phase of development. The focus is on embedding the LLM into cyber-physical systems, including autonomous vehicles, unmanned platforms, secure robotics and human–machine teaming applications.