Rear Admiral (Ret’d) Simon Cullen has completed a report under the Institute for Regional Security banner into the opportunities and challenges facing the RAN as autonomous and unmanned vehicle technology accelerates.
Titled Unmanned and Autonomous Vehicles in the Maritime Environment Circa 2035: Opportunities and Challenges for the Royal Australian Navy, the report draws upon extensive discussions with Navy and security experts.
Two observations underpin the report. First, Australia’s strategic outlook to 2035 is pessimistic as China challenges US regional dominance. Second, where the military-industrial complex once diffused new technology into commercial markets, the opposite is now true: commercial developments iterate faster and now diffuse into the military sphere. Action has become reaction.
For Navy to compete in 2035, Cullen argues that major platforms will need to be complemented by unmanned and autonomous vehicles that can strengthen the service’s strategic and decisive lethality. The push to integrate these systems into Navy’s force structure will be catalysed by a pressure for “humans to step back from the contested environment to minimise casualties.”
The trend towards unmanned and autonomous systems is widely known. Cullen, however, argues that this trend is an evolution rather than a revolution.
“For the foreseeable future there will remain a human in/on/or over the loop for autonomous systems,” Cullen argues. “Machines will enhance human capabilities rather than replace them.
“What is disruptive is not the emergence of a new technology, but the reconfiguration of either new or existing technologies for military purposes.”
A workshop held between Cullen and RAN figures determined that by 2035, unmanned and autonomous vehicles will potentially undertake a variety of tasks, including monitoring acoustic hygiene in noise quiet states, shaping operations ahead of task groups, sensing and engaging targets in and above the water, de-conflicting surface contacts, beach surveys, and even transporting an amphibious assault force to shore.
There are, however, significant challenges to achieving these capabilities. Hollywood has given unmanned and autonomous systems a significant PR problem that will require efforts to fix. This, Cullen argues, will require an international legal framework in the next five to ten years. Otherwise, cautious legal advice may apply a “speed brake to the development of these systems.” It will also require a clear public relations effort from Defence that communicates how humans will remain in control.
A Common Operating Picture that illustrates all unmanned and autonomous vehicles “will be particularly challenging,” with current consoles insufficient for the job. Cullen also observes a trade-off between autonomy and communications bandwidth; the lower the autonomy of a system, the greater network bandwidth it will occupy, and vice versa.
Cullens puts forward a number of policy recommendations for Navy: establish a management program for autonomous and unmanned systems; partner with industry and DSTG to create solutions “outside the traditional capability development process”; establish a testing range; create test and trial elements in the surface and submarine fleets; and develop a roadmap to 2035.
Lying underneath this report is a tacit acknowledgement of the unique challenges Navy faces in the unmanned and autonomous space. Unlike the Army or RAAF, Navy’s operating environment presents one massive complication to adapting commercial technologies for military purposes – water.
It is all but impossible to transmit data through water by any means other than sound, meaning underwater systems face significant restrictions on range and bandwidth. Whilst a USAF drone pilot can fly a Reaper over Afghanistan from an office in Nevada, underwater vehicles without a tether or a transmitting buoy can only be operated from a distance measured in hundreds of metres. Navy, therefore, will likely play a leading role in adapting autonomous technologies to the battlefield.
This is where the trade-off Cullens identified between autonomy and bandwidth comes into play. It is a question of trust, a search for that sweet spot; a system that can make enough of its own decisions to prove tactically effective, but not so many that it develops a life of its own.