Through AUKUS Pillar 2, Australia, the UK and the US are pooling
the talents of their defence sectors to develop at pace the
delivery of advanced capabilities. Four UK companies have been
selected by the UK's Defence and Security Accelerator
(DASA) to
receive a share of the funding to develop solutions in
electromagnetic targeting and protection.
The competition was run to find low cost, disposable, high volume
and highly autonomous electromagnetic technology that can detect
enemy actions or protect against them.
The four successful UK organisations to receive research funding
are:
- Amiosec Ltd
- Autonomous Devices Ltd
- Roke Manor Research Ltd
- University of Liverpool
The trilateral AUKUS EW Challenge was run as 3
individual competitions by DASA in the UK;
the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA), in
Australia; and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in the US.
The EW competition was the first in
what will be a series of AUKUS Innovation Challenges, setting the
template for future advanced defence technology competitions run
by the 3 partners.
National winners of the 3 EW Challenge competitions were
announced at the AUKUS Defence Ministers' Meeting on 26 September
in London by UK Secretary of State for Defence, the Right
Honourable MP; Australia's Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister for Defence, the Honourable Richard Marles
MP; and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. The three
Defence Ministers together emphasised the value of the
collaboration to a free and open Indo-Pacific, with the potential
to enhance joint defence capabilities, ensuring national,
regional and global stability.
The 3 innovation competitions called for proposals to identify
electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) technology solutions to
help give the AUKUS nations a strategic edge in targeting and to
provide protection against adversarial electromagnetic-targeting
capabilities. EMS is a heavily
congested, contested, complex and competitive environment and
there is an increasing need for low cost, disposable, high volume
and highly autonomous capabilities to achieve advantage.
In total, across all 3 national innovation challenges, 173
qualified suppliers applied, in a show of strength of the AUKUS
nations' defence innovation capabilities.
The winning UK supplier organisations:
- Amiosec Ltd: This project is seeking to create fake radio
activity, masking the true location of friendly military forces
to support missions. The research will focus on extending
previous work on AI-generated traffic to boost realism to defeat
adversary EW systems. It will be delivered
by Amiosec in conjunction with its Australian defence technology
partner, Penten.
- Autonomous Devices Ltd: Is developing and
flight-demonstrating the novel combination of a radar Electronic
Counter Measure and a small Uncrewed Air System platform.
- Roke Manor Research Ltd: The ability to transmit and receive
on identical frequencies simultaneously has been an operational
and technical challenge for decades. The Smart STAR Jammer
project sets out to combine a Simultaneous Transmit and Receive
(STAR) Transceiver jointly developed by Roke and the University
of Bristol.
- University of Liverpool: This project aims to improve the
ability to detect multiple individual faint signals in close
geometric proximity to one another. This will be achieved using a
combination of machine learning and statistics.
AUKUS is a landmark security and defence partnership to support a
free and open Indo-Pacific by strengthening regional global
security. A major part of the partnership, named Pillar 1, is
helping Australia to acquire its first conventionally armed,
nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
Through AUKUS
Pillar 2 which includes advanced capabilities such as
Artificial Intelligence, autonomy, quantum technologies and
electronic warfare – the 3 national partners seek to strengthen
trilateral capabilities in cutting-edge military technologies,
increase interoperability, and drive knowledge-sharing and
innovation. One of the aims of Pillar 2 is to “foster deeper
integration of security and defence-related science, technology,
industrial bases, and supply chains”.
Find out more about the
first ever UK-hosted meeting of AUKUS Defence Ministers held on
26 September 2024.
