The United States, Australia and Britain are developing high-tech payloads for unmanned underwater vehicles under their trilateral security partnership, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Saturday.
Hegseth met his Australian and British counterparts on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where they reviewed progress on the AUKUS pact, aimed at bolstering their presence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
“Today, we are pleased to announce the first signature AUKUS Pillar 2 project, focused on the deployment of advanced unmanned underwater vehicles, or UUVs,” Hegseth told reporters at a briefing at the US embassy in Singapore.
“This flagship project will deliver a suite of highly adaptable multi-mission UUV payloads designed to support undersea operations and maintain our collective advantage in the maritime domain,” he said.
AUKUS Pillar 1 focuses on Australia's acquisition of conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines, while Pillar 2 brings together the talents of each nation's defense sector to develop advanced military capabilities.
The pact presents itself as supporting a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” although it is widely seen as a bulwark against a rising China, which staunchly opposes it.
British Defense Secretary John Healey said the planned technology, a “range of next-generation sensors and weapons systems” for underwater drones, “will quickly give our forces the most advanced technologies on the battlefield.”
The systems will be deployed on unmanned underwater vessels, Healey added.
Protecting underwater infrastructure has been a major topic of discussion at Asia's top annual defense summit at a posh Singapore hotel.
“The seabed has become a major battleground over the past 18 months,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles previously told delegates.
“We have witnessed a series of attacks against critical underwater infrastructure on a scale and frequency without historical precedent.”
In the last two years there have been several incidents in which ships damaged cables on the seabed, both in the Baltic and in the Asian region.
Almost all of Australia's internet traffic flows through just 15 undersea cables, Canberra's top diplomat said.
“Our ability to operate as a modern economy and a functioning state is critically dependent on an infrastructure that is exposed, that cannot be moved.”
“As we have seen now in the Baltic, you can cut it with an anchor in the middle of the night,” he said.
