In a world-first, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia conducted an exercise to field-test unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with jointly developed autonomous and artificial intelligence systems on Salisbury Plain, England, under the AUKUS agreement. Military targets, but also capable of in-flight retraining in the face of mission changes, newatlas.com reports.

The Australia-UK-USA Trilateral Security Agreement (AUKUS) was originally conceived in 2021 as a program outside of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that would allow the US and UK to help Australia acquire nuclear attack submarines.

Since then, its scope has expanded significantly. One reason is that you can’t just buy nuclear subs and the Australian government requires boats to be built locally – at least later on. This means the development of the entire infrastructure of shipyards, docks, utilities, refueling lines, tenders and other facilities. It also means closer ties with personnel exchange and joint training between the US Navy, Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, as well as the training of a civilian workforce and a team of experts to support the project.

After all, it is the largest technology transfer program since the Second World War. This applies not only to things like reactor technology and related underwater systems, but also to the three countries’ joint intention to develop advanced cybernetic mechanisms, artificial intelligence and autonomy technologies, quantum technologies, underwater capabilities, hypersonic and anti-hippersonic weapons, electronics. combat systems and innovation and information exchange.

A recent example of this is the April 2023 exercise in which more than 70 military and civil defense experts and industrial contractors from the Alliance, as well as various air and ground vehicles, participated for target designation testing. The aim is to develop general artificial intelligence and autonomy systems that will allow drones to operate autonomously in a cooperative swarm in real time in a realistic environment. The idea is to quickly deploy reliable, robust AI and autonomous systems for complex operations that are reliable and can instantly retrain themselves in response to evolving tasks.

According to the UK MoD, the three countries work together not only to accelerate development without duplicating efforts, but also to ensure that there is a common system that can work with all three armies.

Vehicles participating in the Salisbury exercise include Blue Bear Ghost (UK) and Boeing/Insitu CT220 (Australia) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a Challenger 2 tank, a Warrior armored vehicle and a Viking unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), a commercial There was a rental car. FV433 Abbot self-propelled guns and former OT-90 BMP of the Eastern bloc.