Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, , 6:23:20 to 6:27:39
Examination of the Maritime Capability Coalition and collaboration with the Australian defense industry on autonomous technologies.
Topics: ADF, Manufacturing
Speakers: Hugh Jeffrey, Raff Ciccone, Jacqui Lambie, Unknown Speaker
>> sorry to just one question that since you're talking about Ukraine, but if you want to.
>> Yeah, I was just going to ask Mr. Jeffrey then also ask about the maritime capability coalition for Ukraine. I understand Australia is part of that. Um, could you just um elaborate a bit more about what we are doing with respect to that uh coalition? Um as I
mentioned uh Senator uh Ukraine is making great strides in building its maritime capability. However, it doesn't have a formal navy and uh the UK has set up a initiative and it's asked its partners to contribute um to how we work together um to support Ukraine's maritime capability particularly because its access to the Black Sea remains a critical economic lifeline uh for Ukraine particularly it's its principal um source of um uh uh sea-based export and as you know for a an agrarian country like Ukraine, that remains vital. And so we will continue to work with um the UK and our other partners in support of Ukraine. But I would add and many people have made this point before is that Ukraine is actually on the technological frontier when it comes to autonomous capability. And so we have things to learn from Ukraine too. Uh and indeed um the the rate of uh uh the pace of change in the way in which the battlefield um is evolving as the secretary mentioned earlier today is extremely intense in these battlefields and uh we for for for the Australian armed forces to be in a position such that they remain at the frontier, we need to be able to engage closely with our allies and our partners in the area where warfare is changing so quickly.
And I think proudly being the Australia being the largest non-NATO contributor of military assistance I think hasn't gone unnoticed either. Uh but just on that though um you know there's been a lot of um um support from the private sector here in Australia. people have been involved in the defense industry who initially did support uh uh Ukraine and I think continue to um I'm not asking to go to into into great detail but I don't as much as you can in this forum about how much of that collaboration that we've built over uh the the last couple of years over the conflict um what has that meant for our defense industry been able to learn lessons use some of the experience sadly but then able to continue to support um uh the Ukrainian military.
>> Um yes, Senator, I think that um the Australian defense industry um is observing closely developments in Ukraine and indeed there are opportunities >> um for uh uh co-development and lessons learned between uh Ukrainian defense industry and our own. As you know, Senator, Australia has some significant expertise in autonomous systems. Um, and we have a good and strong innovation base uh and innovative um defense industry sector. Uh, Ukraine has expressed interest in investing in Australia's industrial base in order to supply additional additional sources of supply industrial capacity. Um, there are a range of different initiatives at play. I mean, these these are commercial activities that government would of course support. um um and I think that those areas would be ones which um are are prudent investments for Ukraine and for us as we grow these capabilities over time. As you know the integrated investment program uh um contains a significant um slice that is allocated for the development of autonomous systems and we would see um closer cooperation between Australian defense industry and their Ukrainian counterparts as part of that. Um and uh I will be traveling shortly to um the UK and we will be discussing exactly how we can um work with the UK on closer integration of our respective industrial bases and that of course includes how we would work with our partners like Ukraine.