Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, , 1:59:05 to 2:05:10
Discussion on the transition from traditional mine hunters to autonomous underwater systems and the potential for capability gaps during the decommissioning phase.
Topics: National security, Infrastructure
Speakers: Speaker 15, James Paterson, Mark Hammond
recollection there was in the order of 40% um which is a lot higher than it has traditionally been and certainly a lot higher than what this government has allowed for >> in one financial year when defense spending was increasing but anyway let's have that debate another time I want to uh return back to the this mine hunter issue in the IIP rep prioritizations to use your language. Ju just for absolute clarity um CDF you were talking about how this is deployed in Sydney harour and I think also off the coast of WA what are these autonomous platforms deployed from what how are they delivered to the area of operations?
uh Senate Admiral Hammer, Chief of Defense Force. So, I'll ask the uh Chief of Navy Admiral Buckley to come to speak to the contemporary specifics. Uh but they can be deployed from any vessel um uh many of them. So, Remis underwater uncrrewed underwater systems. There are tethered systems. Uh, and where we find a um item of interest, we can interrogate it with um uh with underwater cameras or we can send our marine uh clearance diapers down to to inspect or to to finish with uh with a suspect package. So, there's an array of
>> Senator Vice Admiral Matt Buckley, Chief of Navy. Um in regards to the specifics of the program, we are currently in the test and trial phase of some autonomous systems. They are systems that are used by a number of our partners um around the world. So they are a military offtheshelf rather than a developmental set of systems. The deployment model for those is um quite wide and varied. The concept as I would describe it is it is not about putting um crude ships into a minefield situation but rather having um distant ways of deploying those um particular autonomous systems into the minefield. Um the kinds of um capabilities you could deploy them, you could put them into the back of an aircraft, for example, a military aircraft, a C7 or a C130, send them to a port. You could deploy those um capabilities from the warf. You could deploy them from relatively small vessels, you know, tugs, harbor support vessels, or you could deploy them from larger ships such as uh landing helicopter docks, um landing um oper offshore patrol vessels and so on. So there's a the concept is that you can deploy them from a wide range of uh either ships, shorebased, and um for the majority they'll they'll be air transportable as well.
>> Okay. So if we needed to deploy them to a maritime choke point, Malaka, Sunda, Lombok, any of those, which would be obviously critical to our national interest in keeping the sea lines communication open, you could do that. You could do that from a ship or even from air.
>> The the concept is to be able to deploy them from multiple means, Senator, including in different ranges of conflict crisis scenarios. Bearing in mind from a clearance point of view, the first and most important thing is that we can clear our own harbors and approaches. So if you think about it, that's a defensive posture. So that there's a large range of u options available to us there, including like I said, even commercial options where you could deploy them from, you know, harbor support vessels and the like.
>> Yeah. How much should I read into the fact that you're you're describing this as a concept? like how uh close to being able to be deployed in those context is it or are we still testing this?
>> Uh so we have been through uh the test phase for um a bit over 12 months. Um we're in the process of finalizing some detailed advice to government about how we move this forward. And I would describe uh our closeness in uh the maturity of that program is that once um we've had um some final decisions made in regards to that capability, we should be able to field it over the next 12 to 18 months in a larger scale than what we've done under a test phase. So it's a relatively mature capability. It's not an experimental capability. So it can be fielded uh today. As the chief of defense force said, we've proven it just as recently as a couple of weeks ago in exercise dugon. So if we needed to field it quickly, Senator, we could field it very rapidly.
>> But but if it is 12 to 18 months and if we are contemplating retiring our existing mine hunters this financial year, i.e. within 6 months or so, 8 months, let's call it, um that doesn't seem there seems like there could be a potential gap in capability there. So
what the VCDF said uh Senator was that the opportunity existed to sequence and um decommission some of those existing minefield uh sorry mine hunters as early as this financial year. My job is to ensure that we have a graduated transition of capability. Uh so if I put it to you this way, we will need to liberate some of the people, some of the expertise from part of the mine hunting force into the autonomous force and we will build that capability over time. So I would not anticipate that there will be a gap in our ability to clear mines. But there will be a transition a transition phase, a deliberate transition phase as we move from the last two uh crude mine hunters into this autonomous system.
>> Can you tell me how many of these autonomous systems we have currently and can you say what what they are, what their names of them are?
>> Um at the moment um Senator u we have a small number of those systems. Um um the Reheis 300 is one example of of those particular systems. I'd certainly be happy to be able to provide you a more detailed um brief of that um in a classified environment. Um clearly some of these are military offtheshelf technologies. They're not commercial technologies. Um but they are already in uh operation with some of our partners.
>> Okay. All right. Thank you. I will um revisit that in another forum. Um, moving back to the IIP, I may need the