Singapore ¨C The United States, Australia and Britain are developing high-tech payloads for uncrewed underseas vehicles under their trilateral security partnership, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has announced.
Hegseth met his Australian and British counterparts on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday in Singapore, where they reviewed progress on the AUKUS pact, aimed at bolstering their presence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
¡°Today, we¡¯re pleased to announce the first AUKUS Pillar 2 signature project, focused on fielding advanced uncrewed undersea vehicles, or UUVs,¡± Hegseth told reporters at a briefing at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.
¡°This signature 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¡¯s Pillar 1 focuses on Australia¡¯s acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, while Pillar 2 pools the talents of each nation¡¯s defense sector to develop advanced military capabilities.
The pact is framed as supporting a ¡°free and open Indo-Pacific,¡± though it is widely viewed as a bulwark against a rising China, which strongly opposes it.
British Defense Secretary John Healey said that the planned technology, a ¡°range of cutting edge sensors and weapons systems¡± for underseas drones, ¡°will rapidly give our forces the very most advanced battlefield technologies.¡±
The systems will be deployed on uncrewed underwater vessels, Healey added.
The protection of underwater infrastructure has been a major topic of discussion at Asia¡¯s premier annual defense summit at a swanky Singapore hotel.
¡°The seabed has become a major field of contest over the past 18 months,¡± Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told delegates earlier.
¡°We have witnessed a series of attacks against subsea critical infrastructure at a scale and frequency that is historically unprecedented.¡±
There has been several incidents in the past two years of seabed cables being damaged by ships, both in the Baltic and around the Asian region.
Nearly all of Australia¡¯s internet traffic flows through just 15 subsea cables, Canberra¡¯s top diplomat pointed out.
¡°Our ability to operate as a modern economy and a functioning state, all of it is critically dependent on infrastructure that is exposed, that cannot move.¡±
¡°As we¡¯ve now seen demonstrated in the Baltic, (it) can be cut with an anchor in the middle of the night,¡± he said.
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