Secretive Australian undersea military technology unveiled in ‘major’ local AUKUS project  

World-leading lethal undersea mines and unmanned aircraft that can be launched by vessels below the ocean’s surface are expected to be revealed on Monday as part of a secretive AUKUS project developed in Australia.

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy will join Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Matt Buckley, along with the Chief Defence Scientist to detail the “major capability announcement” linked to AUKUS Pillar II which is focussed on producing high-end military technologies.

The Nightly has been told the secretive testing of the advanced new payloads for undersea warfare has been undertaken recently but details of the new weapons have remained classified until now.

Earlier this year the defence ministers of Australia, United Kingdom and the United States confirmed efforts were underway to start delivering “cutting-edge payloads and enabling systems for AUKUS partners’ Uncrewed Undersea Vehicles” in 2027.

On Monday Mr Conroy is scheduled to visit the Sydney facilities of US owned weapons maker Anduril, which is also developing an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle jointly with Australia’s defence department, to detail the latest AUKUS work.

“This project is intended to significantly enhance AUKUS partners’ ability to protect critical national seabed infrastructure; deploy cutting edge surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike capabilities; conduct logistics operations; and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare, and contested littoral manoeuvre,” the AUKUS partners said in May.

When Australia’s plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under a new AUKUS partnership were first unveiled in 2021 the partner nations also agreed to work on a second pillar of cooperation for other advanced military capabilities.

To date AUKUS pillar two has faced growing criticism for the slow pace of progress in comparison to the $368 billion effort to acquire Virginia-class submarines from the US and then build a new fleet of nuclear-powered boats locally known as SSN-AUKUS.

This week’s unveiling of the first AUKUS Pillar 2 projects comes as the Albanese government suffers a major setback in efforts to export the uncrewed lethal combat aircraft known as the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, developed in Australia with Boeing.

Germany’s Ministry of Defence has now informed Boeing that it no longer plans to directly purchase the unmanned aerial vehicles in a government-to-government deal but will now instead run a procurement competition.

The Albanese government has declined to comment on the move but had been hoping to soon secure the lucrative export deal with Germany after the European nation previously stated it wanted to receive Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, by 2029.

First unveiled at the Avalon airshow in 2019 as the “Loyal Wingman”, the Ghost Bat successfully fired a live air-to-air missile and destroyed a target drone in December last year, and Australia is hoping to also export the technology to Japan.