Defence unleashes promise of autonomous, underwater vessels

Defence is often criticised for favouring large, traditional naval systems such as submarines and frigates while going slow on the future role of small, autonomous and unmanned underwater systems. Following news last month that defence was in negotiations for a US$100 million co-funded design, development and manufacturing programme for extra large autonomous underwater vehicles (XL-AUVs),…

Defence purchasing need to change to grow local SMEs – Rebecca Humble

Australian defence contractor Nova Systems led a meeting of defence SMEs at the recent Indo Pacific Maritime exposition, to discuss defence industry policy. Here, Rebecca Humble argues that policy settings are not succeeding in growing small SMEs into larger ones, and larger ones to the scale where they can compete against foreign companies and bid…