Viasat, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT) collaborated to integrate commercial solutions to successfully support the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and AUKUS (United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom) during the Autonomous Warrior 24 exercise, which occurred from October 1st to October 24th in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia.
This event was part of the AUKUS Maritime Big Play (MBP) initiative, a series of trilateral exercises and experiments aimed at enhanced capability development, increased interoperability and the expanded use of autonomous systems across the maritime domain.
Viasat worked with the U.S. DoD Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) Prototyping and Experimentation (P&E) team to deliver network effects across partner maritime surface, sub-surface, and aerial uncrewed systems.
Viasat’s NetAgility Software Defined Networking (SDN) platform was used to enable Multidomain Uncrewed Secure Integrated Communications (MUSIC) to connect uncrewed autonomous vehicles from sub-surface vessels, to uncrewed surface platforms and stratospheric High-Altitude Platforms (HAPs).
The software-defined network architecture, MUSIC, enabled seamless communication and coordination across diverse unmanned systems, communication transports, and operational environments. As part of the exercise, Viasat integrated commercial satellite, cellular, and Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) radio networks with its Move Out Jump Off-Next (MOJO-Next) Tactical Data Link (TDL) gateway to connect uncrewed autonomous vehicles and sensors from different partners.
The application of MUSIC and MOJO Next across uncrewed and crewed teaming systems enabled the AUKUS coalition network to pass position location information (PLI), situational awareness / situational update (SA/SU), and command and control (C2) messages between all platforms, using all transports.
This network integration provided a common operating picture and shared situational awareness supporting Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) for autonomous vehicle operations through coalition and alliance networks.
“Viasat is proud to support OUSD and AUKUS in addressing the network integration challenges for these experiments and the Maritime Big Play initiative,” said David Schmolke, Vice President of Viasat Mission Connections and Cybersecurity. “The emergence of uncrewed, autonomous vehicles in Maritime, Ground and Airborne domains, will be a key differentiator in modern warfare operations, but the MUSIC architecture can enable a true mission advantage. Viasat’s ability to deliver flexible, software defined tactical network solutions is critical to integrating disparate and traditionally non-interoperable networks into a harmonized network for autonomous and unmanned systems that will improve battlespace awareness and decision-making.”