In the evolving landscape of modern warfare, the integration of autonomous and uncrewed systems into the Australian Defence Force's arsenal is not just a strategic choice, but an imperative for future readiness.
Conflicts in regions like Ukraine and Gaza serve as poignant reminders.
These systems promise unparalleled capabilities, yet their adoption brings a spectrum of novel challenges and questions for capability developers.
How do we select the best in breed system, in the face of rapidly evolving tactics and countermeasures? How can they be safely and effectively integrated for use in collaboration with crewed systems? How much systems assurance rigour is enough for a minimum viable capability?
Australia is not alone in needing to reconsider approaches to Test and Evaluation (T&E) and systems assurance given the rise of autonomous and uncrewed systems. The AUKUS Pillar II focus on advanced capabilities such as underwater autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and the integration of commercial technology to solve warfighting needs, make this a shared challenge across the partner nations.
The need to test and assure such advanced capabilities is driving the uptake of synthetic methods such as Digital Mission Engineering and the requisite investment by Australian industry.
Digital Mission Engineering – the differentiator
Digital Mission Engineering, along with modelling and simulation, plays a pivotal role in unlocking the true potential of autonomous systems by providing a comprehensive understanding of their capabilities, limitations, and operational effectiveness.
Digital Mission Engineering combines the power of physics-based simulation with model-based systems engineering. It enables data-driven evaluation of systems, and systems of systems, against key mission metrics at every phase of the system lifecycle including, critically, pre-acquisition.
We can simulate missions and optimise them synthetically before our client ever has to take the system out of the shed.
Modelling and simulation capabilities allow experimentation that couldn’t happen in a real-life test scenario to discover meaningful relationships between mission inputs and mission outputs.
While it’s not a necessarily a new concept, the relationship between T&E and mission simulation is becoming increasingly significant. In contemporary thinking and practice in the United States, T&E is becoming less about individual system capability, and is now being applied in parallel with modelling and simulation techniques for predicting and planning mission capabilities comprising complex systems of systems.
We can apply a model-based approach to capability development to ensure our clients are selecting systems that will achieve their objectives.
We can work with the clients to help them understand whether their uncrewed system of systems will be operationally effective, and to minimise their need to test once they have it.
Nova Systems T&E Centre of Excellence
Nova Systems has been investing in both physical and synthetic methods for performing T&E on autonomous and uncrewed systems of systems as a focus of its Centre of Excellence in T&E, launched in 2022.
We have been invested in creating a Digital Engineering environment. This includes the necessary digital threads linking our model-based systems engineering tools with our various modelling and simulation tools. The outcome is we can rapidly move through steps in the Mission Engineering process to experiment with potential systems of systems within designed missions. One of our technology stack building blocks is the Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK), a physics-based modelling environment for simulating enterprise level mission scenarios for integrated mission systems.
Nova Systems also developed a world-first Advanced Test & Evaluation (T&E) Practitioner Course, which commenced delivery from early 2024. Based on the latest best practices with a focus on assurance of autonomous and uncrewed systems, the course teaches advanced theory of T&E techniques, and T&E modelling and simulation, using live mission systems during live test scenarios.
The investment we’ve made in is generating a capable workforce of professionals with the skills, knowledge and tools required to support the Australian defence sector, and potentially professionals from AUKUS and other allied partner nations.
There is also great potential to expand our military mission engineering methods into other markets such as the mining industry, which Nova is already doing with major mining companies to support the implementation of uncrewed vehicles onto mining sites.
*Originally appeared in Defence Connect in March 2024.