Australia’s air force aims its UAV fleet northwards

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is concentrating on three major UAV programmes – one for maritime ISR, another for combat and the third for experimentation – as it attempts to exploit unmanned technology and apply lessons learned from Ukraine.

Air Commodore Ross Bender, director-general of air combat capability at the RAAF, outlined the service’s efforts in a presentation at the Australian Association for Uncrewed Systems Conference in Melbourne in September.

He began by noting that last year’s Defence Strategic Review emphasised the need to monitor and defend Australia’s northern approaches, and UAVs have an important role in this.

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Regarding the MQ-4C Triton, the first aircraft touched down in Australia on 16 June, before being commissioned at RAAF Base Tindal on 31 July. Bender described it as a “fantastic” capability. With its 24h endurance and more than 6,000km radius – sufficient to reach Japan or Antarctica – it might require three crews for just one mission.

To date, more than 25 pilots and operators from No. 9 Squadron have qualified on Triton via US training.

Australian-based training will commence in mid-2025. A four-bay hangar is being built at Tindal to accommodate Australia’s Triton fleet, while control facilities at RAAF Base Edinburgh near Adelaide are “pretty much completed”.

For the next few months, the aircraft remains on the ground but powered up, as RAAF and Northrop Grumman personnel test systems such as communications and cyber compliance.

Bender noted: “A challenge we’ve got is [about] what we do with all that data?” This is where AI and processing are needed to “find the golden nuggets in that massive amount of data” the Triton collects on every mission.

Moving on to the attritable MQ-28A Ghost Bat, the RAAF’s second major UAV platform, Bender explained: “The MQ-28A started off as a loyal wingman, however, I don’t see it flying very often as a loyal wingman.” While it might sometimes fly in close proximity to fighters, much of the time it will fly alone or with teams of other UAVs.

Apart from tethering it to fighters, “we’re currently exploring all roles” as part of its capability development programme. Aircraft are flying at the Woomera test range, with 100+ flight hours completed to date and payloads working effectively.

This test programme involves the US Air Force and US Navy and, notably, the first US navy pilot is about to qualify on the MQ-28A. The three parties are aligning standards related to common aircraft architecture, communication links, common operating picture and ground control.

Bender said systems and sensors need to be interoperable.

“We’re going to be taking these platforms and putting them out there in combat operations,” he remarked. “Everyone needs to be pooling from the same information and trusted sources, and not questioning where it has come from.”

Boeing Defence Australia is independently constructing a Ghost Bat production facility at Toowoomba, and 70+ Australian companies have already signed up as suppliers. “…If we were to go down that path,” Bender said, “we can actually produce that platform in a relevant scale that we’d need in future.”

Boeing Defence Australia told Shephard: “While we’re not providing specifics on number of aircraft completed or in test, we’re coupling flight test data with an existing digital twin to validate models and accelerate our time to field as part of the development programme’s disciplined and methodical test approach.

“The digital twin models the system’s entire lifecycle, from design and development to production and sustainment, which contributes to speed to fleet and first-time quality,” the company added.

“Boeing sees a significant market for a collaborative combat aircraft capability that increases force mass to match or overmatch future threats, but to do so affordably with less risk to crewed systems, and we have interest in MQ-28 from multiple international potential customers.”

The final RAAF UAV is the Wanderer, which reflects “a desire for air force to provide a platform so it can actually learn and develop and understand what to do”. The Wanderer was created in house through the Jericho Disruptive Innovation group. It took just two months from design till production, and this smaller and cheaper platform is helping the RAAF explore autonomy.

The Wanderer, a low-cost, expendable UAV with 4m wingspan, performed its maiden flight in December 2022. There have been multiple iterations with different form factors, shapes, capabilities and payloads, all serving as flying testbeds. Bender commented that the RAAF was taking lessons from all past and current forms to inform future variants.

Of the RAAF’s current and future UAV types, Bender said if their architectures and systems are standard, “even though they look different … we see no reason why these platforms can’t be a family of systems sharing data, autonomy and behaviours, sensors, payloads”.

“We’re not just trying to replicate the roles of manned platforms,” the director-general shared, because such an approach would stymy RAAF thinking. He said industry has been informing the Australian Department of Defence as to what is possible and how to approach the technology differently. The RAAF is thus exploring roles like ISR over land and sea, weapon platforms, active and passive decoys, electronic attack, air-to-air refuelling and air mobility.

As more and more uncrewed capabilities are introduced, Bender concluded: “Our squadrons, they’ll be different; they won’t be what they are now.”

Related Programmes in Defence Insight

MQ-28 Ghost Bat [Australia]

Related Equipment in Defence Insight

Wanderer

MQ-4C Triton

MQ-28A Ghost Bat