Legendary US defence analyst Robbin Laird, the founder and publisher of the influential website Second Line of Defense, has been an early advocate for autonomous systems. Here he interviews C2 Robotics’ Tom Loveard and Marcus Hellyer for SLDinfo.com to unpack the potential of the Speartooth LUUV.
Laird concludes that militaries need to start using systems like this to understand their potential: ‘As I have made very clear in my writing about maritime autonomous systems, these are very different from crewed platforms, and are best understood as complements to the crewed force. And they provide important capabilities, to use the Ocius terminology, between crewed assets and nothing. And really until the operational forces begin incorporating maritime autonomous systems within their kill web concepts of operations, we will not see the kind of effect they can have for a smaller navy like the RAN.
But to get to that future, the force needs to begin to employ such capabilities and use these new assets. For only then will they evolve and develop. For unlike crewed platforms, these platforms are built around software which is driven in its development by domain knowledge shaped by operational use and continuous feedback from users. If they are thought of as traditional defence science projects, they will just remain that.’
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