Powerful demo of drone capability

Exercise Black Prince 3 ended in a spectacular demonstration of explosive power with the detonation of two sacrificial uncrewed ground vehicles in a simulated attack at the Cultana Training Area.

1 Armd Regt and members of the New Zealand Army formed Battlegroup ANZAC for two weeks in May, testing robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) at scale.

CO 1 Armd Regt Lt-Col Matthew Sebesfi said it was important for the battlegroup members to work together before travelling to the United States Army National Training Centre this month for Project Convergence Capstone 6 (PCC6).

“This is the first opportunity that we’ve had to draw all the attachments from across the rest of Army and our New Zealand brethren to come out to Cultana, integrate and gain an understanding of some of the new capabilities that 1st Armoured Regiment have been experimenting with this year,” Lt-Col Sebesfi said.

“The battlegroup has organised a lot of the experimental kit into a couple of niche capability areas. We have a lot of ISR – that’s intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance UAS – we have some strike elements like first person view uncrewed aerial vehicles.

“This exercise has allowed us to set that knowledge transfer and experience with our attachments on the road to PCC6 and Talisman Sabre 27, as they learn how to fight with RAS at scale. These new and emerging capabilities will enable Army to immediately increase the lethality and the range of the Australian soldier.”

As well as the Callisto 50 heavy-lift UAS, which simulated supply drops, the battlegroup tested Quantum Vector UAS, which were deployed on ISR missions; single-use D-40 assault drones; FPV drones carrying explosives charges; Jaeger UGVs; advanced battlefield manufacturing; and a sophisticated communications system enabling the integration of RAS at scale.

Maj Ben Peterson, an operations officer with 1 Armd Regt, said they had been outfitted with an advanced C4 network, using Trellisware radios with ATAK end-user devices.

“The radios communicate differently to in-service systems and create a network which bounces between each other creating a mesh, which will go into a network node which then goes beyond line of sight. So, via satellites we can communicate with anyone at any distance,” Maj Peterson said.

“And because the communications system is secure, but unclassified, it means that we can integrate different off-the-shelf robotics and autonomous systems extremely quickly.”

Capt Flynn Bunter, of the New Zealand Army, said Exercise Black Prince 3 and PCC6 provided invaluable opportunities.

“New Zealand Army is seeking to update our technology and integrate where possible, working with our allies the Australians,” Capt Bunter said.

“Essentially we are coming over here, integrating the systems that we’ve already got, and learning from 1st Armoured Regiment.”

Lt-Col Sebesfi said Cultana was the perfect location to assess the equipment ahead of PCC6, which will take place in the Californian desert.

“The primary weapon system on the Humvee that we’ll be using at PCC6 are .50-calibre heavy machine guns, so we also took the opportunity this exercise to qualify everyone in the battlegroup on that system,” Lt-Col Sebesfi said.