The AUKUS Maritime Innovation Challenge, focused on undersea Command, Control and Communications, is run across the three AUKUS partners.
Stage 1 submissions for the Challenge are due midday 28 April 2025 (AEST) via AusTender (Reference: AUKUS02-2025-ITR) for Australian respondents.
AUKUS partners are seeking to research and develop innovations to enable the synchronisation and teaming of multiple undersea systems. Innovations are invited that enable some or all of the following Desired Capability Effects:
- Provide near real time communications between Undersea Vehicles (UVs)
- Provide near real time communications from UVs to Command and Control (C2) Systems /Battle Management System (BMS)
- Provide near real time communications between seabed systems to UVs and C2 System and BMS
- Provide a system that can optimally allocate the right asset to the right task in a dynamic and complex environment
- Provide optimal bandwidth utilisation and effective range, and perform in a contested/congested environment
The AUKUS partners are looking for:
- Proposals that describe how their solution will perform at various depths and hydrographic conditions
- Solutions that exploit the right mode of communication at every point of the mission to optimise the chance of mission success
- Solutions that could be applied to attritable or survivable systems
- Technologies that are Secure By Design
They are NOT looking for:
- The development or redesign of new sensors
- Technologies related to the recovery of UUVs
- Novel power and energy technologies, such as batteries or fuel cells
An information webinar will be held 3 April 2025. Register here.
UK participation is being overseen by Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) while US participation is being overseen by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
Documents
Competition Document – AUKUS Maritime Innovation Challenge 2025: 1. AUKUS Competition Document
Clarification Questions – AUKUS Maritime Innovation Challenge 2025: 4. AUKUS Clarification Questions
