OPINION | Small, smart, many: what maritime autonomy can teach us about self-reliance

What does meaningful autonomy look like under international maritime law, and how should uncrewed vessels be classified and authorised to operate? While these questions won’t stop innovation, they do need answers.

Outside of a full-scale conflict, any autonomous system deployed in peacetime needs to operate within those rules. That means building platforms now, fielding them, and learning how to manage their lifecycle.

Much of our thinking on military innovation is shaped by recent conflict, including littoral operations in the Persian Gulf and drone warfare in the Black Sea. But Australia’s problem set is different. Our northern approaches are vast; the operational geography resembles the Atlantic more than the Persian Gulf.

In a drawn-out Indo-Pacific conflict, with both sides evolving their tactics, we’ll need persistence, adaptability and the ability to push capability forward. Autonomy offers that potential, if we treat it as something we can scale.

That means building platforms we can produce, repair and iterate quickly. Not unicorn projects, but widely used equipment. The Sea Archer proves that this approach works, and there should be more like it.