The US, UK, and Australia are moving forward with integrating AI defense systems.

The integration of AI with UAVs in "contested environments" has been successfully tested by the U.S., U.K., and Australia's military alliance, AUKUS, officials announced Friday.

The advanced sensing technology was evaluated by all three defense agencies in the alliance to determine if UAVs could accomplish their missions while maintaining network connectivity across various domains, including land, sea, air, and cyberspace.

The AUKUS agreement's Pillar Two aims to unify AI technologies for defense and security purposes, mainly in response to increasing Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

The AI-UAV integrated technology aims to reduce the time taken to detect enemy targets, decide on a response, and execute it.

The DOD stated that matured sensing systems, when integrated into national platforms, will provide more reliable data for optimal decision-making by commanders and quicker action by service members against kinetic threats, while also facilitating seamless joint and combined military operations involving multiple services and nations.

A Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) was one of the systems tested in the Resilient and Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Technology (RAAIT) trials.

By coordinating with a separate UAV that provided detailed imagery, the British UAV was able to detect the location of adversarial forces using "on-the-fly adjustments" based on data it collected.

An "AI officer" in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) provided human oversight before an Australian XT-8 UAV could be triggered for strike use with coordinated information.

Under RAAIT, we have advanced the AI pipeline by emphasizing interchangeability and interoperability, enabling the use of any combinations of datasets, models, algorithms, and platforms across all three nations, as stated by Kimberly Sablon, principal director of Trusted AI and Autonomy (AIA) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

The "AIA ecosystem" will be created using the "lessons learned" from the joint trials, which can be utilized for operational purposes by all three nations.

"Sablon stated that our objective is to achieve a pipeline that is both interchangeable and interoperable while remaining robust. This would enable us to collect data, train our AI systems, conduct testing and evaluation, and adapt to unforeseen threats in less than 10 hours at the edge, which is a significant accomplishment for our partnership."