Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on the development of (a) undersea and (b) counter-hypersonic capabilities as part of AUKUS Pillar 2.

With our AUKUS partners we are undertaking a range of work developing undersea capabilities, including the ability to launch and recover uncrewed underwater systems from current classes of British and American submarines and integrating this capability to the SSN-AUKUS design; exploring opportunities to collaborate on undersea warfare sensors and payloads, including integrating the Sting Ray torpedo into UK and US maritime patrol aircraft; and deploying common advanced artificial algorithms to process data from each nation’s sonobuoys. We are also undertaking a series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises with Australia and the United States to enhance capability, improve interoperability, and increase the sophistication and scale of autonomous uncrewed systems in the maritime and other domains.

The AUKUS partners are increasing our collective ability to develop and deliver hypersonic and counter-hypersonic technologies through a series of trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling technologies.