This is John Bachelor, conversation with colleague Henry Sikalsky of the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center

about Aukas, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US looking to build defenses from the

aggression of the People's Republic of China's PLA Navy.

The AICUS program has pillars.

Pillar 2 is of great interest because it's about technology, especially unmanned

submersibles that can patrol the sea lanes coming out of Asia, Henry describes the expectation and the straightforward way

the U.S. and the Australians in the United Kingdom can work together to build a defensive perimeter.

It's a lot of different things but mostly it's what they now the favorite term of art is uncrude,

well unmanned, autonomous, underwater submersibles that go around looking for submarines and can fire missiles or lay mines in a

stealth in a stealthy fashion which would be ideal to prevent let's say an amphibious surface

fleet from mainland China transiting the Strait to go to Taiwan for example. It's also autonomous drones that fly with a manned

airplane to protect it and to project much more

distant offensive, you know, activity and surveillance

that's unmanned and so you can afford to lose them.

It's things like that which the Australians actually

have a certain authority and skill in devising. We've begun to do something that was unprecedented and as relaxed our trade regulations

to allow them to get technology from the United States and to fashion it into new systems themselves.

So that's where the excitement or sizzle in the near term stake is right now.

More of this later. Thank you.