Techno-economic modelling of fleet architectures for undersea surveillance

With Australia’s vast maritime environment to monitor and protect, the Royal Australian Navy must modernise its fleet architecture to maximise surveillance coverage within resource and budget constraints. Modern uncrewed systems offer a range of technological advancements to supplement the Navy’s crewed assets with affordable mass for persistent undersea domain awareness. This study has developed a novel techno-economic model that assessed the technical performance and total cost of ownership of future fleet architectures incorporating different uncrewed systems. It modelled the demands of concurrent surveillance missions and the ability of candidate fleet architectures to meet these needs. The research determined that investing in larger, strategic uncrewed systems offered greater value for money to the Royal Australian Navy than investing in smaller, tactical uncrewed systems for conducting undersea surveillance. More broadly, this research introduces a reusable evaluation framework to support future defence capability development and investment. The methodology employs scenario-based cost-effectiveness analysis supported by quantitative modelling and operational parameters. While similar defence investment challenges are being explored in the United States, the United Kingdom, and by European navies, this study is among the first to apply a techno-economic lens specifically to fleet architectures for Australia in the Indo-Pacific region.