A Trilateral Exercise with Startups at the Sharp End
In February 2026, more than 200 defence personnel, scientists and industry participants from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States gathered on Australia’s east coast for an AUKUS Pillar II Maritime Big Play exercise. The event was not a tabletop simulation. Operators and technical experts tested and employed approximately 30 next-generation capabilities in a tactical setting, working with industry in real time to adapt and challenge those capabilities under demanding conditions.
What makes Maritime Big Play unusual is the prominence of Australian-developed startup technology. Innovaero’s OWL-B one-way-attack munition was used to strike a target at range. C2 Robotics’ Speartooth large uncrewed underwater vehicle served as a test bed for novel payload configurations. Advanced Design Technology’s GRASSHOPPER payload and PentenAmio’s Next Generation Electronic Deception capability—both winners of the AUKUS Pillar II Electronic Warfare Innovation Challenge—were also put through their paces.
Why Live-Fire Validation Changes the Startup Calculus
For early-stage defence companies, the hardest transition is not building a prototype; it is proving that the prototype works when the environment is messy, the stakes are real and the operator is not the engineer who built it. Maritime Big Play compresses that transition. Industry participants get access to real-world training environments and feedback from trilateral operators, which is exactly the kind of validation that venture capital and defence procurement both demand. As the head of Australia’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, MAJGEN Hugh Meggitt, put it: “Industry access to real-world training environments is essential—they provide a platform for us to rigorously test, validate and strengthen our capability in conditions that mirror operational requirements”.
The exercise also serves a standards-setting function. AUKUS partners are using Maritime Big Play to develop common, open standards that speed up adoption of new technology and improve cooperation on complex missions. For a startup, that is strategically valuable: if your system can plug into a trilateral operating picture, you are no longer selling to one navy; you are selling into an alliance architecture. Australian-developed autonomy is being used to shape those standards from the inside, rather than being handed a specification after the fact.
The Policy Engine Behind the Proving Ground
Maritime Big Play did not emerge in a vacuum. It sits on top of the 2026 Defence Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy, a 10-year blueprint that names autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and undersea warfare among six priority capability areas. The strategy explicitly links those priorities to platforms such as the Ghost Bat uncrewed aircraft and the Ghost Shark autonomous undersea vehicle, and it draws lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East about the speed at which attritable autonomy can reshape a battlefield.
For the startups involved, the message is that the Australian Defence Force is trying to shorten the distance between a working prototype and an operational capability. That is easier said than done; procurement timelines, security clearances and export controls remain formidable. But the combination of a trilateral live-fire exercise, an explicit innovation strategy and a funding environment that now includes dedicated defence tech funds gives Australian startups something they have not always had: a pathway, however narrow, from the garage to the fleet.