Demonstration of MBDA’s NILEQ sensors and how they read terrain like a fingerprint scanner. (MBDA)

SYDNEY — A collaborative effort between a small Australian navigation firm and European defense giant MBDA is among the first to test the new tripartite arms export control system from the start of a program, and initial reports are positive, according to the CEO of the Australian firm.

Before the changes to the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) policies and the arms export regimes of Britain and Australia, “it would take six months to get a license approved to just share information,” Sydney-based Advanced Navigation CEO Chris Shaw said in an interview today with Breaking Defense. But since a revamping of the rules in August, at least the timeline for information sharing has been trimmed down to days or weeks, he said.

“Yeah, there’s still controls that have to be taken to account, which is fine, but it’s a lot more simple now for something like this,” Shaw said. The memorandum of understanding between the two companies limits the work to between the United Kingdom and Australia, the release says, so has yet to test US rules.

The Australian defense minister, Richard Marles, has hailed the arms export reforms as a “generational” change, and Australian officials have generally been eager to comply with American requirements as they amend Australia’s arms export system. The ITAR system, of course, is infamous for its often slow and complex processes, overseen by the US State Department’s Political-Military Bureau.

Pillar II of the US-UK-Australia venture known as AUKUS — whose primary focus in Pillar I is helping Australia buy and build nuclear-powered attack submarines — is a more diffuse effort which covers the rapid development, testing and deployment of new technologies in the realms of autonomy, hypersonics, cyber, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and underwater systems.

Shaw said his company and MBDA have been in talks with Pillar II contact points in each government since the beginning of this effort, and the press release mentions Pillar II without offering specifics.

The collaboration, announced Nov. 20, is meant to produce and test a system that can work on a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drone that uses a newly developed sensor set to provide jam-proof navigation, as well as autonomy. MBDA developed the NILEQ sensors, which function in ways similar to fingerprint scanners, reading the terrain over which they fly. The system includes a detailed database of the Earth’s surface. The sensors note changes between the database and what it senses, allowing rapid change detection and providing information that could be used for targeting.

“MBDA are convinced it has lots of different applications, so then they’ve decided to partner with us to explore taking that core tech and us integrating it with our navigation technology, and then trying to build an end solution for use on drones,” Shaw said in the interview. “That’s not something they do, because typically they build end products, right?”

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The Australian general manager for MBDA, Tom Tizard, said in the press release that their new technology “seeks to address the enormous demand for resilient absolute positioning information that will complement the existing navigation systems of airborne platforms.” Russia has made the risks of GPS all too clear, causing advanced weapons that depend entirely on GPS to lose much of their potency when jammed. Tizard praised Advanced Navigation as “an ideal Australian partner to help accelerate the technology towards market entry. Navigation technologies that are not simply accurate and precise, but also provide the ‘resilience’ against interference, is what propels this partnership.”

If it all works as designed, Advanced Navigation said in a press release that it believes the system “will enable airborne systems to navigate unlimited distances over land without relying on GPS, and is passive and resistant to interference.”

The venture is moving along at a clip, with the new systems’ first test flight possibly happening before the end of the year, Advanced Navigation’s CEO said.

The MBDA agreement comes after the company signed in early September what could be a landmark agreement with South Korea’s Hanwha to supply an already-developed precision guidance systems to Hanwha worldwide. It could, Shaw said the day of the signing, lead to as much as a 400 percent increase in business for the Australian firm.