Royal Navy and US Navy evolve joint AI and ML work

The Royal Navy and the US Navy are working on ways to establish links between their digital delivery teams, test methods for international collaboration and develop deeper technical collaboration around artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The work, which started in August 2020, is part of a wider initiative to establish better technology cooperations between the US and the UK. It follows a mandate from senior leaders in digital and AI at both organisations, with the objective to "aggressively explore, develop and demonstrate" how the two countries make applications work together in an interoperable way, and how they can interchangeably use each other's technology. A shared long-term vision is that US-UK development squadrons will be created, to develop AI and ML to support fleet operations centres to tactical-level units, and interoperability with joint service partners. Under that mandate, a collaboration plan was devised by Royal Navy Digital Services and the US Navy to look at specific pieces of technology and the methods the organisations use to research, design and build software.