Dull, dirty and dangerous might not sound like workplace selling points to potential Royal Australian Navy recruits — that is unless you’re firing up a fleet of advanced unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that are happy and uncomplaining searching for people to be rescued from fires and floods as are they are when stalking down the enemy in places humans would prefer not to go.
It’s a profession that’s quickly gaining speed in the navy, with 822X Squadron working out of HMAS Albatross on the edge of Nowra in NSW, and the nearby Jervis Bay naval airfield officially chalking up 10 years of operations this year in experimenting with and evaluating drones and their applications.
With UAVs big and small now coming to the Australian military in increasingly large numbers, forces like the navy need to get a very fast grip on skilling up the right people to run operations, as well as continuing to test and evaluate new systems, whether they’re running optical or surveillance missions or kicking out jams for electronic warfare.
It’s no mean feat, and Lieutenant Fiona Nguyen has discovered that when pulled off well, it can earn you a Conspicuous Service Medal on the King’s Birthday honours list as the navy’s anointed queen of the drone age.
Nguyen scooped the medal as an acknowledgement of her production of “an exemplar of workforce plans” on the back of her recommendations on growing the navy’s drone personnel to more than 170 staff, work acknowledged as “meritorious service in aviation capability development”.
The task at hand meant getting in touch with a swag of stakeholders to thrash out the best way to optimise the workforce “and provided capability sponsors with significant market analysis on UAS equipment” according to the navy.
“I considered our exponential growth over the next few years and tried to develop the best organisational structure which would suit Navy’s UAS future,” Nguyen said.
On that journey, Nguen spent time with the navy’s Aviation Branch and Aviation Directorate of Surface Combatants (aircraft deployed from ships), providing technical advice about payload sensors “including electro-optical infrared cameras, multi-spectral cameras and electronic warfare capabilities” Defence said.
That hands-on experience and learning in operational situations are what gets fed back into optimising the UAS capability as well as being passed down to those learning the ropes.
“Sensor payloads on a UAS is one of the most important aspects of the aircraft. It delivers the capability effect such as reconnaissance and surveillance,” Nguyen said.
“The air vehicle (drone) itself acts as a vessel to deliver the capability of the payload sensor.”
Nguyen also gets to help implement her recommendations as the deputy aviation engineering officer at 822X Squadron.
“I am now trialling sensor payload technologies on our current Schiebel S-100 air vehicles, which I had previously contributed to their acquisition,” Ngyuen said, adding that “it feels surreal to be acknowledged for my work.
“I feel vindicated for all the years of hard work from high school, university to the present day.”
However, Ngyuen’s career path came close to being lost to medicine.
“After high school, I faced a fork in the road: study a Bachelor of Biomedicine at University of Melbourne or study electrical engineering at ADFA. I chose to join Navy and study at ADFA,” Nguyen said.
Defence’s broader drone capability, but particularly 822X Squadron’s also pay significant civilian dividends.
While search and rescue, as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, are specific roles 822X can undertake for the navy, alongside drone warfare, the big benefit is having knowledge and experience to pass down to civilian operators and being able to coordinate safe operations when there are multiple assets being deployed.
Whether rotary or fixed-wing, uncrewed aerial systems have the potential to stretch much-needed emergency management budgets as far as they can go, potentially relieving pressure on the military down the track.
One sign of the rapidly maturing capability is that the navy’s UAS Unit allocated a specific call sign — “Omen” — for all uncrewed aerial systems to indicate to other operators the machines do not have pilots on board.