The Ministry of Defence has awarded BAE Systems a £285 million contract to support the Royal Navy’s combat management systems (CMS) and warship networks, ensuring the fleet remains equipped for evolving threats over the next eight years, according to a press release.
The RECODE programme will modernise the Royal Navy’s Shared Infrastructure and CMS across 20 ships, including the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, Type 45 destroyers, and Type 26 frigates.
The initiative aims to enhance system security, agility, and capability deployment while addressing obsolescence and integrating DevSecOps principles—a methodology embedding security throughout software development and operations.
The contract builds on a 13-year partnership between BAE Systems and the Royal Navy. RECODE will sustain more than 200 highly skilled jobs at BAE Systems’ sites in Filton, Dorchester, New Malden, Frimley, and Portsmouth, while fostering investment in UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and tech suppliers.
Steve Carter, Naval Ships Combat Systems Director at BAE Systems, emphasised the programme’s strategic importance, stating in the press release:
“RECODE represents a huge stride forward in our partnership with the Royal Navy and will help to realise warfare capability of the future. The global threat picture, advances in commercial technology and the immense volume of data available to crews means we need to become even more ambitious and far-reaching in our services and support. We are excited and privileged to secure this programme that will sit at the heart of the Navy’s ambition to be a protean force.”
Commodore Phil Game, Interim Director of Sense, Decide and Communicate at Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), highlighted RECODE’s focus on adaptability, noting:
“We are pleased to announce that this essential programme is underway to sustain the current Combat Management Systems on board in-service Royal Navy vessels, to enhance their capability and make them fit for the future. This new programme will take on proactive management of obsolescence, ensuring that at its core it is evergreen, robust and flexible. Through our close collaborative work with industry colleagues, this contract will also help to upskill the programme’s workforce and sustain UK jobs.”
Captain Kevin Miller, Combat Systems Design Authority and Surface Ships Combat Systems Group Team Leader for the Royal Navy, underscored the need for agility, adding:
“We have a long and successful history with Naval Ships Combat Systems and RECODE represents an important next phase of our collaboration. Today’s challenging landscape means we must adapt and evolve at pace. Agility is at the heart of the programme in three ways – equipment to maintain our capability, process so we can adapt that capability at the pace of relevance and a mindset to ensure we deliver. Those are the key facets that will enable the military advantage our crews are relying on.”
£285 million, where’s that money coming from we could order another T31 for that. then we’d have something to put it on.
From DE&S multi billion Equipment & SUPPORT Budget.
Support contracts with the MIC cost a lot of money.
£285M for 20 ships and no Export orders even on 31’s. The economies of scale just aren’t there, go for AEGIS.
5 Export orders, 2 to Indonesia, 3 to Poland.
AEGIS with no access to source code, enormous annual contract costs, no user serviceable parts, part having to be returned to the manufacturer, software updates only done by contractors staff, and enormous costs (and being way down the priority list) for the custom integration of any non-US sensor or weapon? That system? The system that ties all other countries using it to almost exclusively US weapons and sensors and costs an arm and a leg (LM makes 500million$ foreign AEGIS sales per year….)? That system?
If we were to go over to AEGIS the costs would be horrendous. We would either have to pay LM billions (and wait over a decade) to integrate all UK weapons and sensors, or spend billions ripping out all our weapons and sensors and replacing them with equivalent US systems.