Leonardo pitches Proteus as Navy’s roadmap to autonomy

At DSEI in London, Leonardo UK spoke about their Proteus aircraft, detailing recent demonstrations of its autonomous capability in synthetic ASW trials and stressing that the current airframe is only a low-cost testbed for the technology rather than the final product.

The company was keen to point out that its Proteus demonstrator is “not…someone sat in a cabin somewhere with a joystick” but rather a roadmap to true autonomy, able to plan routes, avoid threats, collaborate with other aircraft, and execute missions without constant human input.

Nigel Colman, Managing Director Helicopters UK, Leonardo, tied the project directly to the Royal Navy’s own doctrine. “This is about the Royal Navy’s maritime aviation transformation strategy… crewed only where possible, uncrewed wherever possible. That’s where Proteus fits in.”

Proteus has been in development with the Ministry of Defence and Defence Equipment and Support since 2013, but Colman emphasised its agile, adaptive approach rather than rigid milestones.

The current £60 million phase has focused heavily on autonomy, with synthetic trials showing three Proteus systems detecting a submarine threat, sharing information, and allocating tasks amongst themselves. “We’ve demonstrated that to the Royal Navy at senior level,” he said, describing the autonomy package as the “brains” inside a temporary “body.”

Leonardo put particular weight on the synthetic trials already completed, presenting them as evidence that Proteus’ autonomy is not hypothetical but working now. Colman explained that “we’ve done some really good synthetic demonstrations, which includes real hardware, you know, the real software that we have flown in the synthetic environment. So we have flown three Proteus so far, together, collaboratively.”

He stressed that these systems were given an ASW mission to “find, fix and kill the submarine,” and that the aircraft then “communicated amongst themselves, decided which asset is best to deal with…that potential threat or issue, and allocated threats accordingly.” This, he said, had already been shown “to Royal Navy at senior level in recent months” and was described as “a really impressive capability.” The message to reporters was clear: the brains of the system are the real achievement, and they have already been proven in simulation, rather than being a distant aspiration.

At the same time, the company was careful to downplay the physical airframe shown at the briefing, framing it as a temporary and pragmatic solution rather than the end product. Colman told journalists that “this is not what a Proteus would look like in the future…Fenestron and tail rotors are probably not perfect in a really high sea state, high winds on the back of a ship in the North Atlantic. This is not an ideal platform, but it’s low risk, it’s low cost, and it gives us the opportunity to test the technologies and the autonomy.”

He added that “the brains is the important bit and where we’ve been focusing,” making clear that the value lies in the autonomy package rather than the demonstrator itself. “My view has always been that we don’t actually need to fly this particular anything, because we can fully test the digital twin and the important autonomous bits in a single, better synthetic environment,” he said, before conceding that “our customer and our partner wants us to do that, so we fly.”

The company’s aim is to ensure that coverage reflects Proteus as a step on the path to a future family of autonomous systems, rather than this specific aircraft being mistaken for the final product. The emphasis was on modularity. Large side panels conceal spaces where NATO pallet-sized payloads can be swapped in and out, allowing the system to handle anti-submarine, anti-surface, ISR, search and rescue, or even early warning missions.

Leonardo position Proteus as a response to the need for affordable mass in anti-submarine warfare. Uncrewed systems could stay on station longer than a Merlin, without the limitations of aircrew fatigue. They also reduce manpower requirements at a time when naval aviation is struggling to sustain numbers.

Asked about future milestones, Colman confirmed that the prototype is built and due to fly this year following ground runs. He admitted that the real capability lies in the autonomy software rather than the specific demonstrator aircraft. “If you’ve got the right autonomous software and the right accreditation, you can put that into anything,” he said, pointing to Leonardo’s wider portfolio from light Wildcats to the 16-tonne AW101.

The company also positioned the work as sovereign and exportable, noting efforts to keep it ITAR-free and relevant to overseas partners such as Japan. The cultural challenges of shifting the Fleet Air Arm toward uncrewed systems were acknowledged, but Colman argued the trajectory was clear. “I can’t imagine putting 30 people in the back of a Merlin without a pilot, that would be crazy. But times are changing. The hybrid carrier air wing concept is what we’re aiming for.”

It seems to me that Leonardo is moving the conversation away from any single drone and toward an inevitable shift in naval aviation, with autonomy as the decisive technology. It’s hard to argue with that.