Navantia UK has unveiled a design for a large autonomous surface vessel at the Combined Naval Event in Farnborough, as the company seeks to position itself as a supplier for the Royal Navy’s emerging hybrid fleet, the company stated.
The LASV75, designed in the UK, is intended as an uncrewed escort and support platform built from the keel up without crew accommodation, which the company says provides high levels of availability. The vessel’s modular hull allows it to be configured for different roles, covering sensing, operational, or combined mission profiles. According to Navantia UK, the platform can be constructed at pace and at a cost significantly lower than crewed vessels of comparable size.
Derek Jones, Chief Commercial and Business Development Officer at Navantia UK, said autonomous vessels would be fundamental to future sovereign defence capability. “Naval capabilities of the future will comprise a hybrid mixture of crewed warships with uncrewed escorts and ancillary ships. At Navantia UK, we’re investing heavily in our four shipyards to turn them into ideal partners to deliver this vision of the future. With digital design capabilities and cutting-edge automated technology, our sites are being transformed into some of the most advanced shipyards in Europe.”
The LASV75 concept is being unveiled alongside a £157 million modernisation programme across Navantia UK’s four yards at Appledore, Arnish, Belfast, and Methil. Improvements include an automated panel line in Belfast for manufacturing large steel panels, and the adoption of digital design tools across all sites. Navantia UK claims these improvements will reduce the time required to design and build a large naval vessel by up to 30%, supporting the MoD’s ambition set out in the 2025 Strategic Defence Review to deliver major modular platforms within two years to contract and five years to delivery.
Navantia UK acquired the assets of Harland and Wolff in 2025, giving the Spanish parent company a significant UK industrial footprint and the capacity to bid credibly for major Royal Navy programmes. Work on the £1.6 billion Fleet Solid Support programme is described as progressing on schedule, with steel cut at Appledore in December for the first of three ships. A purpose-built 85 metre barge, the Seahorse, was launched from Methil earlier this month to transport blocks and components between the Appledore and Belfast yards.
Jones added: “Meanwhile, we’re working at pace to deliver the Fleet Solid Support programme which involves building some of the largest ships in the armed forces.”
Well if nothing else the CGI visualisations are certainly getting better and better
The latter is definitely an AI image.
AI enhanced, perhaps- the shapes of the ships themselves are consistent.
40mm, 16 mk41, Sea Giraffe and four 40ft containers.
Looks pretty good, presumably they’re planning to build at Appledore?
My only thought on this is what the hell do you do if you need to send in a team to fix something.. and you will.
I’m not sure the whole large blue water autonomous vessel works unless you can fly out a team to A) do preventative inspections and maintenance B) fix something when it goes wrong. That means at a minimum you need a flight deck that can land small ship flight.. you don’t need the hanger. But you need to be able to put a small team on board and provide them with tea and coffee while they work.
The thing is nobody will give a shit if a small cheap autonomous vessel losses power and founders.. but if it’s 90meters, full of advanced sensors and effectors and costs north of 200million ( with effectors and sensors ) people will care a lot when it loses power and founders.
Another concern that has been raised before is that drones are more vulnerable to being attacked without the same escalation that a crewed vessel would have. Seizing a manned vessel for example is pretty hard but in theory if a Russian warship sailed up and took over one of these that might be able to happen without needing to imprison or fight the crew on board. Granted this has weapon systems and is capable of defending itself but it might just be short of that level of escalation.
Potentially a very small crew might be attached on rotation? Something like 2-6 personnel as part of the core ship’s company of the warship it’s supporting on rotation, performing basic maintenance and keeping it occupied in some respect. Obviously that defeats the ‘unmanned’ point but would still be very efficient from a crewing perspective. The main issue would just be lifestyle since most sailors are probably looking to be part of a crew rather than sailing out in a very isolated environment – depending on how frequently they would rotate it might not be a major issue, though.
I would want to see the terms of engagement for these things. We have seen Russians knocking drones out of the sky, what happens if they try to drop a team on this ship from a helicopter? Do we shoot the helicopter down? I just dont see our Prime Ministers making that call!
Depends how many you build, I guess. If we build 30 or so, losing one probably wouldn’t matter, when you can pump out two more a year.
Its more about them getting access to the tech?
Well I guess we lead the World In Concepts at least.