War games examining the Royal Navy’s planned shift towards crewed and uncrewed systems are claimed to have produced roughly three times the missile capacity for a North Atlantic conflict, according to a former senior Royal Navy officer.
War games examining the Royal Navy’s planned Hybrid Navy concept are claimed to have produced a substantial increase in combat mass and roughly three times the missile capacity available for a North Atlantic conflict, the UK Defence Journal understands.
The assessment comes from Rear Admiral (retired) James Parkin CB CBE, a former Royal Navy Director Develop, writing for the Council on Geostrategy’s Britain’s World magazine. Parkin argues that the combination of high-end crewed warships with larger numbers of autonomous and remotely operated systems offers one of the few realistic routes to increasing naval mass without a corresponding rise in personnel or the cost associated with building additional major warships.
He writes that testing of the concept through hybrid war games has produced what he describes as a substantial increase in combat mass and “roughly threefold missile capacity for a North Atlantic contest”. The figure is presented as a claimed result of war gaming rather than an operationally demonstrated capability, but it provides an indication of the scale of effect being sought through the Royal Navy’s future force structure.
The Hybrid Navy concept was formalised in the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, which envisaged highly capable crewed submarines, warships and aircraft operating alongside much larger numbers of uncrewed systems. The 2026 Defence Investment Plan subsequently described a network of crewed ships and uncrewed surface and underwater vessels connected through a Maritime Fighting Web, alongside plans for at least six Common Combat Vessels and autonomous collaborative aircraft under Projects VANQUISH and PANTHEON.
Parkin argues that the concept should not be interpreted as a replacement for conventional warships. He warns against drawing direct conclusions from Ukraine’s use of uncrewed vessels in the Black Sea, distinguishing between sea denial in a relatively enclosed maritime environment and the sea control required by Britain and NATO across the North Atlantic.
He writes: “Cheap, massed, and precise systems matter, but Britain must protect oceanic trade routes, nuclear-power ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) bastions, and NATO strike groups operating far from friendly ports.” Parkin argues that the Hybrid Navy must therefore remain centred on high-end crewed platforms, with uncrewed systems providing additional sensing, weapons capacity and persistent presence.
The memorandum also identifies regulatory constraints as a potentially significant obstacle. According to Parkin, the permissions required to operate uncrewed surface vessels larger than 24 metres routinely in British waters have yet to be established. He states that no uncrewed vessel above that size has so far received either Maritime and Coastguard Agency or Defence Maritime Regulator operating clearance, while neither civilian classification societies nor the Naval Authority and Technical Group have approved such a design.
Parkin argues that addressing this will require more than changes to individual regulations, calling instead for Defence to make greater use of the freedoms already available to it to conduct experimentation. He advocates giving operators greater scope to “learn by doing” and to fail safely during development rather than allowing lengthy approval processes to slow experimentation with new systems.
A second issue identified is the speed at which lessons from trials and operations are fed back into equipment development. Parkin contrasts traditional British defence acquisition cycles, which he says can take months or years to incorporate changes, with the much faster development cycle seen in Ukraine. He cites the so-called “rule of six”: six hours for operator feedback to reach a manufacturer, six days for software updates, six weeks for hardware modifications and six months to replace a system entirely where necessary.
The memorandum argues that a similar continuous feedback model will be required if the Hybrid Navy is to deliver the intended increase in mass and weapons capacity. Parkin also warns that the programme will require specialist maritime knowledge throughout acquisition and development, rather than treating the transition primarily as a conventional programme-management exercise.
The Royal Navy’s underlying challenge is one of numbers and cost as Parkin notes that large complex European warships can now cost around £2 billion to £2.5 billion per hull, while specialised naval aircraft can approach £100 million each. Against that background, the Hybrid Navy is intended to distribute functions traditionally concentrated aboard individual ships across a much larger network of crewed and uncrewed platforms.
Parkin served in the Royal Navy for 28 years and was Director Develop in Navy Command Headquarters between 2021 and 2025. His assessment is presented as analysis rather than an official Ministry of Defence statement, but it sets out both the potential operational gains and the regulatory, cultural and acquisition challenges involved in turning the Hybrid Navy concept into a deployable force.
How can they increase the fleet size with unmanned systems without a corresponding increase in RFA to fuel and supply them, as well as associated rise in dockyard capacity and specialists to maintain them?
Potentially uncrewed RFA vessels could be used but rigging lines in rough seas would require a trained crew?
The concept may be sound but will the RN be able to make it work. Design deliver and have fully operational several new classes of vessels along with the associated technology all in a decade or so?
I hope they war game the resupply of ammunition, from manufacture to platform. It’ll probably be planned over the next ten years to coincide with the inevitable capability gap by withdrawing other resources early or delaying the introduction into service. Cynical I know but that is how they’ve worked up to now. Tell the enemy to wait while we naval (sic) gaze!
“large complex European warships can now cost around £2 billion to £2.5 billion per hull”
Really? Name two. There is only one European surface warship class I’m aware of (outside of aircraft carriers if you can call those warships) that is projected to cost that much, the German F127, and it’s mostly that expensive because the systems aren’t European. Germany went the full Aegis. That’s not an argument for RN going hybrid.
If you account for inflation, the build costs of the Horizon/Orizzonte/T45 are somewhere around the £1.5bn mark. That has to be the most expensive European escort project. Italy’s DDX and T26 B1 are around half Parkin’s quoted cost, and are still counted expensive in European terms. Most top of the line European warships, recent or planned, sit a little below £1bn a unit.
Parkin also mentions a future AW101 costing £100m. That has to be fantasy. So how can I trust his other numbers?
We aren’t building fewer crewed ships because they are ever more expensive. The ships are ever more expensive because we are building fewer. Perhaps the answer is to find a better way to build together.
I really do not like this. With our record I can see all sorts of blunders occuring. Why are we going to build four classes of warship, all untried, when we could build one. T83 is dead, so be it, But if the French can build a 4500 ton frigate capable of carrying 32 tubes for Aster plus a whole host of other weapons why can’t we? The Amiral Ronarc’h class is priced at £500 million, has a crew of 125 and an endurance of 45 days. Babcock would be perfectly capable of building them.
A balanced view setting out the challenges to achieving the move to a hybrid navy.
The essential ambition is to deliver more combat mass without increasing manpower requirements against a background of the ever greater costs of warships.
But is there a lower risk route to achieving this?
Choosing simpler platforms with high levels of automation alleviates the manpower problems. And, if the build cost can be kept below £500m, or around half the cost of T26 or T45 in today’s money, in theory you get more than twice as many hulls for the same budget.
A larger fleet of lean manned good enough ships might be a less risky choice than the hybrid navy.