BMT sets out how hybrid navy will transform command at sea

The shift to a hybrid navy will fundamentally change how command is exercised at sea, with commanding officers moving from being the best-informed individual on a ship to managing competing streams of information across a digital network, according to a paper published by defence consultancy BMT at the Combined Naval Event at Farnborough.

The paper, titled Squaring the Circle on Hybrid Navy and authored by Jake Rigby, Head of Innovation and Research at BMT, alongside Andy Kimber and colleagues, identifies cultural acceptance and doctrine shift as one of nine critical decision points that must be resolved if the hybrid navy vision is to be delivered.

Mike Williams, BMT’s Principal Operability Consultant, sets out the challenge in stark terms: “Command will change from a CO being the best-informed individual in a ship to being the arbiter of competing truths across a digital network.”

The paper argues that the shift from platform-centric to effects-centric warfare means that command and effect will no longer always be co-located. As sensing, decision-making, and effect are distributed across crewed and uncrewed assets, the coherence of the battlespace picture at the tactical edge will inevitably reduce.

Future commanders, BMT argues, will have to accept tactical ambiguity and delegate authority further down the chain than current doctrine demands, with mission command by design becoming central to how the hybrid navy operates.

The implications for command accountability are significant. Disaggregated force structures will challenge existing frameworks, with the gaps between operational command, technical authority, and legal authority requiring redefinition. Commanders will also need to become fluent in multi-domain operations across subsurface, surface, space, and cyber environments as a matter of routine rather than occasion.

BMT identifies a particular gap in the current decision support landscape. While tools such as AEC2 are being developed to enable faster decision-making, they are focused on individual warfare spheres such as air defence. There is currently no decision support tool for the command function at either unit or task group level, and unlike applying a navigation rule or identification criteria, command is not a binary function. A commander’s professional experience and instinct cannot yet be replicated, and BMT notes there has been no successful attempt to capture command experiences in a form that could be used to train AI tools.

The paper calls for tomorrow’s commanders to be trained today in systems thinking and multi-domain operations, and for doctrinal work to be conducted in parallel with technical development to establish where command authority will reside in the hybrid navy. Operational lessons from the use of autonomous systems in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf, particularly the experience of Combined Task Force 59, are cited as relevant starting points.

BMT’s broader argument in the paper is that the hybrid navy transition represents a doctrinal, organisational, and technological shift on a scale not seen since Admiral Fisher’s early twentieth-century reforms, and that the direction of travel is clear even if the pathway remains uncertain. The paper identifies nine trade space tensions that must be resolved, ranging from scale versus depth and survivability versus expendability, to sovereign supply chain versus deliverability. The command and doctrine question, BMT argues, is as fundamental as any of the technical challenges, because without resolving who commands what and how, no combination of platforms and sensors will deliver the operational coherence the hybrid navy requires.