The Ministry of Defence has formally terminated plans to procure an uncrewed surface vessel under Project Lily, bringing an end to a programme that had been expected to deliver a contractor-supported maritime autonomous platform for global operations.
A termination notice published on 3 February 2026 by Defence Equipment and Support confirms that the contract will not be signed and that the procurement is no longer going ahead. The decision not to proceed was taken on 16 January 2026, according to the notice.
Project Lily had been trailed in a procurement pipeline notice issued in May 2025 under the Procurement Act 2023. That notice set out plans to acquire a single commercial off-the-shelf uncrewed surface vessel, along with a dedicated Remote Operations Centre, to support year-round operations in open ocean environments. The estimated value of the programme was £27.3 million including VAT, with a planned contract duration of four years from January 2026 to January 2030.
The proposed capability was intended to support military data-gathering tasks, with a particular focus on hydrographic and oceanographic activity. Early documentation indicated the vessel would initially operate under a Government Owned, Commercially Operated model for two years, before transitioning to Government Owned, Government Operated status with continued commercial support.
At the time, the pipeline notice suggested the requirement could attract interest from companies specialising in marine robotics, autonomous vessels and maritime sensing technologies. The procurement was framed as part of a wider effort to exploit uncrewed systems for tasks critical to undersea awareness and maritime operations.
No explanation beyond “procurement no longer going ahead” is provided in the termination notice, and the Ministry of Defence has not set out whether elements of the requirement may be revisited in a revised form or folded into other programmes. As things stand, the cancellation removes one of the more clearly defined near-term opportunities for an MoD-operated uncrewed surface vessel capability.
The first Unmanned plan bites the dust, it will not be the last.
Well quite
But not until money is sunk into the programme and is non recoverable, yes?
What do the MOD and the various linked agencies actually do apart from sit on their bums or are they remote working or is that remotely working
Lots of plana plans and more plans costing ££££££££ and not seeing fruition
Please tell us MOD when is the DIP coming or is the Treasury saying no £££££
Please tell us Government why you are not ordering
It will be 2 years shortly that you have been in power and probably will be when you finally announce the DIP
Apologies but extremely frustrated on what could be great export earnings when looking at other countries
I doubt the delay is much to do with the Government. They have given defence an extra £14 bn, it’s now with the services to whittle down their wishlists to fit the money on the table. We know already that what they have pitched for is £28bn over budget, so there are going to be quite a few other pet projects like this unmanned survey vessel that fall by the wayside.
I would think that the SoS will eventually need to bang some heads together to finalise the plan, especially to trim down the RN’s bumper bundle of extra goodies.
Frankly the additional funds are chump change. The knock on effects of the several decades of hollowing out , especially during the last 14 years of the previous Conservative government have left the MoD with multiple headaches they need to get ahead of.
Case in point. The Dreadnaughts should have been ordered 5 years ago . The fact several of the subs have exceeded their inservice date means the maintenance requirement is going up exponentially . This is causing a huge drain on the budget. Further because key maintenance facilities for the subs was not maintained ( eg the Faslane ship lift) this has had a knock on effect to the Fleet boats coupled with BAE have been asked to work flat out to build the new SSBN in a compressed time scale is putting a huge drain on the budget.
Our frigates are going out of service faster than we are replacing them .
We need a surge of capital or we will always be running flat out just to stand still due to the short sightedness and stupid decision making of the past.
RN’s bumper bundle?
Assualt ships have been sold.
Fleet solid stores ship wasn’t made ready for the CSG far east deployment.
T23s are falling apart to the point they can’t be repaired or even brought home for decommissioning.
One of the T45s may be getting out of drydock after 8 years in refit……so long that the others are now due upgrades.
When the T45 was being built after the intial cuts in orders there’s a government report saying that it may be tight to maintain the requied 4-5 destroyer availability.
When’s the last time there were 4-5 destroyers available?
At the moment the RN would very much like some ships that are capable of going to sea, not falling apart thank you
The SSBNs should have been ordred and funded years ago.
The navy is not even getting the bare minimum.
You have just ably described why it is indeed a bumper bundle!
The RN’s current position is pretty dismal. On the positive side, it has 20 new vessels building over the next 10 years:
8 x T26 FF
5 x T31 FF
3 x Castle MCMV
1 x Proteus MROS
3 x MRSS
That is already a bumper bundle that will stretch the RN budget to breaking point. The knock-on effect of spending £7bn on the carriers is that not a single frigate has been built for about 20 years. That is history, but if anyone was suggesting building carriers today, the answer would be no chance on our current budget.
Now that long list.has to be increased to include T91, T92 and T93 unmanned vessels, plus Proteus unmanned helicopters, Dragonfire lasers, seabed sensors and all the rest of the transformational mirage.
One can reach two fairly snap conclusions:
1) what the RN needs/wants is going to be miles over its budget, unaffordable and probably the main obstacle to getting the DIP sorted, and
2) unless there is a significant budget increase every year for 7 years from 2028-2035, there is no chance of getting MRSS or T83 until some time after 2036 And probably no chance of getting.a T32 at all.
The submarine programme looks even more stretched.
So bumper bundle is probably accurate enough.
Just as well the Tories ordered ot planned all of them then.
Just a pity they didn’t up the budget to pay for them!
They didn’t actually plan all of it, the transformational stuff looks pretty new.
Actually, they did. The T26 and the T31 were all ordered prior to 2024. So were all the Astute class and if I remember correctly three of the Dreadnoughts. Don’t get me wrong. The Tories weren’t great. We were on the edge of a cliff. Labour have pushed us off the edge.
Objectively, the Tories dithered for 5 years and for what, to spend all that budget on expanding the subsidised car manufacturing?
No argument fro me, alhough I didn’t really get the second part of your post?
Only when they couldn’t put decisions off any longer mind or for example we wouldn’t have any frigates not the woefully inadequate 6 we have now. Present Govt seems to have been inspired by it too.
It’s not been good, my friend but I have a horrible feeling it’s going to get worse.
What £14 billion> I must have missed something.
You obviously have. The budget put £2.5bn extra into defence this year and £5+ bn each year for the next two years.
The defence budget will rise from £60.2 bn this year to £73.5bn in 2027/8. That is a 22% rise overall and takes us up to 2.5% of GDP.
Now recalculate what they have put in so far in real terms! The government have put in less than a billion in 25/26 in real terms (exclusing Ukraine). They are planning on putting in less than a billion in the coming year as well.
“They have given defence an extra £14 bn”
And please stop talking about next year and 2027/28 in the past tense. It’s still jam tomorrow!
The budget has increased from 60.0 to 62.2 billion. There is no cash commitment after this year. The government has said that it “intends” to increase the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GPD by 2028/29, not a real financial figure. With the economy being destroyed by Reeves 2.5 per cent of GDP could be a reduction in cash terms, not an increase. Add to this Starmers decision to include the security (budget 4.5 billion) into defence for the first time and further along road and rail infrastructure it is simple enough. Real spend is going to go down.
Meanwhile where is the Defence Investment Plan promised last autumn? Why have we delayed the signing of the GCAP next stage? We have even just cancelled a plan for better bomb disposal equipment worth only £7 million? Why?
How much of that disappears if Ajax gets canceled?
Extra £14bn? I’m gonna call BS on that. Last I heard it was an increase of £3.3bn outturn in 26/27 or about £800m increase in real terms. The £28bn is over 4 years, so call it a £7bn a year shortfall.
So where the hell does your £14bn come from?
House of Commons Library. Will dig out the reference.
Thank you. However, if it’s promises about the future, there’s no need. I was confused by your use of the past tense “have given”. It’s okay, John Healey does that a lot too. As you can see from my previous responds, it winds me up a bit. Sorry about that. The government actually have given (past tense) very little in real terms. Much of what they have given is redefinitional, ie it’s not new money, just newly counted as part of defence. They plan to add £3bn to those redefinitions in 27/28 as well as the £6bn real money coming from the aid budget to push the headline to 2.6%.
HMG put (past tense) £2bn into defence last autumn, we are spending it now.
HMG has committed £5+bn for the coming financial year, starting this April. They have also committed £5bn+ for the following year, 2027/8.
The net result is that the defence budget will increase from £60.2 bn in 2024/5 to £73.5 bn in 2027/8. That will be a 22% increase.from 24/5.
Now Geoff and chums can poo-poo it as ‘jam tomorrow’ from his hated Labour government. But that £73.5 bn is the figure the staffs are working to in the DIP, so we better hope that the high heid yins who know these things have got it right.
It surprises me how little grasp many here have of the financing of defence, much of which is in the public domain.
Key in UK defence spending 2025 House of Commons library
Their publications are accurate and objective, as they serve the House, not the Executive.
Just to put into context that “extra” money that the government have put into Defence. The entire uplift to the Army is swallowed by the pay rise. It’s not extra capital or even operational expenditure, it’s an inflationary rise to enable the organisation to stand still.
To make matters even more stark, consider that the Treasury has demanded in-year savings from the three services meaning that as of January, they are now officially overspent in many areas including reserve pay (even though against the original budget they are still “on budget”.
As others have commented, by the time this government actually spends more on Defence, they will be nearly 2 years into a 5 year term and we’ve lost 2 years of growth on the path to a potential continental war in Europe. That’s a REALLY bad plac to be.
It is inevitable that there would be a pause in procurement decisions. Even with the extra money going into defence there is still a £28 bn gap between what the services want and how much money is on the table.
It is obviously taking some time to resolve, because the services are going to have to axe some of the items on their wish-lists. No doubt there is a lot of inter-service ‘negotiation’ going on just now.
A second reason for the delay is this transformation agenda, which adds a whole raft of new equipments to the mix. I gather that a lot of the items don’t even have a staff target yet, let alone estimates, so the staffs and civvies at MOD HQ are hard at work specifying the new kit and getting in industry initial guesstimates.
I don’t mind the delay if it leads to a sensible, practical plan and clear forward path. I fully understand the impatience of the ‘we want eight and we won’t wait’ brigade, but in the real world, putting together a detailed, costed plan, against an inadequate budget, will take however long it takes.
All these whining and moaning about the Tories gets real old.
If Labour would promise to back any defence budget increase without immediately pouncing on it as political capital to castigate the Opposition for defunding the NHS and welfare and whatever else pet panem et circensis projects need to go in order to fund defence, any government would have happily funded these vital assets.
Came to the comments just to see the meltdown from the doom monger brigade who always seem to know exactly what is needed. I’m sure they think military spending and planning is just like buying lego sets.
Not all of us!
Of course not all.
True Lego sets are more expensive!!
Admittedly we are all arm chair admirals, generals and Air Marshals, however in my experience the vast majority who post on here are well informed people who do not take defence for granted.
Speaking for myself, when the senior politicians and heads of the armed force tell us with one breath to prepare for war and on the other hand we are told that we don’t have a SSN that can go to sea due to lack of maintenance , or yet another frigate is retired. The Ajax saga continues. We are upgrading the Tuphoon , great but it is only a fraction and at a glacial pace ffs. We don’t have enough maritime patrol , we don’t have enough awacs , the GIUK gaps leaks like a sive
I can understand people’s frustration.
“The vast majority who post on here are well informed people”.
Well, that’s one way to describe us !!!
(when I say “us”, obviously not me, I’m just a halfwit, but I do think you are spot on, spot on, yup, absolutely spot on ) 👌
You are free to describe yourself how you wish.
My opinion of the contributors on here are from several years reading and many spirited arguments.
Thanks 😁
Not really and I suspect this is being binned in order for a military/RN controlled version to be put in place.
That said I’d much much more like to be convinced that someone knew what was needed and they weren’t playing with lego sets….
Bloody Crewing Issues !!!
Thank God Starmer has put the British defence industry on a “war footing” or else we would see no movement and endless delays to major and minor projects….oh we are. I don’t think the liberal elites favourite human rights advocate can bring himself to buy nasty things for defence so he has told the increasingly ludicrous Healey to kick everything he can down the road to a time they are no longer going to be responsible for all this.
I know right. He’s had a whole 19 months now and it’s shocking that he hasn’t completely overhauled the UK’s approach to the military isn’t it. Unbelievable.
😂😂😂
To be fair we know the way he’s going. No money, no orders, R.N. being reduced, No MLH or anything else for the RAF. We have ordered a gun I suppose.
Don’t worry they have raised the age of the Vets who are offered the chance to re-enlist. From what I heard I don’t they don’t sound too impressed with what they would find there either. The fact that Warriors remain a vital part of recruitment adverts hardly encourages them I suspect. Hey they may have to use Lego IFVs (or any vehicles indeed) in their place when they finally are retired, or maybe cgi will do the trick, the only war we seem equipped to fight currently. Wherever you look the visuals aren’t good and over cynicism here or not, no point ignoring the obvious, whoever is deemed responsible.
Couldn’t agree with you more, my friend. I thoght the Tories were slow sometimes but this lot bring a whole new dimension to useless.
No doubt he has many Chinese business and land deals to see to, occupying all his time. Poor soul.
No but you could have done a lot of good in 19 months.. things could and should have occurred..
Assume an easy cut to save money.
“Every little helps.”
Wa this meant to replace Echo and Enterprise?
And will hydrographic capability now be gapped and just left to wither like so much else on the RN side?
Scott and Magpie remain but we know full well that they fulfil very different requirements.
Ecco and enterprise were a couple of key cuts that went under the radar.. 3000-4000 ton very very good vessels only 20 years old.. a couple of ships that could have been turned into very good general purpose vessels.. stick a 40mm for self protection on them and equipment them with air and sub surface drones and they would have been perfect patrol and hydrographic vessels..
Ah but we do have Stirling Castle, she’s In and out of Portland all the time now !
So maybe they realised that there is a lot of smoke an mirrors going on with autonomous systems and drones in naval conflict.. far far to much has been taken from Ukraine which is a green water naval conflict in an enclosed benign sea that is at no point more than 150km from land and the AI companies have been promising far beyond what AI can deliver especially in very complex dynamic environments.
I hope that this means the RN is starting to give its head wobble and realise autonomous systems are not a replacement for crewed vessels, just an adjunct that can be used in specific ways.
China is in reality the nation with the most operational experience of autonomous vessels. With Zhi Fei operating and carrying cargo since 2022, Zhuhai Yun as an uncrewed research vessel, Jindouyun 0 Hao a little green water cargo hauler that has been operational since 2019 and JARI USV a 500 general purpose combatants that has been working up concepts since 2018..
But with all that testing over 8 years of operations, china has not started serial production of a drone combatant and you can be sure if China though the concept was sound.. it would have 500 of the things floating around the chains seas before your could say the worlds complete sea control.. also every drone ship china has produced has also been optionally crewed.. they all have a bridge and some form of crew accommodation.. because they know from experience even drone ships are better crewed unless you really don’t need or want the crew.
So I have no issue with the RN coming up with a future optionally crewed combatant of say 2000-3000 tones that can act as a patrol ship with a small crew or an uncrewed support vessel for a naval task group ( essentially a down threat trip wire come victim)… in reality it’s going to be a decade away and not replace actual warships….
Not enough Action Men to man it
Oh so finance decisions can be made before the Military Industrial Investment Plan then…. as long as it prevents spending it I guess.
Liebour will be in competition with the greens and lib dums to close down the armed forces in these dangerous times . Like Corbyn once said write a letter to our enemies.
Liebour? Lib dums? Are you sure you are at the right place? This is a defence site for those interested in defence, it’s not the Telegraph BTL.
This constant snidey political stuff seems to emanate from the supporters of the party that slashed our defence to ribbons over their 14-year reign. But no remorse at all, back they boldly come with a straight face, endeavouring to blame their successors for the mess they left.
The army establishment was 105,000 when the Conservatives took office. 14 Tory years later, it is sliced to just 73,000, its smallest ever size. It will be a long time until anyone trusts them on the subject of defence.
I very much agree Cripes, they do not have a leg to stand on.
The usual political bias on all sides.
BOTH are as bad as the other, it’s about time this was realised by the country, and the media.
I can list the cuts from 1995 onwards for Tory, Labour, Tory, Labour for some comparisons.
Of interest, most of the Escort force, Fast Jet Squadron, and SSN reductions were under Labour when there was no financial need to cut them.
Yep it’s not one party it’s HMG, it’s our political system and it’s our public ( who tell the politicians what they think is important and likely to win votes).. we are an island you know, and as such who cares about defence and wider geostrategic positioning..
Are we allergic to boats?
Maybe TPTB heard someone say “Britain is an island nation” or “we used to rule the waves”, decided it was too inflammatory and hurtful to other citizens of the world and gave it the chop. I’m joking, but if it was true, it’s hard to imagine anyone being surprised.