For the first time, the Royal Navy will deploy a fleet of drones to carry out vital resupply missions between ships during the UK Carrier Strike Group’s (CSG) upcoming deployment to the Indo-Pacific.
According to a Royal Navy news update, nine Malloy T-150 octo-copters will join the HMS Prince of Wales air group later this month, operating alongside F-35B jets and naval helicopters to transport food, mail, and engineering parts across the task group.
The aim is to relieve helicopters from routine resupply work, freeing them up for their primary combat and protection roles. Drone operations will be conducted by a 12-person team from 700X Naval Air Squadron, based at RNAS Culdrose.
“There is a statistic from previous carrier strike deployments that shows 95 per cent of stores transferred weigh less than 50kg,” said Lieutenant Matt Parfitt, one of the drone flight commanders, in the news release. “They could be anything from parcels from home to a vital engineering part. This time we’re going to use a remotely-piloted, uncrewed system instead.”
The Malloy T-150 drones—capable of carrying up to 68kg, flying for up to 40 minutes, and reaching speeds of 60mph—will initially operate from three ships in the group as part of an operational trial. Each drone requires two operators: a remote pilot and a command unit monitor. The aircraft can be flown manually or navigate autonomously using waypoints.
While the drones have previously been used for land-based missions, this marks their first maritime deployment at scale. The Royal Navy hopes the project, accelerated by the Ministry of Defence’s innovation push, will transform future logistics.
“We only got these Malloy systems last August,” Lt Parfitt added. “Since then we’ve had to learn how to fly and maintain them and how to integrate them into the crewed aviation space… That’s an awful lot of regulations and documentation.”
The squadron has adapted rapidly to meet the pace of technological change, integrating personnel from diverse naval backgrounds to build a new cadre of drone specialists.
One of them, Able Rate Michael Page, retrained from an aircraft handler to drone pilot. “You’ve got a lot more responsibility in this role,” he said om the news update. “They don’t just need to look at your rank, instead they look at your level of skill too.”
This is good progress, certainly
I wonder if the drones will stay with the carrier, or be based from the supply ships?
Well they talk about 3 platforms, I assume that’s Tidespring, Maud and the carrier
Argus?
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Well she is suppose to have finish her refit/maintenance by the end of March ready to depart with the CSG but I’ve not heard anything recently.
She’s not listed as being part of the CSG…
🇬🇧HMS Prince of Wales
🇬🇧HMS Dauntless
🇬🇧HMS Richmond
🇬🇧RFA Tidespring
🇬🇧SSN
🇳🇴HNoMS Roald Amundsen
🇳🇴HNoMS Maud
🇨🇦HMCS Ville de Quebec
🇪🇸 ESPS Mendez Nunez
Would be great to see more NATO allies sending ships to join up. Show some European solidarity to the orange rage baby.
As far as I know I think RFA Argus was using the CSG as security to transit the Suez cannal and the red Sea to get back to Bahrain but play a small part of the CSG on route. She is still supposed to deploy according to her Wikipedia page
Mail drops could actually mean Mail drops ” Away swimmer of the watch”
Mail drops could actually mean Mail drop ” Away swimmer of the watch”
It’s a good move to deploy these for use on a long mission where moving small items around is needed and using a Helicopter is just not cost effective. But it’s 5 years since these and the larger T400 were trialled, it’s lethargic to say the least and not a good reflection on the uptake in UAV tech.
Old saying is “speculate to accumulate” and has never been truer than this, we are short of Helicopters, need to save their Airframe hours and cut costs and these tick the box nicely.
Where is a bigger version able to carry Sonar buoys or even a Torpedo, we all known the trials have / are being carried out but it’s Snail Like pace.
The T600 has been trialled dropping an inert Sting Ray torpedo. Will be interesting to see if this progresses.
Malloy has sold drones to the USN and USMC, so it’s proving to be a British success story… which ensured BAE Systems snapped it up.
The first flight of the Proteus demonstrator, which is aimed at the ASW role and should be able to carry sonobuoys or two Stingrays, is expected to be the middle of this year. The Malloy T600 can’t lift a live mod 1 Stingray yet (the inert one is lighter), although it might just about get there when Malloy/BAE have finished fiddling with it. Alternatively the mod 2 torpedo is supposed to be lighter than the mod 1, but you’ll have to wait for that. You’ll also have to wait some time for the T650. Logically, the money would be on the Proteus, but when did logic count for anything?
It’s always good to have a choice of options.
Imagine if NASA had just backed Boeing and not SpaceX also for developing a crew capsule…
They learnt their lesson hard with the shuttle.
Informing decisions my friend….informing decisions.
Do the FAA even own these 9 Malloy? Or are they contractor owned as still being trialled?
Royal Marines bought a load last year. My guess is these will come from there rather than the FAA’s private stock.
22 ordered by RM in Feb 2024
It goes to show the difference between the requirement and the reality. The Navy’s heavy lift challenge required an entry-level payload of 100kg,
a minimum viable product carrying 200kg and a stretch goal of 300kg. I think these numbers have remained constant since 2021.
Yet they’ve settled for 68kg capability, which shouldn’t be viable, nor would it even have reached the minimum to be trialled for heavy lift requirement. However, the Navy have access to the larger Malloy T400 or could even have bought the T600. So why are they taking the T150? Were the requirements wrong? Did they fail to figure in a cost or size issue? Is this simply fulfilling a different requirement that just sounds very much like the original one?
By the way, the statistic I first read was from the US Navy in 2021 which was”90 percent of [inter-ship store transfers] weigh less than 50 pounds….” It broadly accords with the UK stat, and they said it at the same time the Royal Navy didn’t deem anything under 200kg viable. I didn’t get that then and I don’t get it now. They aren’t even taking a couple of T400s for the odd occasion it might go over 70kg but they don’t want to fire up a Wildcat. I wonder where that leaves those who claimed Proteus (max payload about a ton) would be useful for heavy lift logistics.
I’m sure the T150s will make themselves very useful.
I think the 1000kg or whatever was a ‘that is what we do with an XYZ and have always done that is the baseline’ rather than this actually ticks most of the boxes.
Like most ‘staff’ specifications it is OTT for most uses.
That said you are going to struggle keeping QEC in baked beans with this sort of load. Bog roll will be an issue too. Sausages could be OK. Olympic showering pools: hopeless, likewise London buses and Big Ben. So quite a way to go.
Someone suggested rather than bog roll we use bidets. I’m not convinced. If we can’t lift bog rolls, how are we going to lift the bidets?
You float those over, seal the waist hole strap on an outboard and a control kit and it becomes its own get shit done surface drone.
How long before somebody straps two of these together into a hexadecacopter for extra lifting power?
Or even a chinook style conversion of Proteus for COD?
The Heavy Lift Challenge was a separate requirement to this. For that Mallory entered its T600 drone.
For the 50kg lift requirement (which covers 95% of inter-ship transfers) the T150 is possibly over spec’d given it can carry 68kg.
We have different lift requirements for helicopters (heavy-lift, medium-lift, etc). Same with drones.
I suspect the initial requirements were based on the assumption that everything would be thrown onto 1 pallet. Reality has probably demonstrated that rarely happens and isn’t necessary. For once, perhaps the RN has rightfully adjusted their requirements to what is needed, not what is idealised.
Wow! A drone purchase!
I am sure these will be very useful, and they will likely be put to use experimentally as well. There’s all sorts of parameters to experiment with…ship movement, wind, rain, darkness and so on, let alone trying out alternative roles like drone target practice (not actually shooting at them, obv) , recce and so on
If truly 95% of stores weigh less than 50Kg then there will be a very worthwhile saving in helicopter resource. Both in fuel and wear and tear. AA
AA
Maybe…..but you gave 20 flights to shift a standard pallet’s worth of whatever.
So your swarms of drones will be a bigger air traffic issue as well as operating 24/7 to shift the needed mass…so maybe more complex?
I bet the majority of the time the CSG will have no aircraft up, and there will be even fewer periods when they are in close proximity to the ships, especially if drones are doing the majority of VERTREPs.
So I don’t think other aircraft will be the main issue, more that these drones will be very low down the pecking order when it comes to being assigned flight deck spaces.
22 T150s bought by the RM last year.
T150 has previously been tested by RM for ferrying supplies from ship to shore.
T150 has previously been tested by RN for VERTREP between moving ships.
Not the way we might have expected 5-10 years ago but the QE-class might finally be getting 40+ airframes in the air wing
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