The Royal Navy’s transition toward a Hybrid Navy model, integrating crewed and uncrewed platforms across air, surface, and underwater domains, is moving from concept to reality, according to a long-form feature published by Navy Leaders ahead of the Combined Naval Event at Farnborough. It is well worth reading in full.

The feature, entitled Sensor Sensibilities: Building Blocks for a Hybrid Navy, draws on interviews with Captain Mohayed Magzoub, the Royal Navy’s Head of Force Development, and William Egan, a Senior Vice President at Teledyne Marine, one of the industry partners working to bring programmes like Atlantic Bastion and Atlantic Net into service. Magzoub spoke on the Hybrid Navy concept at Navy Leaders’ Navy Tech and Seabed Defence 2026 conferences in Gothenburg.

When First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins took the role in May 2025, he called for a fleet guided by a simple but powerful principle: “uncrewed wherever possible; crewed only where necessary.” At DSEI 2025 he described his ambition as “a dispersed but digitally connected fleet of crewed, uncrewed, and autonomous platforms that will redefine maritime military power” and pledged that “we will have our first [Atlantic] Bastion sensors in the water next year.”

Magzoub laid out the operational and financial case for the shift. “There’s a big range of anticipated benefits: cost is one of them. But there’s also our ability to de-latch our capability from our crewing. We can increase our capability considerably without having to have the commensurate increase in people…. Improvements in survivability, by shifting from platform survivability to force-level survivability. I think it has a huge impact on our ability to introduce capability quickly, more quickly than we can today. And at the pace of relevance, we can put our capability in the right place at the right time.”

The feature explores a model in which traditional frigates and destroyers give way to lean-crewed Common Combat Vessels acting as command and control nodes, flanked by large uncrewed surface vessels handling diverse roles such as air defence or anti-submarine warfare as missions demand. The first CCVs are likely to be Type 45 destroyers, with that role subsequently adopted by the incoming Type 26 and Type 31 frigates.

Trust in autonomous systems runs through the feature as a central concern. Egan observed that “trust is the currency of the Hybrid Navy…. that uncrewed systems will perform reliably, integrate seamlessly and deliver the sort of effects commanders need without constant human intervention. Really that trust is only earned through operational experiment, not PowerPoints, not lab demonstrations.” Teledyne’s participation in the SeaSEC Harbour Challenge Day was cited as a practical example, with the company’s systems successfully detecting and classifying underwater targets in real time in a live harbour environment rather than a controlled trial.

Progress on the ground is already visible as the RN’s Peregrine drones and Malloy T-150s have been used on exercises and declared ready for operational use, while the Proteus rotary uncrewed aerial system is in development with Leonardo and has reached the test-flight stage. The RN acquired XV Excalibur, its first extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle, in May 2025. Twenty drone boats from Kraken Technology Group were announced for testing and development in March 2026, and the Maritime Mine Counter Measures programme delivered its second system in April.

Those attending CNE at Farnborough will find the themes covered in the Navy Leaders feature directly relevant to the discussions taking place on the floor. For those who cannot attend, it is one of the more substantive recent treatments of where the Royal Navy is actually heading and why. The full piece is well worth your time and can be read at navyleaders.com.