Madfox is being used to examine how uncrewed vessels can be used across a range of military operations including surveillance and force protection.

The vessel is currently near Faslane naval base in the Clyde.

https://twitter.com/geoallison/status/1453317539090640905

The account @ArgyllSeaGlass also captured some video, I fully recommend following their account to see the comings and goings on the Clyde.

The vessel is operated by ‘NavyX’, the Royal Navy’s experimentation group.

According to a Royal Navy news release from March when the vessel joined the fleet.

“Named Madfox (Maritime Demonstrator For Operational eXperimentation), it is derived from technology firm L3Harris’ Mast-13 vessel, which for the past 18 months has been operated by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) on a series of trials with the Royal Navy. Since being delivered, NavyX has been working hard to get Madfox to sea and ready to begin a demanding year of testing.”

Over the next few months, the Royal Navy say that NavyX will carry on its work with the Uncrewed Surface Vessel.

Commander Antony Crabb, NavyX team leader, was quoted as saying:

“With Madfox now directly in the hands of NavyX, the team will be able to explore a multitude of issues such as safety, regulatory compliance, new missions, new payloads and the role that a USV can play in complex operations and within the future fleet.”

What’s more, the vessel recently launched a missile during NATO’s biggest autonomous war games exercise, you can read more about that here.

Royal Navy drone boat launches missile

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

12 COMMENTS

    • Assume the vessel can be nominally manned when necessary / appropriate. Great to get this stuff out and tested early…technology moves so fast.

      This drone with a robot fitted with an integral gravity pack coming to a boarding near you sometime soon !

  1. Talking of drones, the bbc has an article on the RRS Sir David Attenborough (which has some brilliant inaccuracies) but it’s got pictures of It’s sub surface drones that have been called boaty Mcboatface. Love it.

  2. Clearly there is a lot of work being done with this craft. Interesting that safety was the first thing mentioned by Commander Crabb in his quote. A boat that size isn’t going to present a huge threat to other vessels so a relatively low risk way to test the technology in a range of hazard simulating scenarios in the real world before migrating to a larger heavier platform. This demonstrates a sensible appraoch to risk management whilst still getting a lot of data and information that will be directly applicable to future developments.

    The interesting bits to most of us on here, me included, are the new missions and new payloads, but I guess we won’t hear too much about them for quite sometime. Really hoping that the NavyX team has a successful year as I think the RN is pinning a lot on this technology for its future capability. The recent missile firing trial appears to have been successful and hints at at least one role for small boats i.e. supporting commando raids with direct / indirect fires. Quite a feather in the dstl / NavyX teams’ cap.

    Interesting times.

    Cheers CR

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