First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins used his DSEI 2025 speech to set out an ambitious vision for the future of carrier aviation, pledging that uncrewed aircraft will soon sit alongside traditional jets in the Royal Navy’s strike groups.
“That is not just for the Navy – but for UK industry as well. We want you to become the world’s leading exporter of autonomous vessels, as well as building the best warships in the world – as we’ve seen with the £10 billion Norway deal,” he told industry leaders.
He underlined the urgency of the shift. “Let me be really clear – this is not an aspiration for some distant point in the future. It is a necessity now.”
Jenkins set a principle to guide the fleet’s transformation: “uncrewed wherever possible; crewed only where necessary.” He said this marked “not just a technological shift – it is a strategic transformation in how we project power, preserve lives, and adapt to the pace of modern warfare.”
The First Sea Lord said the Royal Navy would pioneer “Hybrid Airwings by the end of this decade, leading NATO nations in a new way of air warfare from the maritime.” By the time the UK’s Carrier Strike Group sails again to the Indo-Pacific, he predicted, “its Carrier Air Wing will be almost unrecognisable – a fusion of crewed and uncrewed platforms, optimised for speed, survivability, adaptability and combat power.”
Jenkins confirmed that the transition is already under way. “We intend to launch the first jet-powered collaborative platform drone as a concept demonstrator off a Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier as soon as next year,” he announced.
I hate speeches by senior officers.
Yada yada yada
Buy some kit.
As my dad would’ve said:” piss or get off the pot”.
Your dad was a very eloquent man. 😁
this will likely just be banshee being launched on a test with F35,
There is no jet powered carrier drone under development.
Even if there was it could not launch without a catapult and it certainly wont be able to land.
No one has secretly built a STOVL jet powered drone that’s ready to deploy next year.
Banshee has been tested on several occasion off the QE class. So all they need to do is link it with the F35 and they will say job done.
Sadly I think you are right.
Unless something very quiet has been going on.
Hi SB
It terms of the aircraft not impossible, after all Taranis Technology demonstrator was kept under wraps for quite sometime, but if he is talking about a full sized drone it will need to be a STOVL airframe of it ain’t going to fly from a QE class carrier.
I have been curious about why British defence companies have been investing so heavily recently, especially on the maritime front, despite the lack of firm orders. I can only conclude that they have been given some kind of signal that things were going to improve for them or may be they have just been way better at reading the geopolitical landscape than the politicians, which is entirely believable. So perhaps there is something in the pipeline.
I would not be at all surprised to find that someone somewhere has been bolting together a STOVL drone and loaded a computer onto it with appropriate software. It could be quite a small airframe designed and built to prove the software works, which is the key to unlocking the potential. In which case a small enough STOVL or even a small conventional airframe might indeed be possible next year. After all the article on here about the RN’s new drone submarine said ‘whiteboard to water’ took just 11 months, so why not the same for an aircraft?
If the dearth of recent orders is followed by a surge in orders for uncrewed stuff across the forces I’ll be happy, for now at least.
We’ll see.
Cheers CR
I totally agree with that.
I’d be surprised if the TANARIS project was totally shuttered IRL as it developed some really useful tech for other things.
“I have been curious about why British defence companies have been investing so heavily recently”
To sell something in a hot market innovation is required. We have a live testing / proving ground provided by Mr Zelsinski with targets provided by Mad Vlad Putin. As there is a hungry market for weapons systems and profits are booming in defence why not create better newer things to sell at a profit?
Maritime is something different and I think letters of comfort were issued to the ship builders as well as the commercial export possibilities lead to a lot of planning for increases in volumes.
What about the MQ-1C?
Indeed the Gray Eagle STOL as it’s now called has done take off/landing on the PoW. Although this article refers to a jet powered drone. So…
GA Gambit could probably take off over the ski jump and there already exists deployable arrestor gear that could presumably be set up on deck. You are, however, probably correct in your assessment and the deployment will just be a rehash of the Banshee trial.
Bayraktar Kızılelma is a jet powered drone that could operate from the QE class, maybe with QLZ in refit & PWLS due after, work to facilitate the operation of this type is in the pipeline, I’m being optimistic, but who knows?
It doesn’t need a catapult so could operate from the QE class as-is, though some tweaking may be necessary for it to use the ski-jump. It has as arrestor hook allowing it to land on Turkey’s amphibious assault ships, but with the longer deck of the QE class this may not be necessary.
How do you land a UAV without a CATOBAR carrier? How do they propose to recover the UAV? Fish it out of the ocean or catch it with a butterfly net?