A former Royal Navy commodore has warned that the Hybrid Navy will not succeed simply by buying autonomous ships and drones, arguing that communications, software, command systems and logistics must become the core of the programme.
The Royal Navy risks turning its Hybrid Navy concept into another collection of separately procured platforms unless it builds the digital, command and logistics architecture needed to connect them, according to a new analysis by a former senior naval officer, the UK Defence Journal understands.
Writing for the Royal United Services Institute, Commodore (Ret’d) Steve Prest argues that the emphasis on autonomous surface vessels, large uncrewed underwater vehicles and drones risks obscuring the more difficult task of creating the infrastructure that allows those systems to operate as an integrated fighting force. Prest, a RUSI Associate Fellow in Military Sciences, describes the Hybrid Navy as an ecosystem rather than a programme for replacing crewed warships with robotic equivalents.
He writes: “The temptation is to see Hybrid Navy as a programme to deliver autonomous ships. That would be a profound misunderstanding. Autonomous vessels are not the point; they are simply the most visible applications of a much bigger idea.”
The distinction matters because the Royal Navy’s emerging Hybrid Navy concept envisages crewed warships operating alongside increasing numbers of autonomous and remotely operated systems. Prest argues that simply procuring each new platform through separate programmes could reproduce the same organisational boundaries found in the existing Fleet, only with a different mix of hardware. Separate architectures, proprietary interfaces and isolated support arrangements could leave individual systems unable to generate the combined operational effect envisaged by the concept.
Prest writes: “There is a real danger that Hybrid Navy simply recreates the traditional acquisition model using different platforms.” He argues that replacing independently procured frigates, submarines and helicopters with independently procured surface drones, underwater vehicles and artificial intelligence would amount to a digital version of the existing fleet rather than a fundamentally different force.
At the centre of his proposal is what he describes as a maritime operating system. Rather than a single software package, this would encompass digital infrastructure, resilient communications, command and control, cloud services, cyber resilience, common data standards, artificial intelligence, software deployment, digital engineering and logistics. In this model, individual crewed and uncrewed platforms become nodes connected through a wider fighting architecture.
Prest argues that the Maritime Fighting Web, already identified as a central element of the Royal Navy’s future force, should form part of that architecture but requires greater clarity and resources. He writes that discussion about future ship classes risks becoming a distraction from what he describes as the “cognitive architecture” governing where decisions are made, what information is available and how weapons, sensors and autonomous systems interact.
He states: “Uncrewed, or even Autonomous, systems are not the operating system. They are applications running on it.” Prest argues that an autonomous vessel provides little additional combat power by itself, with its value instead depending on connectivity to communications networks, edge computing, artificial intelligence, mission data, logistics and command systems.
The commentary also proposes a practical test of whether the Royal Navy is developing that architecture quickly enough. Prest suggests demonstrating a disaggregated air-defence engagement in which a Sea Ceptor missile is fired by one ship against a target detected and tracked solely by the sensors of another platform, rather than by the firing ship itself.
He asks: “So, when is the first demonstration of, say, a Sea Ceptor missile engaging a target tracked only by an accompanying Type 45 destroyer and not from its ship’s own onboard sensors?” Prest argues that Britain should demonstrate such an engagement by the end of 2026, noting that it would test a fundamental assumption behind a distributed combat system without requiring an entirely new class of ship.
Should go without saying that we need to avoid being locked into an ‘armed services as a service’ model at all costs but there you go.
How are these drone ships going to dock, especially if visiting overseas? Will they be tied up separately against the mother vessel or independently? There could be a a need for an accompanying and assisting tender type mothership for these LUSV/drones? We’re not sure of the CCV layout and drones carried on-board but for the larger drones, maybe a repurposing of the Elliade Strike MRSS that could be a dock-at-sea for LUSVs and other drones where they can be refuelked, repaired or rearmed?
I would go much further and suggest a layered, fully-integrated system that covered: sea surface, sub-sea, land, air, exo-atmosphere, space, Intelligence, and cyber for the defence of the UK. Many lessons to be learnt from WWII and Ukraine so the Dowding-type system of sectors and multiple redundancies. This would include underground facilities – especially for command nodes – with at least two main command battle hubs that integrated everything. (e.g. High Wycombe, Corsham etc.) This would be a UK stand-alone thing and not reliant on NATO – especially the US – but obviously feed to NATO if needed.
Realistically, I suppose uncle Andy will just have a couple of blokes with a laptop in a tent at Marham.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the comparison with the Dowding-system. Spitfires, Hurricanes, radars, control stations, observer corps posts, the lot, all inter-depended and relied on each other. The fighter planes, like the LUSVs of the hybrid navy, are just the front-of-shop window item.
Lol. Is this a realisation that you can’t just buy any old random autonomous vessels from chummy suppliers and expect to intergrate them without spending significant time + resources on the actual act of intergration?
… So much modern tech is a flop and deserves the dustbin due to propietary interfaces that age faster than warm milk. It also causes issues with decommisioning. Fine if you are happy regularly spending fortunes on what becomes landfill. Not fine if you have a budget and want a lasting product with good shelf life.
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More to the point who is going to give the engage order? Someone is going to carry the can if mr cock up is available.
I was in the simulators in Collingwood not so long ago during CDTT weeks the staff captain asked one of the fresh out of the box PWO’s explain your actions and why and what do I say in the courts when your act was deemed illegal?
Weapons malfunction?
Generator failures?
Cooling plant failures.]?
RAS?