The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that GBP 14 million in combined government and industry funding has already been committed this year to testing and development work under the Atlantic Bastion programme.
In a series of written answers to James Cartlidge MP, Defence Minister Luke Pollard said the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan will set the funding envelope for the programme. He reiterated that Atlantic Bastion capability options submitted for consideration include “a blend of uncrewed systems, underwater payloads, options to increase lethality, and improvements to crewed platforms.”
Asked how much of the pre-concept funding had been spent, how many contracts had been signed and how many orders placed as of 11 February 2026, Pollard did not provide specific figures. Instead, he said that while detailed information could not be disclosed due to commercial sensitivity, there had been significant industry engagement.
He confirmed that “combined Ministry of Defence and industry investment of £14 million [has been] already committed this year to testing and development.”
Pollard added that 26 consortia from the UK and Europe have submitted proposals to develop anti-submarine sensor technology for the programme. He also stated that 20 companies, ranging from major primes to technology-focused SMEs, have already showcased technology demonstrators.
£14m wow whheeee – that’ll frighten Mad Vlad.
The Tangerine Genius does actually have a point about our defence spending. It is a total joke.
Agreed.
Whenever I see the concept art that George uses for the headline picture I’m reminded of toy boats zipping around the Serpentine.
For £14m all you will get are some simulations and concept art.
And a really really hyper effective power point presentation.. and we know what a massive deterrent power point presentations are.. especially if you can follow it up with a really cracking airfix model at a trade show.
You may be onto something there.
Putin collects scale model aircraft carriers so he could be influenced by a really good Airfix Atlantic bastion set?
For £14m it should be possible to 3D print one?
Or maybe PowerPoint is one of the new RN effectors? If you did a really long PowerPoint presentation it would bore the enemy into submission. I know I have stopped death-by-PowerPoint meetings……
I can see it now a whole new area of grey warfare.. Putin is having tiffin and suddenly the British ambassador is there with the defence attaché.. he’s assaulted with a 2 hour power point presentation with graphs and everything on the power of AI and small plastic boats..as they slip away his mind in turmoil as to how his SSNs will ever survive.. he notices the 500 piece bastion defence system model kit.. and for really nasty phycological warfare.. the treasury refused to fund the glue….. as secretary after secretary is defenestrated for not having any glue.. finally Putin gets to build his new model… in the mean time a decade has passed and Europe has built up its defences.
Can your partisan reflexivism get any more pathetic, your goal isn’t actually to critique the policy, but to undermine the party delivering it. It’s just cynical reductionism, you’ve taken the act of a complex, multi-layered initiative and boiled it down to its most underwhelming, ‘useless’ components to dismiss it.
Dismissing £14m of R&D as “concept art” is technically ignorant. In modern engineering, if you don’t spend that money on simulations, your £1bn ship will have a hull that cracks or a sonar that can’t tell a submarine from a whale OR you end up with a Type 45 Destroyer and its engines cutting out in warm water, which cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions to fix later.
I know you think Digital Twins, Digital Thread, Palantir’s “Warp Speed” and Siemens Teamcenter etc. are all ‘bullshit’, you have openly said that on this website in responses to my comments. You don’t pay a multi-billion dollar data firms to make pretty concept art drawings; you pay them to integrate the most complex supply chain and targeting data in the world.
To reach “millions of hours,” the MoD and its partners like Babcock use massive High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. They might run a complex fluid dynamics test on 10,000 cores simultaneously for 100 hours. That single test accounts for 1 million hours of “thinking” time. Importantly, they aren’t just looking at what the ship looks like; they are simulating how it behaves in the most violent scenarios possible.
With Computational Fluid Dynamics they Simulate how the hull moves through the North Atlantic in a Sea State 6. They run millions of variations to ensure the ship doesn’t capsize or lose speed.
Finite Element Analysis, subjects a ’ship’ to digital stress testing where they break the ship’s 3D model into millions of tiny cubes and simulate a near-miss’ from a heavy torpedo. They calculate exactly how the shockwave ripples through the metal to see if the engine mounts will snap or the pipes will burst.
For the Atlantic Bastion sub-hunters, they simulate how sound reflects off the hull. They run millions of hours of virtual sonar to make the ship as quiet as possible so it can see the Russian sub before the sub sees it.
Before you cut a single sheet of steel for a new sonar array or an autonomous sub, you run millions of hours of simulations. So the £14 million for Atlantic Bastion isn’t disappearing into a black hole; it’s being paid to British companies like BAE Systems, Babcock, and Thales. This money pays the salaries of hundreds of UK engineers and software developers and for the equipment they use.
To say “all you get is art” is to ignore the actual physical infrastructure of the UK’s defense industry. It’s a lie of omission, pretending that high-tech R&D doesn’t result in real-world jobs and intellectual property that we then sell on to our allies.
ffs grow up.
Maybe lighten up a bit?
I’d have thought it was pretty clear that Jonathan and I were riffing and sending up the lack of DIP.
BTW I’ve never commented on “ Palantir’s “Warp Speed” and Siemens Teamcenter etc.” so I’m not sure what you are talking about.
Simulations are absolutely vital. However, £14m doesn’t get a full design and a full simulation. It gets to test out some concepts.
You werent riffing with anyone at my comment insertion, your comment was second off the rank, you were being snide and contemptuous.
I have pointed out the benefits of the whole Digital Twins / Warp Speed and BIM concept to you on this site and you basically said it was all pie in the sky, and that they couldn’t make blocks with all the utilities, services just fit and that “If this is digital guff then without implementation it is just guff.” and “Yes, I have a BIM team. … But all the BIM in the world won’t make the duct and pipe ends disappear….unless they aren’t there!”
Remember. Well its all happening now.
The comment still stands in that unless it is implemented in build it us just a digital model.
Maybe the blocks are fully plumbed and ducted etc before assembly – there has been no visible evidence for this so far. I’d expect to see photos of pipe and duct ends with appropriate unions in place.
I’d be delighted if this was being delivered. I remain sceptical.
This £14m is just seedcorn funding to see what’s out there, what works and at what cost. Atlantic Bastion is just a PowerPoint slide show so far. To get it into the DIP, with a tangible.production plan.and funding stream, the staffs need to work through all the technical elements involved, the possible providers and the likely costs. There must be a big blank space holding up the DIP regarding funding for AB, as I doubt anyone really has a clue as to what the final bill will be.
Spending £14m on scoping the thing and putting some flesh on the bones sounds like money well spent. It’s essentially R&D at this stage. I would think a lot more will need to be spent over the coming year before they get to any kind of tangible working plan.
Exactly this.
14 mil? Well that’s the new chairs, furniture and various snacks sorted for the next 4 years “concept discussions” phase!