New details have been released on the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Bastion programme, the UK’s developing anti-submarine warfare network in the North Atlantic.
Responding to a written parliamentary question on 4 November, Defence Minister Luke Pollard confirmed that capability options submitted for inclusion in the Defence Investment Plan “include a blend of uncrewed systems, underwater payloads, options to increase lethality, and improvements to crewed platforms.”
Pollard said the proposals align with the government’s plan to transition toward a Hybrid Navy, combining crewed and autonomous assets. “These are consistent with the transition to a Hybrid Navy and reflect industry maturity to deliver, as set out in the Strategic Defence Review,” he told MPs.
The statement follows earlier remarks by Defence Minister Al Carns, who described Atlantic Bastion as “a portfolio of programmes to secure the North Atlantic for the UK and in support of NATO against a range of underwater threats.”
As previously reported, the Royal Navy’s new Type 26 frigates will form the backbone of the Bastion concept. Each ship is designed to deploy uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles from its mission bay, acting as a command node within a wider acoustic surveillance network.
This architecture will link warships, submarines, and maritime patrol aircraft through AI-assisted data fusion, creating what officials call a “digitally networked picture” of underwater activity. The system is being developed in parallel with AUKUS research into autonomous maritime technologies and NATO’s Baltic Sentry initiative.
The projects aim to strengthen Britain’s capacity to detect and counter submarine threats in contested waters.
So Frigate numbers are being cut….
Let’s be realistic the fleet was never going to grow.
Every ship, aircraft, or tank in service is liable to be sold/retired by this anti-British government.
Not necessarily. We will need a base number of T26 to make this work. Not sure the numbers could be cut much further. What these drones offer is a method of covering a far wider area with only a relatively small increase in kit and expense.
I name these boats “Ocean Droplets”.
They are small drops in a vast Ocean.
all this guff is to reinforce the knowledge of the navy having to few ship in some ways high tech and complicated to produce quickly all the drone talk is interesting but it doesn’t fool anybody more T31 should be ordered
some of the vessels could surely be built in faster gto produce, composite materials other than steel. its yet another opportunity to think outside the box and innovate, like our navy used to be renowned for.
So despite the tech, lets be honest here. HMG won’t fund an expansion of the escort force which is sorely needed, and judging by a Navy Look out article may be about to be cut further to prioritise sales to Norway ( what else, when they always put money to the MIC above the military need. )
So lets go for a cheaper version with a hybrid navy of vessels which don’t yet exist and the real warships that do continue to fall apart.
Yes? Come on Healey, be honest.
I wouldn’t take NL too seriously at the moment, given their source for said claim was ‘rumours’. The quality of the articles has been trending towards speculation, I’m starting to prefer Naval News and/or EDR as the more accurate sources of news.
The Norwegians have a limit on how many frigates they can operate – the RN couldn’t simply keep selling them. Given all the talk of a 13-ship task force, we can fairly confident 13 will be built, and that 8 will go to the RN. There’s just not the option to sell them on to the Norwegians.
Hi Leh.
I’m sorry, EDR?
European Defence Review. They’re a little smaller, I think, and post less often, but it’s been exclusively good stuff in my experience.
The main disadvantage of those two sites is that they’re European-wide, meaning you lose the close-up coverage of British matters.
Thank you.
Same here, the articles on NL are now often extremely biased opinion pieces though the ‘in focus’ summary articles are very good.
And the comments are way too toxic and/or patronising for a sensible discussion, and it isn’t just WIZ.
It’s a very good thing UKDJ recovered when it did.
an far faster to produce
Within there was “ improvements to crewed platforms” now this is in regards to the Atlantic bastion which is essentially an ASW function.. because Russia has sod all else that could fight its way into the Atlantic. So what improvements are we looking at.. there is no real way to improve the ASW capability of the type 26.. all you can do is simply fill its mk41 siloes with the correct weapons and that is not an improvement.. are they looking at the type 31 ? It would not be inconceivable to equip it with a thin line towed array and maybe an active hull sonar.