The Ministry of Defence is asking industry for missile silos capable of operating aboard uncrewed vessels and remaining ready to fire for at least 30 days without any physical human interaction, according to a request for information issued to suppliers.
The RFI, titled Future Integrated Air and Missile Defence Silos and published on the Defence Sourcing Portal on 27 May with responses now due by 13 July, states that current and planned maritime missile launcher and silo systems “carry substantial platform design and integration work, require high levels of maintenance and operator interaction, and are not optimised for remote operations in the Hybrid Navy onboard Uncrewed Surface Vessels.”
The department is seeking information on developed and conceptual high-performance launchers with low maintenance demands, capable of operating on both crewed platforms and USVs, able to fire current effectors such as the CAMM and Aster families or similar while remaining compatible with future weapons.
An update issued on 30 June widens the ambition beyond air defence. The clarification tells suppliers still preparing responses that “a pillar of IAMD is a Strike capability” and that the department “would value responses which include Strike in the capability of future silo,” indicating that the launchers under consideration are intended to fire offensive weapons as well as air defence interceptors. As secondary learning, the RFI also seeks containerisation options to minimise platform integration complexity, and solutions achieving 90 per cent component commonality between maritime and land domain variants, pointing towards a common launcher family serving ships, uncrewed vessels and ground-based air defence alike.
The requirement reflects how existing systems work. The Royal Navy’s current silos, the Sylver launchers firing Aster from the Type 45 destroyers and the vertical launch cells carrying Sea Ceptor on the frigate fleet, are integrated deeply into their host ships and depend on embarked crews for maintenance, checks and firing, an arrangement incompatible with vessels that have no one aboard.
A silo able to hold weapons at readiness for a month unattended is the enabling technology for the missile-carrying uncrewed platforms envisaged in the Defence Investment Plan, which ministers have described as including missile barges and sensor platforms sailing alongside crewed warships. The RFI documentation is issued under the FADS Hybrid Navy title, understood to refer to the Future Air Defence System, the effort to define the air defence architecture that will follow the Type 45s, which a senior defence official confirmed this week will retire from 2035 without life extension.
The document is explicit that the exercise is market analysis rather than the start of a procurement, stating the activity “is not intended to prepare industry for any specific future procurement” and that information gathered will inform Hybrid Navy and joint force IAMD development within the MOD.
Remote systems have advanced at a rapid rate, and I’m sure they are about to go stratospheric. The notion of firing weapons remotely will require extraordinary engineering backed up with AI, but it will be done as both China and Russia double their efforts in this field. We are about to witness seismic naval developments quickly matched by remote land systems.
How secure will communicating orders to drone ships be?