The Ministry of Defence has published a formal pipeline notice for “Project CABOT – ATLANTIC NET,” marking the next step toward fielding a fleet of autonomous sub-hunting vessels in the North Atlantic.
Previously reported by the UK Defence Journal, Project CABOT represents the Royal Navy’s long-term effort to digitise anti-submarine warfare (ASW) through uncrewed surface and subsurface platforms. The newly issued Prior Information Notice, published on 30 May 2025, confirms that the first phase of the programme is entering its early procurement stage.
The contract, estimated at up to £20 million over 4.5 years, outlines the delivery of “ASW as a service” using a Contractor Owned, Contractor Operated, Naval Oversight (COCONO) model. The Ministry of Defence intends to work with industry partners to deploy lean-crewed, remotely operated, or autonomous uncrewed systems. These would gather acoustic data and relay it to a secure Remote Operations Centre (ROC), where Royal Navy personnel will analyse it using AI- and machine learning-assisted tools.
The new notice builds on previous MOD documentation outlining how CABOT’s ATLANTIC NET phase aims to increase persistence and mass at sea. The goal is to create a distributed network of autonomous systems to cover the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap — a critical maritime chokepoint for detecting Russian submarine movements.
As the MOD previously described, CABOT will “accelerate the RN’s pivot to autonomy with a specific focus on Anti-Submarine Warfare,” complementing crewed platforms and relieving pressure on traditional Royal Navy vessels by assigning routine monitoring tasks to automated systems.
This work follows earlier progress under Project CHARYBDIS and the Defence Innovation Unit’s “ASW Spearhead” programme. It also draws on progress made under NATO’s Smart Defence initiative to establish an automated ASW barrier using digital, networked platforms.
Project CABOT will be delivered in two stages. Phase One – ATLANTIC NET, now in early market engagement, will use commercial providers to operate surveillance platforms with Royal Navy oversight.
Phase Two – BASTION ATLANTIC is intended to bring those capabilities into direct Royal Navy control. Under this phase, the MOD envisions using government-owned Type 92 Sloop drone ships and Type 93 Chariot autonomous submarines, supported by additional underwater sensors and underwater battlespace denial tools developed in the UK.
While the pipeline notice does not represent a final contract award, it confirms that the UK is pressing forward with procurement preparation — and with it, a new model of maritime surveillance.
If fully implemented, Project CABOT will dramatically improve the UK’s ability to detect and track submarines over vast distances with reduced reliance on crewed assets.
Trying to do the job on the cheap.
Depends if that means cheap and nasty or cheaper and good enough… Far too much gold plating in the defence procurement world.
Cheers CR
May not be that cheap.. but if it gives the option to return to mass then that is a good thing.. we cannot have enough T26s to cover the whole high north and North Atlantic.. but if we had a huge number of drones that could cue the Poseidons thats a good thing…
ASW is lacking esp wrt PRC/RU operations.
£20 million over five years, this will be prefect if the job is to open up a number of staff positions and get a few jollies in to look at “solutions”
Likely Fathom UA sea gliders
Privete contractors for operations? Why? Maybe we’re going to use a Chinese company.
Phase 2 will be GOMO.
GOCO, COCO, COGO I know…now we have a COCONO to add!
As long as it’s not Coco the Clown !! Showing my age now !
Is that like gnocchi.. I like gnocchi.
I love Gnocchi! You should get yourself to Taramina in Bayswater for that, best I’ve had. Brother in Laws best mate owns it, and my Dad worked there in the 60s so I’m biased….
I will give it try if I’m ever around the Bayswater area..
The phase two is just a concept but that’s where the real hard power and weapons systems delivery comes in.
If the RN can get a fleet of drone hunter killers out to sea able to provide enduring patrol patterns and resilience that’s one quick way to add mass to the submarine fleet. A drone sub could also conceivably be adapted for special forces deployment and recovery.
The type 92 Sloop motherships have been discussed to death years ago within the Black Swan sloop of war concepts. I think everyone agrees a highly automated sloop with optional minimal crewing is an excellent idea. The RN could easily deploy 20 such vessels if their crewing requirements is under 20 personnel each
If you Google search type 92 sloop and click onto the UK defence forum .net page you’ll get a decent bit of information on the proposal
Correction. Type 92 sloop is intended to be larger than RFA Sterling Castle as that vessel has been shown to be too small to support operations with USVs/ USSVs.
So something at least 80m and +4000 tons is required.
They’ll be large unmanned or minimally optionally manned.
I had a nice pictograph and link but can’t seem to be able to upload it.
Thales/ Stellar systems trimaran TX series looks like a viable contender for the type 92 sloop design
T92 isn’t the mothership, it’s the USV itself!
If you’ve had a look at the UKDF site, you’ll see that the consensus was for a small towed array ship, probably SWATH of about 40m length.
It would be very difficult to have both the “hunters” and the mothership unmanned.
George.. you need a better picture for these articles… every time you use this picture I keep getting taken back to those really bad radio controlled boats on small ponds they used to have at the sea side….
Me too!!! Then I visualise the waves in the Atlantic and those toy boats!
Hi DM,
This is SailorBoy, I’ve changed my name partly to avoid the shenanigans that have been happening over the past few weeks and also because I thought it might be time to leave the obviously childish name behind. There was a bit of a gap with no comments, because the moderator for UKDJ has been away, but got it working again in time for the SDR
Thought it might be useful for a few people to know before plunging back into the comments with a completely new identity (though same avatar).
There you are!!!
I’d wondered where you’d gone, assumed you’d gone on holiday and nothing untoward had occurred.
Good to know. 👍
I wish I was on holiday!
How are you, DM? Hope life’s treating you well
Thanks mate.
Life is busy, I’m looking forward to giving up full time work and having a life!
I do fine the whole type 9x concept fascinating and I think they are likely to be more that a lot of people imagine
The discussions on the T91 arsenal ship and T92 ASW ship seem to actually revolve around a 4000ton + set of hulls that are minimally manned or autonomous, but with reasonable good systems… that are focus on the one thing only.
Wasn’t sure where to put this but of the recent treads this was about drones albeit sea based so here goes.
Yesterday warfare changed again when the Ukrainians with I assume our help played a blinder. Based apparently according to Ukrainian intelligence on 18 months work.
They send at least 4 legit civilian trucks/vans into locations around 1,500m from 4 major Russian airfields. In their false ceilings were many fiber guided autonomous FPV drones. At the appropriate times they were launched targeting aircraft striking and destroying 3x Tu-142MS and 2x Tu-122M strategic bombers. Great work.
But it is a two edged sword as virtually all NATO airfields including ours are likely vulnerable to similar attacks. As strike aircraft are might be regarded as a more important asset than say tanks on the new drone heavy battlefield are we going to see soldiers moved into airfield protection roles?
In fact almost every significant military site has just become potentially vulnerable in a way the weren’t before.
This is discussed on the SNP/Labour Glasgow shipbuilding thread.
All the Russians have to do is creep up & pinch 1 or 2 & they’ll soon reverse engineer & steal the tech.