/ Surface
Uncrewed surface vessel
A long-endurance hull carrying acoustic, RF and electro-optical sensors, with the power and antenna height to relay a picture ashore. Designed to hold station in a sea state that would exhaust a crew.
Maritime systems
Uncrewed vessels for the watch the Atlantic now demands.
Surface and underwater platforms that deploy themselves, navigate without satellites, and hold a persistent picture over the waters that matter most to Britain.
The problem
Too much sea, too few hulls.
Anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic is a numbers problem. The Greenland–Iceland–UK gap is the chokepoint through which submarine traffic must pass, and watching it continuously with crewed warships alone is neither affordable nor sustainable.
The answer the Royal Navy has set out is a high-low mix: a smaller number of exquisite crewed platforms, backed by large numbers of cheaper uncrewed systems that supply mass and persistence. That is exactly the gap our vessels are built to fill.
GIUK gapNorwegian SeaSea lines of communicationCritical undersea infrastructureMaritime chokepoints
Mass and persistence at sea, at a cost that scales.
The platforms
Two complementary classes.
A surface vessel for endurance, communications and sensing on the waterline; an underwater vehicle for the quiet work below it. They share an autonomy stack, a navigation solution and a common picture.
/ Subsurface
Uncrewed underwater vehicle
A quiet, GNSS-denied platform for sustained subsurface sensing, navigating on inertial and acoustic methods and seabed terrain models when no satellite fix is available.
How a sortie runs
From tasking order to recovery, on its own.
- 01
Tasking
An operator ashore issues an area and an intent — not a waypoint-by-waypoint route. The platform works out its own passage.
- 02
Transit
It self-deploys, deconflicts with shipping under the international collision regulations, and adapts the plan to weather and current as it goes.
- 03
On task
It holds station or runs a search pattern, fusing sensor feeds on board and surfacing only ranked, classified contacts over a thin link.
- 04
Decide
A detection cues a human. The operations centre confirms, tasks a response, or holds — the authority stays ashore.
- 05
Recover
On low power or new orders, it routes home and recovers, logging the full sortie for assurance and replay.
NavigationInertial + acoustic + terrain-aided
GNSS dependenceNone for primary fix
AutonomyMission-level, layered fallback
Collision avoidanceCOLREGs-compliant by design
CommsResilient, low-bandwidth tolerant
SustainmentUK assembly & support
Navigation, without the satellites
Knowing where you are when nothing will tell you.
GNSS is the first thing jammed and the last thing available underwater. Our navigation solution treats a satellite fix as a bonus, not a requirement.
The platform continuously calculates position from inertial measurement, speed through water, depth, acoustic references and a model of the seabed beneath it, cross-checking each source against the others. The result is a position estimate that holds together through jamming, spoofing and a long dive — with a known, reported confidence rather than a false certainty.