Royal Navy

The Royal Navy has awarded a £15.4-million (US$18.9-million) contract to MSubs to build a cutting-edge robotic submarine, called Cetus, that will be the largest in Europe and will be capable of diving deeper than conventional submarines.

The first of the Royal Navy's Type 26 City Class frigates, HMS Glasgow, has begun a very slow launch, which will see it shifted onto a special barge before being slowly lowered into the water in an operation that will take days.

The Royal Navy's 700X Naval Air Squadron has completed intensive testing of heavy-lift drones at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, UK, to determine their fitness for resupplying aircraft carriers and other frontline naval operations.

Britain's supercarrier HMS Prince of Wales has become the first surface ship to be equipped with a state-of-the-art atomic clock as it departs for the Exercise Cold Response 2022 NATO joint exercises off the north coast of Norway.

Filling a gap in the UK Carrier Strike Group screen protecting the supercarrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, a Royal Navy Wildcat helicopter successfully fired new Martlet lightweight missiles for the first time during frontline operations.

The Royal Navy's latest supercarrier, HMS Prince of Wales, has launched jet-propelled drones from its flight deck for the first time as an experiment to see if autonomous aircraft can replace crewed fighters in simulated in-coming attack exercises.

A major shipbuilding program for the Royal Navy is now underway, with the first steel being cut for HMS Venturer, the lead ship of the Type 31 Inspiration class frigates, which will replace the navy's aging Type 23 frigates.

The British Ministry of Defence has given three four-year contracts worth £72.5 million to consortia led by Thales and Raytheon UK to develop laser and radio frequency demonstrator weapons to be mounted on Royal Navy ships and British Army vehicles.

The Royal Navy has released an outline of its vision of how its Future Autonomous Fleet will operate over the next half century, including green aircraft carriers, underwater command centers, and robotic warships.

On Horsea Lake at the Defence Diving School, Portsmouth, the Royal Navy is testing the Otter Pro, a robotic boat designed to survey uncharted waters as part of an investigation into the use of uncrewed vessels for military surveying operations.

The Royal Navy's NavyX autonomy accelerator team and private companies Malloy Aeronautics and Planck Aerosystems have been testing the potential for heavy-lift Minerva drones to locate and aid sailors that have fallen overboard until help can arrive.

In a NATO exercise off the coasts of Scotland and Norway involving more than 3,000 military personnel, the Royal Navy has used artificial intelligence to help counter live-fire supersonic missile attacks in sea trials for the first time.