Royal Navy

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.

When the first of the Royal Navy's Dreadnought-class nuclear missile submarines takes to the sea in this decade, the same fly-by-wire technology used in aircraft will be used to control all the major facets of the boat's maneuvering.

The Royal Navy is ready to begin operational training of its new Merlin "Crowsnest" Airborne Surveillance And Control (ASaC) helicopter as it prepares for the aircraft's first deployment aboard the supercarrier HMS Queen Elizabeth later this year.

The Royal Navy has officially received a new autonomous vessel. The Maritime Demonstrator For Operational eXperimentation (Madfox) will go through a year of testing by the Autonomy and Lethality Accelerator, NavyX, before entering regular service.

HMS Victory, which has been in dry dock for almost a century, is once again "afloat" – but not on the water. It is being supported by a high-tech system that mimics the pressure of the sea pushing against the vessel's hull and keel.

BAE Systems has won a US$4 million contract to supply the British Royal Navy with autonomous Pacific 24 (P24) boats. The P24 Unmanned is a 25.6 ft-long Rigid Inflatable Boat that can reach 38 knots and operate for 45 hours at patrol speed.