Source · Select Committees · Defence Committee
Recommendation 28
28
Paragraph: 198
The Navy is moving towards principles of modularity, autonomy and lethality in vessel design.
Conclusion
The Navy is moving towards principles of modularity, autonomy and lethality in vessel design. Modularity is likely to increase vessels’ capabilities and the potential roles they can play. In the future vessels may perform their roles supported by autonomous vessels to which they can act as motherships. The Navy should consider taking a distributed lethality approach to future fleet and vessel design, learning from the US Navy’s development of the concept.
Paragraph Reference:
198
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Response: The RN has been working alongside the US Navy to learn from its experience as it invests in crewed and uncrewed vessels and platform types that can conduct power projection and Distributed Maritime Operations. The RN is sharing lessons with US allies to ensure coherence in harnessing new technologies and adopting new ideas. Our concept for distributed lethality demands that systems should be developed and procured as enabling elements to deliver SENSE-DECIDE-EFFECT. These elements can then be distributed across a balanced and networked Fleet of mixed crewed and uncrewed warships, auxiliaries, aircraft, land vehicles and underwater vehicles. The RN has begun experimentation of this approach through the concept work on the mission modules from the Persistent Operationally Deployed System (PODS).