First Sea Lord drives Royal Navy overhaul: hybrid fleet, cutting-edge innovation and a 2029 goal for complete warfighting capability.
defence24.com
Just like John Lee Pettimore.... First Sea Lord is back with a brand new plan.
"uncrewed wherever possible; crewed only where necessary.”
"a 2029 warfighting‑ readiness goal for the whole of the Royal Navy."
Atlantic Bastion to protect sensitive waters and NATO sea lines.
Atlantic Shield to strengthen air defence across the UK’s northern approaches, with uncrewed escorts contributing to layered protection
Atlantic Strike to guarantee credible maritime strike options, including a carrier‑borne uncrewed fast‑jet demonstrator developed with the RAF.
Why is the High-North so prominent in the overall strategy?
The High-North is of critical importance for the following areas:
Strategic importance: Melting Arctic ice is now opening new routes whilst Russia’s Northern Fleet expands its submarine and missile reach across the Barents and Norwegian Seas. Undersea cables and energy routes raise the obvious risk of hybrid disruption in both peace and war.
Alliance integration: UK Commando Forces are re‑rolling for Arctic operations alongside Norwegian and Dutch partners, building on the many valuable lessons from Ukraine for effectively mastering dispersed and digitally connected warfare.
Operational response: Atlantic Bastion sensors extend surveillance deeper into the High North. Future Carrier Strike Group cycles will incorporate Arctic training as a key capability. Commando Force modernisation enabling rapid, resilient operations in extreme environments.
The Defence Industry- an integral partner and enabler (Edit - Defence as PPP)
In the context of the Atlantic
Bastion concept, at
DSEI, Jenkins praised industry for its tremendous example when compared to other key players. He said,
”For every pound we have invested, industry has invested four”, which amounts to approximately £500 million in research and development investment. He linked this directly to the commercial potential of maritime autonomy, projecting a global market of £350 billion and presenting
Bastion as an engine of national growth.
Instead of over‑specifying requirements up‑front, the Navy has issued what it wants specific capabilities to be able to do and then has left the rest for industry innovators to realise. In this way it has adopted a commercial as‑a‑service approach, so industry can iterate and innovate solutions quickly by working with the Navy’s test and experimentation ecosystem. This is a shift in approach in order to deliver capability at the pace of technology development and by not entangling industry in the all too familiar bureaucratic inertia of the past.
Early „seed corn” funding of roughly £14 million has already unlocked strong private match funding (around 4:1), with 26 firms submitting sensor proposals and 20 companies demonstrating prototypes. In this way initial systems are planned to be in the water in 2026 and scaling thereafter. Conceptually,
Bastion revives the idea of persistent undersea coverage, something akin to a mobile, distributed successor to Cold War SOSUS, but with unmanned endurance, AI classification and multi‑domain integration that enables faster, coordinated responses when threats are detected.
Edit: Urgency
"On the open sea, uncrewed escorts will operate alongside high‑end capabilities such as Type 26 frigates, adding sensors, decoys and weapons capacity while increasing task‑group mass, all at lower cost and shorter build times. General Jenkins set out publicly an ambitious near‑term goal to have the first of these escorts in the water within two years. It was not lost on many commentators, that finally a decision maker is not talking of vague future intentions but setting measurable targets for which he is prepared to be accountable."
.....
Are our schedule and aspirations compatible?
He seems to be leaving the North Atlantic west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to us and the Americans.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
www.navalnews.com
en.defence-ua.com
www.navylookout.com
www.naval-technology.com
