You owe me a new keyboard!
Spat my coffee out when it said to be delivered in ... WEEKS!
Royal Navy races to arm ships against drone threat
Britain's Royal Navy is urgently seeking a ship-based counter-drone system and recent world events likely explain why. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) from industry, to gather details and refine requirements ahead of a potential tender under the codename of Project TALON, as spotted by …
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 22:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
Then they will need to be able to deliver the result to Cyprus in 30mins or so and then install in another 30mins ... otherwise the ship will be arriving just to be a target ... as it will have NO defense against the Drones other than issuing catapults/Ball Bearings to all the Sailors.
:)
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:04 GMT Wellyboot
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
Yes for a small number of drones attacking at the same time, currently the relatively low cost of drones allows the ability to send enough to simply overload the defences.
The short term fix is to repeat the WW2 anti kamikaze tactics - quite literally filling any spare deck space with small auto-cannon* capable of firing proximity fused shells with multiple ships able to cover each other, it's the 'multiple ship' bit that the royal Navy isn't going to fix anytime soon.
*The Type-31 frigates under construction have one (forward) 57mm & two (one at each end) 40mm auto-cannon, a safer mix to account for system failures would be two & six giving multiple barrel coverage of any approach angle.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 11:17 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
Wellyboot,
While I agree with you that Type 31 should have 3 x 40mm, maybe even 4 (to account for failures), you should also remember that they're equipped with 2 x Phalanx 20mm as well. Plus they also have several .50 browning heavy machineguns - but I don't know if they've got the anti-drone sights for those. Plus they should get Dragonfire as well. And CAMM / Sea Ceptor is cheap enough that firing it at Shahed drones is a reasonable thing to do - which you might do if there's lots of them. Also Sea Ceptor minimum engagement range is only 1,000m - so you can even afford to fire at a bunch of drones, knowing you can lob missiles at them if they start getting uncomfortably close.
I also think we should equip the Navy with Martlet and Starstreak (Seastreak apparently has been designed but we didn't buy it).
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 14:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
I was once in the boss’s office of the company I was working for and we were discussing creating a prog to measure various server outputs and usage stats. We called in the most senior developer and asked them how they would do this. Both of us very surprised when he said he’d already written exactly the software we are talking about. It was only actually designed for the dev server as that was all he wanted it for. Would therefore need a tiny bit of work to get it to run on all of them not just the dev one. My boss immediately calls his PA and says says we will be in an offsite meeting for at least the next two hours.
He then explains to the two of us that we needed to discuss the technical requirements of this new software. Developer protests that he already has the thing ready to go and we do not need a meeting. Boss says of course we need a meeting as we have ‘so much to discuss.’ Developer starts to mention again that he already has the thing written when the boss cuts him off. “Look we’re having this lunch meeting in the pub and at the moment I’m buying. If you continue to protest……..”
Probably the most productive meeting we ever had
-
Monday 9th March 2026 12:21 GMT rgjnk
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
Done in weeks can be done, has been done, just isn't cheap & requires shedding a lot of process & paperwork.
Sea King AEW with Searchwater was done in 11 weeks, other stuff has also been turned around quickly.
It's not the engineering that takes the time, it's everything else.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 17:29 GMT Eclectic Man
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
Well, maybe this would do as a start: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cpv83ndmezno
"President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukrainian drone experts will arrive in the Middle East this week to help Gulf states under attack from Iran.
In recent days, Iran has fired a number of Shahed drones across the Middle East - and some air defences in the region have struggled to cope.
Ukraine has spent the last four years inventing cheap but effective ways of defending their skies from similar Russian strikes, and now some countries have come knocking on their door to ask for help.
The BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent, James Landale, is in Ukraine and has been to see the latest anti-drone technology the country has to offer."
-
Monday 9th March 2026 18:21 GMT Boris the Cockroach
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
In 19<cough> , I was part of a team tasked with developing <cough cough> as an urgent requirement for events in <cough cough>, luckily the guy in charge had a few ideas already <coughed> out, so he brought them down to the <cough cough> department<us lot>
It was built , tested, and bolted onto <cough cough> in 3 days from a standing start. with the admin and beancounters kept well away by liberal use of security clearances.
Thats how fast new things can be built if the will power is there.(and staff to work 18hr days)
Ps It took 3 months to sort the paperwork out afterwards... plus liberal doses of cough medicine
-
Monday 9th March 2026 21:55 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: You owe me a new keyboard!
They'll identify a suitable off-the-shelf product which can be delivered overnight.
But then there will be 39 pages of changes required to customise it for the special circumstances of the MoD, which will take a year to implement, and the end result will have a range of 25 feet, and cost $1m a shot.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 09:48 GMT Adam 73
RFI?
So you have identified a threat to your ships, you need to implement something ASAP and you have to issue an RFI first ............... glad procurement process appears top be more important than capability
This is the kind of thinking/knowledge that should just exist in your organisation because you employ competent people. They should have a working knowledge of what is out there in the market and a shortlist already of suppliers/equipment that they know have this capability, why do you need a "Request for Information"?
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 20:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: RFI?
You're missing Adam 73's point.
Back in the day, the MoD's internal staff could really do things. For example, consider this from Wikipedia's entry on the Blackburn Buccaneer and the 1st Gulf War:
"The Buccaneer took part in combat operations during the 1991 Gulf War. It had been anticipated that Buccaneers might need to perform in the target designation role, although early on, this had been thought to be "unlikely". Following a short-notice decision to deploy, the first batch of six aircraft were readied to deploy in under 72 hours, including the adoption of desert camouflage, and additional equipment, and departed from Lossiemouth for the Middle Eastern theatre early on 26 January 1991."
I happen to know that it was staff at RAE Farnborough that just cracked on with it, got the job done. That was a lot of system integration done on an aircraft in only 3 days. They could do it because 1) they were the right, experienced staff, 2) they had the equipment, tools, work space, etc. available to do the job, 3) they were well integrated into the MoD, everyone knew who they were and they knew the RAF. No need for a contract, just a few phone calls and it was done.
That is typically what used to be done for stuff that mattered and was needed fast. Tendering and contracts were for sorting out the improvisations properly, later.
Fast forward to the 2nd Gulf War, and all that in-house capability had gone. Add another 23 years, and there's no one left who even knew what was once possible or know how things can possibly be and what can be achieved. If all that's left is procurement staff, don't be surprised that the first thing they do when told to "get on with it" is to reach for their Invitation to Tender template. What else are they going to do? I also strongly suspect that - when it comes to procurement - there's few left who know what "good" looks like.
Even commentators such as yourself have become attuned to the notion that "only contractors can and should do anything", and have forgotten that - once - MoD really could do things for itself.
Reminders
There's been occassional reminders since.
Remember the fuss over the security arrangements at the London Olympics? G4S had the contract to supply security staff, but having ****ed up the contracts they'd got with said staff they were unable to supply on the contract when it came to it. It was a proper cluster. So, the Armed Services were called upon to supply security, and they did an excellent and thorough job. The irony was that - afterwards - it was found that the cost of using the armed services had been considerably less than G4S was contracted for.
The Minister at the time afterwards wrote a pretty glowing article in the papers thanking the service personnel (pretty much had to given the circumstances), but expanded on this by admitting to having had their fundamental thoughts rocked on what should / could be done in Gov and what should be in industry. Of course, that didn't result in a root and branch reconsideration of how the Gov runs itself...
Another one recently reported in The Register was some senior Cabinet Office type talking to a parliamentary committee on the slow roll out of some cyber security policy. They cited the dearth of expertise inside Gov. I think they said something along the lines of, "It's all very well saying 'get in contractors', but when the contractors are effectively permanent (as seems to be widespread) one might as well just employ the right people on the right salary in the first place and be done with it".
It's better still to have enough in-house work to provide the training ground for such personnel, because then you'll probably get such personnel simply via career momentum instead of via an expensive external recruitment cost and salary. That's what Toyota does, and they're a pretty good example of lean, mean cost efficiency.
Abroad
The UK Gov's self-inflicted divesture of all its in-house expertise and capability is not repeated elsewhere.
Consider France; there, their gov firmly and strongly believes in having such capabilities in house, and generally speaking in France you've got to be pretty damned good at what you do to get the senior jobs (and handsome salaries) in their government. The French civil service pays good money for the best in the country in certain areas of endeavour, and generally seems far better at having a vision of what's needed and getting it done.
Ok, perhaps they don't count the money so well, but that seems to matter less to them than it does to us Anglo Saxons...
Also, their roads don't suffer from potholes. Whereas we - the very country that invented tarmac - don't seem able to get a smooth stretch of it down and make it last anymore. The only difference is in organisation; the tarmac itself is the same...
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 11:09 GMT vtcodger
Re: RFI?
Interesting thought, but No -- that's not realistic.
This is presumably a shipboard system. That means it has to compact, operate off ship power, not interfere with other shipboard systems, operate in the Arctic in winter as well as the Persian Gulf in Summer, tolerate high humidity, survive salt water spray, and a bunch of other things. Not only that, I was told back in the day, that, in practice, pretty much every ship in the US Navy is unique. No two ships have exactly the same equipment complement or layout. Every install is custom. I expect the same is true of the royal navy.
Then there's the issue of installation. Probably has to be done in a shipyard. Which means scheduling time in the yard. For every ship in the navy. And getting the ships -- some of which may be on the other side of the planet back to the yard in an orderly and timely fashion.
Ans there's the matter of training the crew to use the system. Probably requires simulators and course materials and instructors that have some idea how the thing works.
And I won't even go into the issues on the production side of manufacturing and quality testing a bunch of units in a hurry.
Overall, weeks sounds like wishful thinking.
-
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 19:48 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: RFI?
We could probably shield half the RN surface fleet with Mone's multiple yachts.
What about her Ultimo Bras? Do they offer protection against drones in addition to the primary support function? Can we cover the RN surface fleet with them? Or fire them at drones? Anyone got the number for the Baroness?
Which reminds me of the film "Operation Petticoat", where various items of ladies undergarments were fired from a torpedo tube to stop friendly fire...
-
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 13:18 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: RFI?
Yeah, you'd think that they've thought about drone defense already, at least since the drone-dominated Ukraine war got under way.
Generals (and Admirals apparently) are always preparing to fight the previous war....
For fuck's sake! The design requirements for Type 31 were to be able to shoot down large numbers of swarming drones. And that was ordered in 2019! So 3 years before Ukraine was invaded - and therefore the design requirements finalised years before that! That's why it was armed with 2 x 40mm and 1 x 57mm guns - rather than a bigger 155mm main gun (5") - so that it could deal with large numbers of swarming drones.
Plus they've been working on Dragonfire for literally decades. Type 45 has just been updated with cheaper Sea Ceptor missiles, for shooting down cheaper targets at closer ranges and they've trialled a ship-launched Martlett system, which sadly did too much damage to other deck-mounted items and so would need a major re-design. Speculation was that this was because they tried to mount it to an existing 30mm mount - because then it could be cheaply retrofitted - rather than requiring a complex design for a whole new mount that would then need serious dock time to install all the required power and comms connections.
They've also built a drone training centre off the coast of Wales where they lob various flavours of drones at RN (and other NATO) ships, to see how they coat.
I know it's fashionable to pretend to be all-knowing, and that other people must be stupid for not be as wise as yourself. But a few minutes of research would show all this stuff up. The leadership of various NATO militaries have been regularly banging on about the future of drones in warfare for at least 15 years now.
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 11:33 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: RFI?
Could you then please explain why the Navy is requesting an anti-drone system for it's ships with such a short desired delivery time, as the article covers?
Pete Sdev,
It's all down to cost and range. This system is not primarily designed to defend the ship itself. The ships already have 3 or 4 different types of guns that can engage drones, they're procuring Dragonfire for extra pew-pew and they have electronic warfare systems and decoys. But all of that good stuff only defends a small bubble around the ship. Say 10km around you. Fine if you're in convoy or a naval task group, but bugger-all use if you get a call from an oil tanker 50 miles away that's under attack.
Sea Ceptor (CAMM) is reasonably cheap, more expensive than Shahed, but close enough. But that's not going further than 30km. Your helicopter can deploy with Martlet, but it can only stay on station for a limited time. That leaves only 2 systems available to the Navy. If carrier present, put up an F-35. If not, Type 45 has Sea Viper (Aster 30) - which can reach out to around 100km. But they're bloody expensive, and you don't want to use them on cheap crap drones - or even medium price ones. They're for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
Hence they want drone interceptors, or something like. That can extend the bubble of protection that the ship can exert over the horizon and out to 50-100km. Or in the case of Type 45 (which can already do that) - do so at a much cheaper cost. We used Aster/Sea Viper against Shaheds while fighting the Houthis and other navies used SM2s and the like for similar purposes, in order to expensively defend other ships at distances their guns couldn't reach. That's $1-3m SAMs against $100k drones, not a good swap.
-
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: RFI?
" a shortlist already of suppliers/equipment that they know have this capability, why do you need a "Request for Information"?"
Simple: Because their short list is literally empty: No-one is selling such systems. Ukrainans have the best ones and no-one knows if those would work at sea.
None of those systems are mature either, you can bet on that; "Mature" in drone warfare -context is a literal synonym for obsolete.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 12:38 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: RFI?
Simple: Because their short list is literally empty: No-one is selling such systems
The US are already deploying a system called Coyote to their destroyers, llinky to Wiki page. It's already been deployed by the US army and marines, but I'm guessing has to be navalised.
They're also waiting on Anduril to deliver an upgrade / replacement called Roadrunner - which the US Navy may also have ordered, or be about to order?
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 14:53 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: RFI?
Quick answer to my post, to add a thing I forgot. The RN have ordered the Schiebel Peregrine, a small drone scout helicopter and the Malloy T-150 drone for moving cargo between ships. Both could be used to carry some kind of anti-drone drone, or operate and/or Martlet or Seastreak (Starstreak and Martlet share a common launcher).
Both are in small-scale operation now.
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 10:07 GMT Noodle
Weeks you say? Totally understandable, it's not as if there has been a nearby years long war with massive use of offensive drones happening that could have prompted there idea of "anti drone" systems maybe possibly being a good idea in the near future. Who could have possibly forseen that.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 10:15 GMT Guy de Loimbard
Careful Noodle
You may upset old Johnny Rubber Desk at Whitehall with your wit! :)
Yes, you'd think a war that's now into its fifth year, would have triggered a reaction sooner, however, I suspect the RN have just realised how few ships they have and how long it takes to replace one, particularly if it's been malleted by much cheaper drones....
-
Monday 9th March 2026 13:30 GMT I ain't Spartacus
This is little to do with Ukraine. They've been building drone defences into their ships for years now. This is what Dragonfire, Phalanx, and the 30mm and 40mm quick-firing radar and electro-optical guided medium guns the Navy have already put on their ships are already for. Or ordered as soon as the R&D was finished, in the case of Dragonfire.
This is designed to protect a much bigger bubble around the ship - but without using expensive surface to air missiles. Because the ships can already defend themselves from Houthi or Iranian drones and missiles - and have been able to for years. But in the Red Sea crisis over the last couple of years, they were having to use their top-of-the-line SAMs against cheap drones, because their cheap SAMs only have limited range. And you don't want to be spending £2-10m on a round to destroy a Shahed - but may have to if you're defending a tanker 100 miles away.
One option, as stated in the article, is to put up Wildcat. Which can carry 20 Martlets, that are an excellent and proven anti-drone weapon, and only cost about £50k each - so pretty much the same as a Shahed. But that requires keeping your helicopters on station for a long time, which is only practical if you know the attack is coming.
Hence this RFI to use tech that didn't exist until last year, things such as drone interceptors, that are being built for Ukraine. If you can get loitering ones, you can send them out in patrols, returning them to the ship and recharging them as you put other ones up. And maintain a combat air patrol of drones.
One option might be to have some of them in deck mounted containers that you can load onto your merchant ships as they go through the Red Sea or Straits of Hormuz - and have them controlled remotely by a defending warship, that way you can use the fancy radars and computers on the warship, that would be too expensive to put on the merchant ships, but give them cheap self-defence drones with a small maintenance crew that they can drop off at an assigned safe port, where the next ship can take them on. This means the slow drones will already be in the combat zone. So your warships don't have to be everywhere at once.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
"electro-optical guided medium guns the Navy have already put on their ships are already for."
These work against small planes and large drones, but are basically useless against a swarm of hundreds small quads. Those of course won't be able to sink a ship, but that's not the goal either: Destroying radars and antennas is enough: A blind ship is a dead duck.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 12:44 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Hundreds of small quadcopters will be very vulnerable to electronic warfare. They will show up on decent radar, and they will also show up on thermal imagining, even if they're hard to track visually. That's what electro-optical means, both visual and IR spectrum and ships have IRST (infra-red search and track). In fact that's how the Danish Iver Huitfeldt shot down incoming Houthi drones when their radar and missile management system fatally disagreed with each other last year - they switched to IRST and did it that way, with guns.
Also, quadcopters are very small, and very short ranged. Ships are relatively fast and live in the sea, which is quite big. So they're only really a threat around ports and choke-points.
The bigger threat is larger, more capable, drones. More expensive means smaller swarms. Which makes them easier to deal with.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 20:37 GMT Jellied Eel
The bigger threat is larger, more capable, drones. More expensive means smaller swarms. Which makes them easier to deal with.
Except well over a year ago now, Russia started using drone 'motherships' to carry Lancets and smaller drones. Ukraine's done the same thing with modifed jetskis act as drone carriers. So the challenge is to deal with both threats. Plus per the article, very different and conflicting demands, ie ship protection vs fleet protection. So a warship can more easily deal with a threat closing <40km than it can trying to defend an LNG carrier >40km away. The bigger the area to protect, the harder the problem becomes. So the solution is probably carrier drones that can act as pickets. Quadcopter-sized drones might not be able to sink a warship, but a swarm carrying fragmentation grenades might damage or destroy sensors, cables, mounts etc.
Then there's submersible or semi-submersible naval drones. On which point, Trump's threatend Iran with yet more retaliation, if they've laid mines in the Straits of Hormuz, and if they have, they better remove them! Modern mines are drone-like, and slight snag in US demands is they've already kinda sunk Iran's minesweepers. Doh!
-
Wednesday 11th March 2026 14:48 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Jellied Eel,
Except well over a year ago now, Russia started using drone 'motherships' to carry Lancets and smaller drones.
That's a good point. Although that's when you move your targetting to the mothership drones, and try and shoot them down before they can unload.
Which of course means you might want to develop your own mothership drones with small fighter drones that launch mini anti-drone missiles.
It's gonna be drones all the way down...
-
Thursday 12th March 2026 15:39 GMT Jellied Eel
Although that's when you move your targetting to the mothership drones, and try and shoot them down before they can unload.
Indeed, but the threat is not just from UAVs, it's also USVs and stealth tricks. But a wicked problem to solve. Ukraine's been showing off vertical launched quadcopters, but they're still relatively slow and short range. Big drones like Shahed and Geran have been getting stealthier, faster and longer range, and harder to determine if they're drones, or cruise missiles. And a 90kg warhead from one of those is still going to hurt a modern warship because they're just not as well armored as the WW1 & 2 era battlewagons. Which is one of the things Ryan & commentors have been discussing over in the Battleship New Jersey channel wrt the proposed new US battleships.
Their traditional role was to get into gun range and slug it out with enemy assets, so became fast and well armoured so they can take a beating. Concepts for the new ships make them look more like CGs with missiles rather than big guns, so don't need to close, thus don't need the armour. Except for situations where ships might need to, ie current proposals to escort civilian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. They're very narrow and the terrain on the Iranian side makes it easy to potentially hide launchers. So then a proper BB would kinda help, because 9x16" guns do a rather good job of persuading enemy drone operators to rethink their life choices.
But then there's some history. When the New Jerseys were reactivated for the Gulf War, they had CIWS added. Which was shades of WW2 and the advent of air threats, and battleships & cruisers having guns added wherever they'd fit. We moved away from that strategy to relying on missiles, which are finite. So an N+1 problem where enemies just fire more stuff than the ship has interceptors, plus the challenges (and risks) of re-arming at sea, or having to sail back to a friendly port to do that. Then volume, and general space for X missiles vs Y 5" gun rounds... Or drones, lots of drones.
Then design chalenges, so WW2-era ships had more room for mounting more guns, modern warships like the Type 45s where the superstructure blens into the hull don't have that. Plus keeping stuff out of the way of missile back blast. There's some deck space at the stern, but that's currently for helicopters. And then there's boring maths & physics. Like we're pretty much at the chemical limit for guns, plus there's a 40km-ish* detection threshold for surface or near-surface threats. So that gives ~5000km^2 to defend, or more depending on how far away the things you're trying to protect are.. So quite a challenge.
Or we develop cheaper drone picket ships. So one threat that was demonstrated by Ukraine was hiding drones in shipping containers. Luckily, there are plenty of cheap ship designs for hauling those around the oceans, and those could be slaved off a warship's FCS and probably commanded remotely. A standard TEU is easy to manage and could hold a lot of cheap, disposable drones. Once you've fired off your entire Can'o'Drones(tm), swap empty container for a full one. With the potential that those could conceivably be added to civilian ships transiting Hormuz,
Downside is enemies also saw what Ukraine did and probably went 'Huh, we can do that!'. Lots of containers get lost overboard at sea, some could become drone-launching containerised mines. We live in interesting times
*Flat earthers won't understand why
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 12:03 GMT theOtherJT
It does seem odd to me that no one has tried something that looks a lot like a CIWS but loaded with birdshot. You'd not think that a belt-fed automatic shotgun would be a hard thing for defense companies to come up with. Maybe it's a range problem, and by the time a drone is close enough to be intercepted with something as low velocity as lead-shot it's close enough to still do considerable damage if it explodes. /shrugs.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 14:41 GMT DJO
Shotgun pellets disperse too much, a pellet at 250m might take out a squishy grouse but will bounce off a carbon fibre drone.
Look to Ukraine, they have what's effectively a shotgun with propellers which is effective in the hands of a skilled operator. They've also developed shotgun rounds that fire a net to entangle propellers but these are all last ditch close up defence. Ideally you'd want to intercept the buggers before last ditch defence becomes necessary.
Explosive fragmentation rounds are very effective but it's hard to manufacture ones with an accurate delay but still a cheap option even if the rounds cost a few £100 each they can engage targets at greater distances.
EW measures have proven effective but you still have a flying bomb which *may* detonate harmlessly or may crash into something.
The only defence that works is multi-layered with multiple weapon types and this is what (I hope) the MOD is trying to achieve.
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 13:37 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Martlet
TDog,
A Shahed drone is estimated to cost anywhere from £30-£100,000 a pop. So the same as a Martlet.
You can't easily sink a warship with a £100 drone. They don't have the range, they don't have the payload, and they can easily have their control-signals jammed.
The Mavic drones used at the beginning of the Ukraine war, weren't even all that effective then. They were just what people had. They're now much less frequently used, and drones are much more expensive than that. They're either using Starlink terminals for comms, or fibre-optic cable, or they're semi-automatic. Otherwise they'd be jammed. You also need a bigger payload to carry your sensors and warhead.
Normal front-line drones cost thousands. As you make the drone's job harder, you increase the cost you have to pay in order to be effective, and by doing so you make allow more options for interception that are now financially viable.
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 17:11 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Martlet
The RN have chosen Dragonfire to fit to our warships. The US Navy have gone the Microwave route. At which point you simply switch on the giant microwave and 1,000 drones fall out of the sky. It may be that the US got that decision right, as our army look to be deploying both.
However, the radar on Type 45 can independently track 1,000 targets. Modern radars are also backed by computers, so you can also set your target discrimination higher, so that it will ignore targets doing less than say 50mph. That takes your £100 drones out of the equation, so you can look at which ones you have to worry about. Admittedly, ships with less capable radars will be easier to overwhelm., but drones aren't magic. There are many counters to them, those counters can be layered, and the cheaper the drones you use, the less effective they are.
The Royal Navy specialise in electronic warfare, in a way I think our army and air force miss out on. So they could also jam the control signals to those £100 drones at a decent distance, and again, only then have to concentrate on any more capable ones.
Not that I'm saying this is all going to work perfectly. You only find that out when you get into combat. But the Navy have been in combat a bit with the Houthis, and have exercised and trained against this threat for over a decade. They're not looking for a self-defence device here, they seem to think they've got that covered. What they're looking for is something for area defence, to protect ships and installations that they're guarding or convoying.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Martlet
"At which point you simply switch on the giant microwave and 1,000 drones fall out of the sky"
That's what the seller says: Not a single case has been observed so they do not know, in reality.
Small drones are mostly carbon fiber, so they have automatic RFI protection and the energy density needed to melt any of them? I'll believe it if I ever see it.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Martlet
"So they could also jam the control signals to those £100 drones at a decent distance, and again, only then have to concentrate on any more capable ones."
Funny theory: All modern ones use optic fibre for control signals and they can't 'jam' those.
Jamming small drones is so last war now.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 14:33 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Martlet
Anon,
Funny theory: All modern ones use optic fibre for control signals and they can't 'jam' those.
Apart from the radio and satellite controlled ones you mean. Or the semi or fully autonomous ones. You can't have it both ways. You can't have un-jammable drones that also cost £100. Your swarms get smaller, as you increase the cost of your drones. Your swarms also get smaller as they approach a warship fitted with a medium sized medium range gun with explosive ammunition, 2 5-10km range 30-40mm guns with smaller explosive rounds - all of which can be guided by radar and/or thermal sighting systems - followed by 20mm close in weapons using radar guided 20mm shells.
That's a lot of lead going downrange. Not to mention the ship is equipped with chaff, various other decoys, and the ability to create a smokescreen, which it can see through.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 12:01 GMT s. pam
Arming them against, what, Union Drone strikes?
Th @£$%^ ships are either in dry dock, awaiting parts, or so understaffed they can't even set out to sea. Embarrassing as fsck when the French are offering support / protection that our own damn ships are not safe.
Better keep em here, perhaps then they'll be fixed and protected from LIEbour's drone army which is hellbent on destroying the UK as we know it!
-
Monday 9th March 2026 12:15 GMT Steve Davies 3
Re: protected from LIEbour's drone army
If you think that any political party worth calling itself one, would do any better, then you are severely mistaken. The rot in the Royal Navy (And all the other armed forces) can be traced back to Duncan Sandys and his review in the late 1950's.
successive Governments of both Tory and Labour have chipped away at their capabilities to where we are now ... unable to send even a frigate to the eastern med.
Yes, there are plans for new ships on the drawing board/.under construction but the number of ships in service will not increase by more than 1 or 2 (perhaps 3).
We as a nation are well and truly FSCK'd. Thanks to Fuhrer Trump and his bunch of fascists, the world is a far more dangerous place in 2026 than it was even in 2024.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 22:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: protected from LIEbour's drone army
There is a recruitment problem in the Royal Navy (and in fact, all of the UK military services). There have been extensive advertising campaigns running on TV for several years trying to get people to join up, but I understand that they (it's outsourced to Capita so what do you expect!) have repeatedly failed to meet their targets.
I had heard that in order to man the two new carriers, more than one Type 23 frigate and possibly HMS Ocean as well were decommissioned before their expected end-of-life to free up the personnel for the carriers, contributing to the serious shortage of ships.
It's a story we've heard before. And the carriers are not even that functional, because we have not bought the number of F35Bs necessary to equipment both of them at the same time (yes, it was expected that one would be under maintenance while the other was in service). I know that a while back we were 'borrowing' US marine F35Bs and pilots just to make it seem that the carriers had aircraft and to acquire aircraft deck handling experience.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 01:35 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: protected from LIEbour's drone army
just to make it seem that the carriers had aircraft
They could always have some full-size inflatable or wooden F35Bs on deck to make up the numbers.
icon: Joke alert - but best that no MOD or Treasury mandarins get to hear - they'll be commissioning inflatable and wooden F35Bs and putting the money saved in their pension scheme
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 07:50 GMT Ian Johnston
Re: protected from LIEbour's drone army
successive Governments of both Tory and Labour have chipped away at their capabilities to where we are now ... unable to send even a frigate to the eastern med.
The assumption that we should be sending - or at least be capable of sending - warships anywhere in the world to interfere in other people's fights is an interesting one.
-
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 12:28 GMT Catch-the-Pigeon
too slow
I always assumed that the army and navy were a step or two ahead of what the public sees or uses when it comes to technology. Perhaps that assumption comes from the Cold War era, when defence research often led the way and civilian technology followed.
It seems years of under investment appears to have left gaps in capability and innovation. With drones flying around airports and the widespread use of drones in the Ukraine war, you would think militaries would already be integrating counter-drone and drone capabilities into tanks, naval ships, and other platforms as standard.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine effectively began in 2014. That should have been a clear alarm bell for the UK and the EU to start seriously planning for the future of warfare.
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 14:46 GMT EvilDrSmith
Re: too slow
The person that isn't Spartacus has already largely said was I was going to say (I shouldn't have waited until after lunch to post).
While I largely agree with you, it is worth remembering that 4 years ago, at the start of the 3 day special military operation, and for most of the first year, drone use meant Bayraktar and other, similar to Predator, large drones, for which adequate defenses existed.
Loitering Munitions such as Shahed and Harop existed, but had not been widely used. I'm not sure anyone envisaged these types of munition being manufactured on the scale that they have been, and used as little more that a round of ammunition, rather than being reserved for particular targets.
FPV drones and fibre-optic controlled FPVs were simply not a thing.
And there were systems being developed - as not-Spartacus points out, Dragonfire, due to be installed and in service next year, didn't spring from nowhere and the US have been field trialling vehicle mounted laser systems. Moreover, before drones there was the threat of attack by boat-swarms in coastal waters: manned vessels, not drones, but still the idea being to swamp the target. In response, there was a move to increase the number of rapid fire low/mid-calibre guns, and this seems also to have pushed the development of Wildcat with Martlet missile, which is why the UK can now deploy that system to Cyprus this weekend.
There have been developments since - April last year, our gracious hosts carried an story about UK testing a radio frequency DEW; the UK is producing Octopus anti-drones for Ukraine and seemingly anyone else that wants them; APKWS was developed over a decade ago, and as APKWS II is an effective (and cheap) anti-drone weapon system.
35 years of defense cuts (combined with 25 years of counter -insurgency warfare) have certainty damaged the UK's (and indeed nearly every NATO country's) broader defence capability, and meant that decisions had to be made to prioritise certain capabilities at the expense of others. I agree, 2014 should have been the point that underfunding ended and we started taking defence seriously, but outside of the Eastern European states, we didn't. However, since 2022, most of NATO is now taking this seriously, and if the UK isn't (in respect to the timescale to ramp up defense spending) we at least started with a number of programmes that are coming to fruition just(about) in time.
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 13:54 GMT alain williams
An RFI sounds like a single event ...
to counter today's threat: drones.
But our enemies do not stand still, they invent new threats all the time. What needs to be put in place is an open door policy: "you have some interesting idea, come & tell us, we will try it and maybe roll it out" - ie a state of perpetual RFI. This approach will not sit well with the usual suppliers as small, new companies tend to be fleeter of foot but have the disadvantage of not employing navy procurement officials of 10 years ago.
-
Monday 9th March 2026 14:20 GMT Kevin Johnston
Simple answer
Just do what Sweden are doing and buy the Sea Snake system from Reinmettal
30mm cannon with all the necessary sensors to detect drones and uses NATO standard airburst munitions to FOD them out of the air. Tested in Ukraine and worked so well that Sweden see it as the best option for their Littoral boats patrolling the inshore waters
So, no design period required and we could get onto the delivery list fairly quickly...sorted
-
Monday 9th March 2026 15:02 GMT QuickLuck
Re: Simple answer
For "reasons", I believe the Royal Navy is standardising on 40mm rather than 30mm. Did see a good article (or comments to an article) recently (Navylookout I suspect) about the differences, esp the costs and different ammunition types. and 30mm seemed to win. But it's 40mm we're going for, and that's unlikely to change
-
Monday 9th March 2026 17:09 GMT Roland6
Re: Simple answer
I think this the article: https://www.navylookout.com/the-case-for-enhancing-the-royal-navys-30mm-gun/
Basically, it seems it depends on whether you are wanting to protect against drones (30mm) or missiles/aircraft (40mm). Which would suggest a larger ship needs both whereas a smaller ship only one to be determined by its operational role.
-
-
Monday 9th March 2026 17:30 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Simple answer
Kevin Johnston,
The RN have already got either 30mm (Type 23, Type 45, carriers and Type 26) or 40mm on Type 31. I believe they all also have Phalanx. Which is a bit short range for modern fast missiles, but pretty good for the slower drones. Plus they all have heavy machinegun mounts, and at least some of them have automatically operated ones as well.
This program is not about self-defence. The ships can already do that. It's about long range anti-drone systems, so that air defence ships can protect a wide area, i.e. a convoy, base, shipping choke-point or whatever. Hence they're asking for systems that range out anywhere from 25km to 150km.
Even the 40mm guns are only effective to 5-10km from the ship. The surface to air missiles go much further, but cost a lot - and this is about shooting down drones, so you don't have to waste an expensive SAM on a cheap target.
-
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 08:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
"The RN also wants to focus on mature products, meaning it will likely be a package of existing weapons systems and sensors."
Good luck on that, AFAIK such systems don't exist. At least as mature, battle-proven systems.
But of course that does not stop people behind desk thinking they just need to choose one.
Total disconnection from reality, hardly a surprise. These people believe that *any* "weapon system", for whatever purpose, exists and has been existing at least a war or two, they just need to order one.
Currently Russians and Ukrainans have most experience on drone wars and I don't think either has anything which actually would work in a ship. They do have secret stuff, of course, but I don't think they'd sell that to UK.
-
Tuesday 10th March 2026 15:00 GMT zeltus
RN takes head out of sand
So, the Ukraine war, with it's plethora of drones on both sides, and Vladdy the Baddy's Black Sea fleet scuttled, has been raging for the last four years.
And it's only now that the RN has noticed and thought "Ooh, drones, never thought of those, better get some defences up and running"? With that attitude, I'm surprised we've moved on from the age of sail and Trafalgar.
