A stronger fleet, a safer ocean: why the Hybrid Navy demands a different kind of industry
© PCS
The Royal Navy’s transition to a hybrid fleet is gathering pace. But delivering it will demand more than new technology. It requires a fundamental shift in how industry collaborates, integrates and delivers capability at pace.
The Navy is changing how it fights. Now industry must change how it delivers.
Let me be clear: the Hybrid Navy is not optional, we have to move at the speed of the threat.
General Sir Gwyn Jenkins - First Sea Lord, Battle for the Atlantic, September 2026
The First Sea Lord’s message in September was unequivocal: the Royal Navy must transform to meet evolving threats, and industry must transform alongside it.
The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) reinforces that urgency. With warfighting readiness the overriding priority, it signals a shift towards greater autonomy, resilience, affordability and integration, with increasing emphasis on the operational effects capabilities deliver rather than the platforms themselves.
Through Atlantic Bastion and investment in autonomous systems, the Hybrid Navy is moving from vision to delivery. The Navy is embracing approaches industry has advocated for years: clearer operational problems, faster experimentation and greater openness to innovation.
Now industry must fulfil its side of the bargain.
A new role for traditional platforms
Autonomy is no longer experimental. It is becoming central to how the Royal Navy intends to generate combat power, extending its reach and persistence while traditional crewed platforms evolve into connected command and control hubs.
But this transition will not happen overnight. Autonomous capabilities will enter service incrementally, alongside existing systems that must remain operational. Pressing anti-submarine warfare requirements, for example, could see Type 92 systems introduced ahead of other autonomous assets.
This places integration at the heart of the challenge. Industry must deliver flexible networks and open architectures capable of accommodating new systems as they become available, without disrupting existing operations or requiring wholesale redesign. Collaboration on modular technologies, such as next-generation intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) masts for autonomous underwater vehicles, demonstrates how industry can help enable this transition.
The ability to connect sensors, decision-makers and effectors, turning data into operational advantage, will be just as important as the platforms themselves. The Hybrid Navy’s strength will lie not in individual assets, but in how effectively they operate together.
Thales ISR Mast: Sensing for the Hybrid Navy
Thales and BAE Systems are collaborating to integrate a next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mast with BAE Systems’ Herne extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (XLAUV).
Developed in Glasgow, the platform-agnostic, modular mast is designed to provide advanced 360-degree surveillance while minimising exposure above the surface.
With a demonstration planned for 2027, the collaboration illustrates how adaptable sensing technologies and industrial partnerships can help deliver the connected, autonomous capabilities a Hybrid Navy demands.
People and platforms must evolve together
The transition also demands new skills, operating concepts and approaches to training. As personnel manage increasingly complex combinations of crewed and uncrewed assets, training must evolve alongside the technology, rather than follow it.
The Royal Navy’s transition towards autonomous mine warfare, supported by Thales’ Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) programme, demonstrates this in practice. Zulu Squadron’s preparations to operate the new capability highlight the importance of developing people, processes and technology together to deliver operational readiness.
From innovation to operational advantage
The DIP sends a clear message: delivering capability quickly, affordably and at scale matters more than pursuing technological perfection at the expense of operational need. This demands rapid prototyping, spiral development and continuous improvement, while maintaining the security and resilience needed for operational deployment.
Thales’ UK Technology Strategy reflects this approach, emphasising partnership, sovereign capability, open architectures and the rapid integration of emerging technologies. But speed alone is not enough. Industry must deliver capabilities that are interoperable, scalable and adaptable as threats evolve.
A more connected industrial ecosystem
Procurement reform and the emphasis on operational outcomes require industry to move beyond traditional supplier relationships towards long-term partnership with the MOD.
Prime contractors must increasingly act as enablers, bringing together established suppliers, SMEs, start-ups and academia to accelerate innovation and turn ideas into deployable capability.
Sovereign capability remains essential to resilience and freedom of action, but must be strengthened through collaboration, not isolation. The Royal Navy has made clear that the Hybrid Navy is not optional. Neither is the industrial transformation required to deliver it.
A connected fleet demands an equally connected industrial ecosystem. Industry’s ability to collaborate, integrate and deliver at pace will determine whether the Hybrid Navy’s ambition becomes operational advantage.