The Royal Navy has developed three autonomous testbed platforms – CETUS, PROTEUS, and SCYLLA – to enhance its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
Against the background of the overhaul of MOD procurement and development, the case study highlights the accelerated rate of development:
The programme’s success stems from a 7-step governance framework that prioritised speed without compromising safety. This approach, championed by UK Defence Innovation (UKDI), enabled rapid development while maintaining rigorous operational standards.
Multi-year funding provided industry partners with the confidence to innovate and covered all development activities, ensuring that demonstrators could progress without traditional handover delays. The Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl) provided technical support throughout the programme, acting as a cost cutting enabler and participating in panels to assess capability proposals.
The three testbed projects highlighted in the study are CETUS a large (20 ton) autonomous underwater vehicle developed by MSubs, PROTEUS a 3 ton Rotary Wing Uncrewed Air System by Leonardo, and SCYLLA a torpedo tube launch and recovery system for underwater drones.
CETUS
The Royal Navy describes the submersible; “The £15.4m Cetus is in a different league: the length of a bus, it will be the largest and most complex crewless submersible operated by European navies, designed and built specially for the Royal Navy by Plymouth-based tech firm MSubs, creating ten specialist jobs and supporting 70 more.”
The Navy is looking to amass a fleet of unmanned underwater vehicles that will bolster the UK’s underwater capabilities whilst also de-risking certain elements of it. Trials of the submersible are expected to continue into 2027.
PROTEUS
Leonardo developed the Proteus technology demonstrator aircraft in collaboration with the Royal Navy and the MOD’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) Future Capability Innovation (FCI) team. The aim of this testbed is to “enhance payload modularity, autonomy and rotorcraft technology”, crucially it will demonstrate how uncrewed air systems can augment the existing helicopter and fixed wing capabilities.
Mark Andrew, Project Manager – Autonomy in Leonardo’s UK Product Future Programmes department says this about the craft:
Autonomous platforms bring potential cost benefits vs crewed platforms. For the former, you get more capability as they require less mechanical complexity and avionic equipment. Furthermore, there is no crew controlling the aircraft, so mechanical control runs, seats and avionic displays are all unnecessary.
Additionally, because the aircraft has no crew, the design approach can be slightly less orthodox; the crashworthiness of your design, for example, will consider different factors when there are no longer humans on-board the aircraft.
SCYLLA
The Navy says that SCYLLA “will increase the capability options for UK nuclear-powered attack submarines and support underwater reconnaissance, underwater communications, and seabed warfare missions.” The torpedo tube launched vehicles feature a modular mid-section, allowing a variety of payload configurations. The vehicle is launched then autonomously conducts missions and recovers itself back into a submarine torpedo tube. The seabed is rapidly becoming a frontline with undersea cables and pipelines already being targetted in covert sabotage, these undersea drones can extend the UKs reconnaissance capability, enhance seabed mapping, deploy mine countermeasures, and detect myriad underwater threats.
Project Scylla is being delivered with international partners through AUKUS Pillar 2, developing advanced capabilities to benefit both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security. In Navy News, Commodore Marcus Rose, Deputy Director Underwater Battlespace Capabilities, said: “Delivery of these trials demonstrates our commitment to the use of advanced capabilities as part of a future hybrid Fleet and are a big step forward in delivering new capability to the Submarine Service.”
A changing frontier
The seabed is home to a huge number of cables and pipelines that play a crucial role in global communication and energy transmission. In modern warfare and terrorism they face a growing range of threats due to their strategic importance and physical vulnerability. We’ve already seen anchor dragging and trawling damage seabed infrastructure – while often accidental, adversaries could deliberately use ships to drag anchors or fishing nets to damage lines. Being able to monitor, identify and resist these actors is an essential capability. NATO and the EU have increased focus on seabed warfare capabilities in response to Russian naval activity around cables.
An increasing risk of tapping fibre optic cables for intelligence-gathering has to be countered, a fleet of autonomous vehicles would act as both monitors and a first line of defence against this threat. With 95% of global internet and financial transactions flowing via undersea cables this becomes a glaring vulnerability. Likesise, gas and oil pipelines (e.g., Nord Stream) are lifelines for economies, attacks trigger price spikes and political crises, the effects of which can easily ripple into banking, military command systems, emergency services, and critical supply chains.
In an environment of asymetric warfare, an increased arsenal of manned and unmanned undersea platforms gives us the ability to go on the offensive as well as guarding against disruption and interference in our infrastructure.
Image shows Proteus, via Leonardo
Source: gov.uk
