Autonomous Systems: Land & Sea

Chinese-made cameras on the Royal Marines' K3 SCOUT robot boats were found sending traffic to an IP address in China, and the Ministry of Defence says nothing was compromised. Four days before that story broke, the Royal Navy asked industry how to build a certifier for uncrewed vessels. Britain has a code and a pathway for whether the boat is safe to sail, and nothing that asks whose parts sit inside it.

American Rheinmetall took an 18-month US Army contract on 31 July for hybrid-powered autonomous resupply robots, with no value disclosed. The only multi-vehicle underwater order in the European Union's procurement journal over the same ten days was Belgium's, for twelve vehicles that steer down a cable. Lowdown read the notices at source: sustainment, survey and bomb disposal took the money in this window.

Ukraine crossed the sea-land robotics line this fortnight: a sea drone landed an armed ground robot on the Kinburn Spit on 13 July, a hexacopter airlifted a second robot to the front on 19 July, and the Magura USV maker signed a US production deal on 21 July. The battlefield is now the leading indicator, and Western industry the follower.

British uncrewed-boat maker Kraken Technology Group has raised $175m at a $1bn valuation, with the NATO Innovation Fund, the British Business Bank and Rheinmetall in the round and a Rheinmetall joint venture now building its K3 SCOUT boat in Hamburg. Rheinmetall MAN also took over Germany's InterRoC VII programme, pushing convoy autonomy that works when GPS is jammed. Ukraine's National Guard Omega unit is reported to have built an uncrewed boat to launch attack drones.

Thales agreed a EUR 3.9bn takeover of Exail, folding France's undersea supply chain under one prime just as Kongsberg leads a US Navy XLUUV design and anchors a rival European bid. Britain retired its first Hunt-class minehunter and committed GBP 90m for Norwegian-built motherships. This was the fortnight the sector moved from memoranda to capital and steel.

Kraken and Capewell airdropped a K3 SCOUT uncrewed boat from an A400M into Sea State 4, a world first that turns strategic airlift into a way to place robot minehunters far from any port. The most capable allied autonomous mine-clearance package meanwhile sits parked off Oman, authorised then set back by a 7 July tanker attack. Ukraine's Trinity Robotics doubled its own robot output; Kongsberg won a subsea-protection deal.

The Prime Minister's Defence Investment Plan commits more than £5bn to autonomy and, for the first time, names four uncrewed Royal Navy classes, Type 91 to Type 94. No numbers, contractors or delivery dates came with them, and the overall settlement landed £13bn below what the MoD had asked for. The real money and tempo moved elsewhere this fortnight: a £6.68m trials contract for the CETUS submarine and Ukraine codifying 50 new robot models in six months.

RFA Lyme Bay reached the Middle East on 23 June with the most advanced allied autonomous mine-countermeasures package yet assembled. The fortnight pushed undersea robots into the core of NATO's Baltic exercise, put a mine-breaching ground robot on the Eurosatory floor, and stood up Britain's first operational army UGV fleet. Production lines and cooperation deals are multiplying faster than binding government orders.

Kongsberg and DRASS unveiled a joint undersea-warfare bid for AUKUS Pillar II at ILA Berlin, ten days after the trilateral named only US vehicles. NATO's Task Force X-Arctic put networked uncrewed systems to sea, RFA Lyme Bay embarked France's Sirius mine-hunting drone, and Southampton's Seawork opened its first autonomy pavilion. Britain leads on operations and the industrial base while the AUKUS hardware contest opens.

Britain spent the week building the institutions for a maritime-autonomy industry: a regulatory route for crewless-ship trials, an £8.3bn market case, and a research programme to write the rulebook. Yet the trilateral undersea-autonomy flagship it co-announced with the US and Australia named only American underwater vehicles. The contrast is Milrem and VDL, who opened a Dutch robot-vehicle line for Ukraine the same week.

On 19 May the First Sea Lord set the Royal Navy's autonomy doctrine; eight days later a crewless minehunter docked inside its mothership and sailed toward a potential Strait of Hormuz mission. The IMO adopted the first global code for crewless cargo ships, and Ukraine's appetite for ground robots is pulling European production. Maritime and land autonomy stopped being a procurement line this month and became a posture.