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Autonomous Systems: Land & Sea
12AUG

A £6.68m trial holds the subsea money

2 min read
14:17UTC

The Submarine Delivery Agency awarded M Subs £6.68m on 24 June to trial XV Excalibur, the largest uncrewed underwater vessel the Royal Navy has put in the water.

← Back to Chinese cameras in the Navy's robot boatsJump to analysis ↓
TechnologyDeveloping
Key takeaway

The only funded submarine-robot work this fortnight is a £6.68m trial, three orders of magnitude below the plan it underpins.

The Submarine Delivery Agency awarded M Subs of Plymouth £6,680,147 on 24 June 2026, running to 1 May 2028, for trials of XV Excalibur, the CETUS-programme extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle. At 12 metres and 19 tonnes it outsizes the crewless minehunter the Royal Navy sent toward Hormuz in May , and the award was sole-sourced because M Subs is the vehicle's only designer.

Set the two 30 June numbers side by side: a £5bn plan names a Type 93 class, and a £6.68m contract funds the one extra-large underwater vehicle that class currently rests on. The trial runs to 2028, so a Type 93 fielding decision cannot lean on Excalibur data before then, which is why the plan's subsea timeline stays soft.

For the procurement reader this is the useful signal in the fortnight: an actual contract, an actual value, an actual incumbent to displace, against a headline plan that is still nomenclature.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The navy is paying a Plymouth company nearly seven million pounds to test its biggest robot submarine, a 12-metre, 19-tonne uncrewed vessel, over the next two years. This is the one piece of real, funded work behind the much larger plan to build a whole class of underwater robots, which shows how far the announced ambition runs ahead of the money actually committed.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The award is pulled by the AUKUS and Type 93 undersea requirement: Britain needs a home-grown extra-large underwater vehicle to avoid depending wholly on US platforms for seabed and anti-submarine autonomy.

The sole-source route reflects M Subs' position as CETUS's only designer, which concentrates the UK's extra-large underwater vehicle knowledge in one Plymouth SME.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    M Subs becomes the reference supplier on the Royal Navy's largest uncrewed underwater vehicle, a position rivals must displace.

  • Meaning

    A trial running to 2028 means a Type 93 fielding decision cannot rest on Excalibur data before then.

Sources:The Defense Post
Mentions:XV Excalibur →CETUS →Royal Navy →US Navy →BAE Systems →Lloyd's Register →Herne XLAUV →Type 91 →UK Ministry of Defence →
First Reported In

Update #5 · Britain names four robot warship classes

The Defense Post· 3 Jul 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
This Event
A £6.68m trial holds the subsea money
This is the funded, dated, contracted reality sitting under the Type 93 banner, and its scale against the £5bn plan is the clearest live measure of announcement versus delivery on this beat.
Led to
Britain names four uncrewed warship classes
The XV Excalibur trials contract is the funded CETUS work sitting under the Type 93 class the DIP named.
Occurred 30 Jun 2026
Read story →
Type 91 to 94 robot fleet takes shape
Type 93 is confirmed as grown directly from the Excalibur XLUUV trial programme.
Occurred 16 Jul 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Conservative opposition
Conservative opposition
The Conservative opposition called on the Government on 9 August to 'urgently audit' equipment for hidden Chinese components, after the Telegraph's K3 SCOUT report. No named MP has been quoted on the record; the call came at party level, alongside the Ministry of Defence's own 10 August statement that no data had been compromised.
Netherlands Ministry of Defence
Netherlands Ministry of Defence
The Netherlands Ministry of Defence authorised Dutch Naval Design on 4 August to design 12-metre anti-submarine warfare uncrewed vessels for the Dutch-Belgian frigate programme, and to buy an adapted Compact FLASH dipping sonar from Thales Underwater Systems France. The order commits money and a named supplier while Britain's own certification body remains at the market-engagement stage.
Kraken Technology Group
Kraken Technology Group
Kraken Technology Group is a UK maritime-defence company based in Portsmouth that builds the K3 SCOUT, and crossed a $1bn valuation in July on a single-sourced $175m raise. The camera components reached the fleet under a third party's written security assurance, which the Platform Authority, which does not yet exist, was never positioned to check.
Navy Commercial
Navy Commercial
Navy Commercial at Whale Island published two notices on 5 August: 074032-2026, asking industry how to build a Platform Authority to certify uncrewed vessels, and 074351-2026, a GBP10m multi-role USV testbed for the Defence Chief Technology Officer. Responses on the Platform Authority close 19 August, ten days after the cameras were found transmitting to China.
Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence
The Ministry of Defence said on 10 August that a routine cyber vulnerability assessment found the camera fault, and a thorough investigation found no evidence that MoD data or systems had been accessed, compromised or transmitted externally. It stripped the cameras of internet connectivity but did not say whether it acted against the supplier.
Thales
Thales
Thales converted its 6 July engaging accord with Exail into a definitive combination agreement on 30-31 July, but the tender offer for Exail's remaining shares now closes by early 2028, later than July's timetable implied. Thales integrates its new undersea prime while still bidding against Kongsberg and DRASS's 2027 target for the AUKUS Pillar II contest.