Camera components made in China and fitted to Royal Marines and Special Boat Service K3 SCOUT uncrewed surface vessels (USV) were found sending "heartbeat" traffic to an internet address in China, The Telegraph reported on 9 August1. A USV carries sensors to sea with nobody aboard. The £12m fleet has been in use with both units since March 2026, and The Telegraph reported that the cameras stayed active with the boats powered down2.
Kraken Technology Group, the Portsmouth firm that builds the K3 SCOUT, bought the cameras from a third party that had given security assurances3. Kraken Technology Group is a British maritime-autonomy builder, and is not the Canadian sonar firm Kraken Robotics. A defence source told The Telegraph the department had "lost confidence in the platform"4. The Telegraph attributes that judgement to one unnamed person, not to the department itself.
The reported facts are narrow and worth keeping narrow: components manufactured in China, traffic to a Chinese internet address, and cameras drawing power while the vessels were off. Nobody in the reporting alleges direction by the Chinese state.
This briefing has carried the same vessel class twice in six weeks. Kraken and Capewell dropped one from an Airbus A400M into Sea State 4 water, waves of roughly 1.25 to 2.5 metres, on 8 July, and the class was earmarked for a British freedom-of-navigation package in the Strait of Hormuz that stalled after a tanker attack. Britain committed £115m of mine-hunting drones and counter-drone systems to that multinational mission in May. Those records establish which boats were in the package. They do not corroborate The Telegraph's account of what the cameras did.
