The newly formed RN Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office (DCTO) merges NavyX, the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), and the Navy AI Cell into a single organisation.
Operating with what is described as an “entrepreneurial mindset”, the DCTO will oversee rapid prototyping, testing and deployment of advanced systems to meet urgent operational needs. Its first prototype project is already in progress and has reportedly drawn on lessons from the Ukraine conflict, aiming to reduce risk through increased use of autonomous systems and supporting frameworks.
The team has worked alongside RN and Royal Marines personnel, as well as policymakers and regulators, to ensure the transition from concept to operational deployment is streamlined. A core asset to the DCTO remains the experimentation vessel XV Patrick Blackett, which continues to serve as both a technology demonstrator and trials platform for uncrewed and AI-enabled systems.
A new Fleet Experimental Squadron is also being established under the Surface Flotilla. Echoing Victorian-era innovation squadrons, it will test and refine emerging technologies at sea. Commanded by a Principal Warfare Officer at Commander rank, the unit will explore developments ranging from uncrewed surface vessels to directed energy weapons and AI-assisted ship systems. DCTO will also begin early work on longer-term technologies, including quantum, artificial intelligence and next-generation nuclear systems.
Senior officers emphasised that the changes are aimed at cutting through traditional procurement delays. While much will depend on resourcing and sustained political support, the new structure may allow the RN to iterate more quickly, bringing new capabilities into service faster than in the past.
Although this measure is welcome and efforts to streamline the adoption of new technologies are desperately needed in light of lessons from Ukraine, Senior naval leaders have been repeating the exact same mantra for more than a decade. Every naval conference attended by this author in the past 10 years has included at least one keynote speech from officers making the case for “procurement at pace”. So far, there has been very little in the way of new capabilities delivered quickly to the frontline, apart from some software enhancements to combat systems.
For example, the RN has been conducting trials and experiments with assorted Uncrewed Air Vehicles for many years, but has only managed to get the very basic Puma UAV into the hands of operators. The Peregrine RWUAS is only just operational, an obviously effective system that has been around for more than a decade. Malloy T-150 logistics drones are finally being deployed with the carrier strike group, more than 6 years after they were first developed. It is a similar story with Uncrewed Surface Vessels, which could be armed or play a far greater role in ISR. Civilian regulatory frameworks are seemingly constraining (or used as an excuse) for the glacial progress in operationalising a technology that is already well proven. Only in USV-based mine warfare can the RN claim to have been innovating with some modest success, but progress has been far from rapid.
In the counter-UAS space, the accelerated development of Dragon Fire DEW and RF-DEW is a very good news but the failure to provide more interim gun-based hard-kill systems to every vessel in the surface fleet as a matter of routine is of increasing concern.
Good news if new innovations lead to faster implementations. I’m not sure this will achieve that, or at least, as it’s headed up by a Commander, it will still need the same political push of the CTO. Although the article points out this issue, I can’t see anything here that will help naval innovations get over the valley of death.
I wonder where this leaves CETUS and undersea innovation if this is seen as part of the surface flotilla.
Fleet Experimental Squadron has a Commander but is under Rear Admiral James Parkin, the “Director Develop”.
Not sure who commands the Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office? Maybe Brigadier Jaimie Roylance, Chief Techonology Officer of the Royal Navy?
Likely RN Captain under that Brigadier.
Hopefully the MOD take note of what £6mill buys you in the commercial market.
Although why we need to spend £1mill on a wardroom is beyond me.
“DCTO will also begin early work on longer-term technologies, including quantum, artificial intelligence and next-generation nuclear systems.”
Editor
……the RN needs to be getting many other of the engineering basics right first
Also definitely lacking from this article are any comments about what professional engineering qualification(s) this team have got……..especially those of the leader……
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
The leader is a dabber / warfairy.
Given what has come out of Navy X / OCTO and before that MASTT, suspect they need some real engineering expertise – which they try to contract out. But without any idea of what they actually need.
Are you daring to suggest that knowledge and expertise are actually needed to convert warfare by PowerPoint into systems and executables?
I’m sure if you formed a small unit and gave everyone buzzword bingo titles Bob would be your uncle and aunt simultaneously in an instant?
Joking apart from the description of what they are trying to develop they need about 30 PhD level people with some degree of naval experience and then the same number of electronic engineers etc etc….oh and people used to getting stuff done….old school machine shop…..if they are going to get on with Victorian engineering!
What they will need is a commercial service function that has a serious set of Jacob’s and is prepared to work in the grey zone of precurement policy and process.
You can have all the PhD and brightest minds you like generaring great ideas to transition to technology but if, and they odds on will, get bogged down by jobs worth commercial officers and management competing everything to death at grat expense and time, this iniciative will be just like those that all tried and all failed before them.
Been there, seen it, got a 100 T-shirts!
The Navy are clearly trying to get ahead of the curve,but I don’t think they have the ability or money to identify what the curve is?
Let me help you.
When a wet shoe lace is undone and you put your other foot on it and you pull it gently it forms a catenary curve.
The only problem is you generally don’t notice the progressive formation of the curve until you are flat on your face.
So it becomes a problem of Schrödinger’s shoelace in that you cannot observe the curve either before it is formed or when you are flat on the floor?
There FIFY.
Cough cough. The RN has been behind most of the Ukrainian navy clever attack drones on the Black Sea, with RN personnel in Ukraine to implement and assist.
https://www.naval-technology.com/news/uk-leaks-development-of-snapper-and-wasp-naval-drones-for-ukraine/
Drink some Cough syrup and watch Dirty Harry
Reliable sources say otherwise. There wont be a photo spread in Navy Lookout, yet … for a few years at least.
So did they forgot HMS York(1928)?
Posted today on Jane’s.
“The Saab Multi-Shot Mine Neutralisation System (MuMNS) being supplied to the navies of France and the UK as part of the Maritime Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) minehunting suite has completed a first successful firing in an operationally representative environment.
Announcing the test milestone on 23 April, the Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d’ARmement: OCCAR) said that a munition was successfully trialled at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) test centre in Motala lake, southern Sweden.
Being delivered by Thales (as prime contractor), MMCM is an autonomous ‘system of systems’ designed to detect and localise mine threats and other underwater explosive devices down to depths of 300 m and then deploy a capability to identify and neutralise those threats. OCCAR is acting as contracting management authority on behalf of the French Direction générale de l’armement and the UK Defence Equipment and Support organisation.
The full MMCM end-to-end suite comprises unmanned platforms, minehunting payloads (sensors and neutralisers), and remote command centres (deployed from a ship or sited ashore) hosting command and sonar analysis software. Saab is supplying MuMNS – the neutraliser component – as a subcontractor to Thales.
Deployed from an unmanned surface vessel, MuMNS uses a ruggedised remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to deploy disposal charges onto mine targets by means of a ‘nail gun’ attachment function. In a live operation, the ROV would ‘nail’ a disposal charge to up to three mine targets and then retreat to a safe distance prior to detonation.”
Nigel
A very useful link.
Many thanks to you for posting it
——————
So, the BOQ (Bl**ingly Obvious Question) is coming next….
Is it a result of
However, if you are a bone idle bar steward, you can use multiple choice answers:
…….which is, of course why………..
….. I have labelled the only four possible explanations up as nos 1 to 4 for you….
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1.
Why not?….climate change gets blamed for everything else.
..either that or the Spanish did not have enough AAA batteries in their tube trains i.e. to power them when the weather became rather too cloudy over their biggest solar farm
Note 2.
The very latest trendy four letter acronym: one invented by an arts graduate working in a government sponsored PR spin department (What used to be known as “propaganda”)
Why does the whole end to end system need unmanned platforms?
Why does the REOV have to be deployed from an unmanned vessel?
What manned function is supporting this unmanned system?
Who or what is providing the sonar data that is being analysed remotely / onshore?
Is that system unmanned and if yes what manned support does it need.
Interesting contraption to do the disposing / Other elements in play starting to look like a dog’s breakfast. System of systems — can we please retire this phrase ASAP?
Does the RN have any smart / fancy / high tech mines to deploy at the moment?
Sitting on a MOD shelf somewhere waiting for a call?
Or have we given up and only play defence?
Heavy vibes that all this is being done to give someone a promotion.
Another layer of bureaucracy to complicate matters.
Technobabble to the fore — not much about generating a new reality.
Everything has to involve AI and be fully autonomous.
We have been here before with the lights out factory.
The secret is not the elimination of local humans it is the rationing of local humans.
Boot up the erse time for the RN brains trust.
All talk and little delivery is not the way it works in Ukraine.
Fat Bloke on Tour
All of Spainish and Portuguse factories were “lights out” yesterday
So why is the UK so far behind?
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
It’s all a bit “Net Zero”..no one’s sure if theres a goal at the end of it! Or will it all be a waste of time and money!
Net zero — there is a goal but no-one wants to say it.
Plus it has been taken up by various hobby horsers and unworldly absolutists.
Lets start with reducing the money flows to the oil exporting states.
See where that takes us and how things might change.
Pebble in the pond time …
How would the MOD / RN brains trust have handled the need for “airbags”?
Put in the development so that they are cheap / good / available?
Or built a small batch at eye wateringly high costs and moved them between ships as the came in and out of service?
The MOD’s use of resources is wasteful / lazy / ignorant in equal measure.
World class in Powerpoint and little else.
Tim — nice but dim — lives on.
Not a joke anymore.
Unfortunately.
Civilian regulatory frameworks — how is it that civilians can work at pace with the same regulations but the MOD cannot?
Reeks of the MOD lacking experience / smarts / minerals and taking a safety first approach as they are working from a standing start of little knowledge and no experience and rotating the personnel every two years.
Perhaps they coukd do something useful like stopping the illegal migrant boats invading Britain.
Don’t you remember that little boy and the Dyke!..
Nig e
Following the (very rare) outbreak of common sense seen in the UK Supreme Court the other week…..
I am pleased to see that the editor of NL (Note 1) has allowed your excellent double-entendre of “finger in the dyke” – as wriitten in your of post of yesterday – to remain lIve!
————————-
As for Peter Gardner’s suggestion that the very-recently-formed RN Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office (DCTO) rapidly develops advanced high-tech solutions to deliver on the PM’s promises to “Stop the Boats”
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1:
To protect the editor’s true identify from any possible retributions by LGBT activists reading this post on social media: I shall deliberately conceal his identify by only using his offical codename here = “Pete”
The Royal Navy could engage with businesses like Roke, who helped with STARTLE® a biologically inspired threat monitoring system that detects anomalous or threatening conditions by emulating the mammalian conditioned-fear response mechanism. It helps RN rapidly detect and assess threats in complex and evolving situations. Roke and UK SME’s have the intellectual and engineering horse power to deliver the necessary AI/ML products the RN need and want to delver s step change in capability. We can not help with the current issues over fleet size or availability, which appears a challenge at the moment in time.