‘Firsts’ class: RN’s new autonomous experimentation vessel brings new achievements in uncrewed concepts and capabilities

For a navy investing in platforms like aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines, and anti-submarine warfare frigates, one of the UK Royal Navy’s (RN’s) most interesting, and important, recent platform investments is not a frontline warship. Such higher-end platforms play a crucial role for the RN in providing capability to deter and defend against threats across the spectrum of operations, across all domains, and across the Euro-Atlantic theatre at a time of real risk of escalation at sea. However, another platform is playing a crucial role in preparing RN concepts, capabilities, and personnel to meet the requirements of the evolving naval operational environment. That platform is its autonomy testbed ship, the experimental vessel (XV) Patrick Blackett.

In the Russo-Ukraine war, as demonstrated at sea as well as in the air and on land, the use of autonomous concepts and autonomous capabilities is having a significant impact on the conflict’s daily development. In the maritime domain, perhaps most notable is the Ukrainian armed forces’ use of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), integrated with ‘first-person view’ autonomous command-and-control (C2) capability, to target Russian naval and commercial ships at sea and in port in the Black Sea with such regularity and effectiveness that Russia has been forced to restrict its Black Sea Fleet operations to eastern coastal waters. This example illustrates how autonomy can be harnessed to give an armed force with (in this instance) only minimal naval assets and no established C2 at sea the capacity to generate sea denial, something having significant strategic effect in the conflict’s wider context.

For the RN, Patrick Blackett is the centrepiece of its efforts to accelerate the delivery of autonomy and enhanced lethality to the navy through building understanding of and capability for using autonomous platforms and autonomous systems in contemporary naval operations.

The vessel supports extensive trials and testing work in UK waters, but also participates in high-end operational experimentation (OPEX) activities including with international partners. For example, it is a regular presence at the Portuguese Navy/NATO co-hosted ‘Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems’ (‘REPMUS’) OPEX exercise, an annual activity held each September off Tróia, southern Portugal, where multi-domain serials are conducted to develop autonomous concepts and capabilities towards readiness for use with operational units.

Thus, Patrick Blackett is a busy ship, testing – amongst other things – new autonomous concepts, new autonomous kit, and new autonomy-shaped crewing models.

Achieving firsts

Being both a relatively new ship and a new type of ship concept for the RN, the nature of its job means Patrick Blackett is often achieving ‘firsts’ for and with the navy.

For example, in November 2024 the ship was used as the ‘host’ platform for a trial with a USV, in which the USV was remote controlled by Patrick Blackett. In the trials – which took place off Portsmouth, UK where busy waterways are criss-crossed by naval vessels plus ferries and other commercial traffic – Patrick Blackett supported both remote and autonomous piloting of the Autonomous Pacific 24 (‘APAC24’) rigid-hull inflatable craft, the RN said in a statement. The ‘APAC24’ seaboat is used by the RN to conduct tasks like maritime interdiction, search and rescue, and ship-to-shore transfers.

In the remote testing, an operator onboard Patrick Blackett controlled the USV via a console; the autonomous tests saw the USV follow a pre-programmed route and conduct pre-programmed manoeuvres. The RN noted this was the first time such tests had been conducted in UK waters, with the ‘APAC24’ seaboat having been tested autonomously previously at ‘REPMUS’ in 2024. Off Portsmouth, with a range of trials conducted by NavyX – the RN team responsible for driving innovation and experimentation to quickly deliver enhanced and novel capability to the frontline – cameras and other sensors onboard the ‘APAC24’ USV were used to gather data, including live video footage, which was fed back to Patrick Blackett for analysis.

In the RN statement, Commander Michael Hutchinson – Patrick Blackett’s commanding officer, and NavyX experimentation team leader – said “Integrating crewed and uncrewed systems and operating them at the same time is a huge step forward for the RN …. The trials and experiments we do will develop the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for ‘APAC’ and how to use uncrewed systems effectively for warfighting.” Such work, he added, “forms the backbone for further integration that future ships will have with autonomous technology”.

For example, the RN statement noted, adding an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) to deploy from Patrick Blackett would enable the ship to extend the range at which it could control the USV.

“[Patrick Blackett] is a trials and evaluation ship that can develop operating manuals for technology and see what works, what doesn’t, and how we get it ready for further use by the fleet,” Cdr Hutchinson added. Such further use also relates to improving wider understanding of the fact that the RN is now operating such uncrewed capabilities. Cdr Hutchinson explained that operating uncrewed systems more regularly around the UK will help show that such systems are being operated, and safely.

Patrick Blackett is helping the RN understand autonomous system use from several perspectives. First, how to operate uncrewed systems safely in a modern, congested maritime environment. Second, how to operate them in an integrated manner with crewed platforms. Third, how to understand and enhance their contribution to naval operations including combat-related activities. Patrick Blackett’s testing work is allowing the RN to understand, develop, and operationalise the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) designed to enable autonomous systems to contribute most effectively in these contexts. These three points all come together to illustrate how the RN, as with many navies, sees uncrewed platforms currently as working in an enabling, supporting capacity for crewed platforms, for example to allow the crewed platforms to focus on the tasks where an operator-in-the-loop is needed; and/or to enhance the output of those crewed platforms by providing supporting capability through ‘dull’ tasks such as sustained sensing input, as well as more ‘dirty’ and ‘dangerous’ activities.

Unveiling new capability

The RN formally unveiled Patrick Blackett in July 2022.

A Damen 4008 Fast Crew Supply commercial vessel acquired and adapted over the previous 12 months, the 42 m, 270 tonne vessel – given the RN designator X01 – was procured to provide a dedicated and available trials and experimentation platform for developing autonomy and autonomous systems for RN operations. According to the RN, Patrick Blackett is designed to be an autonomy, lethality, and innovation accelerator for the navy. The ship brings greater flexibility in experimentation capability for new technologies, and capacity to generate accelerated delivery of new concepts, technologies, and capabilities to the frontline through enhanced and dedicated testing. The ship is also intended to show how autonomy and autonomous capabilities can shape the RN’s ‘navy after next’ thinking, which is looking ahead to how maritime uncrewed systems (MUS) can support the navy’s current generation of crewed platforms out to 2050 (even integrating within set-ups like an RN carrier strike group), and then perhaps to provide alternative platform options beyond 2050.

Underlining the perhaps unconventional role the ship plays for the navy, its crucial capabilities are perhaps not so much its systems as its open nature, in terms of both space and architecture. Its 140 m² working deck, located aft, can accommodate four standard 20 ft ISO shipping containers, embarked using a two-tonne crane. This capacity underlines how the platform can support testing of modular capabilities, utilising for example the navy’s Persistent Operational Deployment containers (PODs), which are used to carry a range of autonomous and supporting capabilities and can be integrated with the ship using a ‘plug-and-play’ approach. With the vessel’s flexible design, physical space, and adaptable C2 architecture allowing both hardware and software to be onboarded as required, this set up enables the conduct of testing both in the ship and from the ship.

The platform is also used for testing of more conventional capability. For example, as announced in May 2023, Saab’s Sea Giraffe 1X surveillance radar – 11 of which have been procured by the UK Ministry of Defence, according to Navy Lookout – was embarked for trials.

REPMUS reputation

Patrick Blackett deployed outside UK waters for the first time in September 2023, to participate in ‘REMPUS’. It has participated in the exercise in both 2023 and 2024.

Over these two ‘REPMUS’ exercises, the ship has established a reputation as playing an integral role in testing and capability development in what is one of NATO’s primary MUS OPEX activities. This is underlined by the fact that, for the 2024 iteration of ‘REPMUS’, the ship was forward deployed to Tróia in advance to support exercise planning and serial development to help optimise the outcome of the MUS testing and the ship’s role therein. Patrick Blackett’s design flexibility, open-architecture C2, and working deck capacity allows it to contribute to MUS testing in all domains – UAVs, USVs, and UUVs (uncrewed underwater vehicles).

For the RN, Patrick Blackett’s work at ‘REPMUS’ plays a key role in building the navy’s understanding of the contribution of MUS to frontline operations. At the OPEX activity, the ship and NavyX personnel work very closely with the Portuguese Navy’s two primary MUS technology innovation, capability, and operational development cells, both of which are based in Tróia: the Centre for Naval Operational Experimentation (Centro de Experimentação Operacional da Marinha: CEOM); and the Operational Experimentation Cell for Uncrewed Vehicles (Célula de Experimentação Operacional de Veículos Não Tripulados: CEOV).

In ‘REPMUS 23’, the ship integrated into live operations using various autonomous systems, including tasking different MUS to investigate, identify, and track threats, especially in the underwater domain. In this latter context, it supported ASW work and participated in critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) security serials (working with a USV to deploy UUVs to search the seabed for CUI interference). Illustrating its adaptability for C2 integration, the ship embarked mesh networks and SATCOM systems, and plugged into the navy’s Naval Strike Network (NSN) C2 architecture.

‘REPMUS 24’ demonstrated Patrick Blackett’s wider-still development and integration of its capabilities. With the OPEX activities focused in particular on above water warfare, especially anti-air and anti-surface warfare (AAW, ASuW) serials, the ship worked with several different UAVs and USVs, and was used as a launching platform for different MUS systems.

As regards working with UAVs, it operated with a Schiebel S-100 Camcopter, and was used as a target for a simulated aerial attacks by a Rotron Talon DT-300 drone.

As regards USV serials, Patrick Blackett operated the ‘APAC24’ remotely in an ‘end-to-end’ mission, with the USV deploying in ‘remote’ mode from harbour to conduct an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) task before returning ‘remotely’.

‘REPMUS 24’ demonstrated another ‘first’, with the RN’s StrikeNet (formerly NSN) C2 network installed onboard Patrick Blackett for the first time, with the ship providing an open architecture operating construct and an open computing environment (OCE) – which enables ‘plug-and-play’ shared infrastructure hosting – in which the StrikeNet architecture could be trialled and tested. Regular software updates for the system were uploaded, and regular communication was maintained with the RN StrikeNet team via SATCOM connectivity.

RN activities at ‘REPMUS 24’ also included working with MUS systems in other contexts. For example, under the Australia/UK/US (AUKUS) strategic partnership construct’s ‘Maritime Big Play’ MUS programme, personnel from all three navies were deployed to a command node in Tróia to operate MUS systems in waters close-in to Tróia itself and at distance off Australia.

Lean machine

Patrick Blackett’s role in helping the RN bridge any gap, or build any links, between crewed and uncrewed platforms by developing concepts of operations (CONOPS) for integrating autonomy and autonomous platforms is underlined by the fact that the ship has a core crew numbering just five personnel (all drawn from the NaxyX team). There are spare bunks onboard for an additional seven people.

As well as operating with a lean crew, Patrick Blackett also supports testing of lean crewing concepts. The RN has been looking at several different models for lean crewing, one reason for which is to provide crew constructs that can underpin platforms that are moving to greater degrees of autonomy onboard and will use more autonomous systems offboard to generate effects (thus in principle needing less people).

Underlining the ship’s role in developing autonomous platforms for safe routine, daily function at sea, Patrick Blackett has supported various RN future navigation system and capability trials. For example, in May 2023, the ship embarked for trials a quantum sensing system – a technology that can support development of improved inertial navigation, through bringing improved accuracy over a longer time period.

For a ship that is testing autonomous platform and capability concepts, harnessing data from the platform and its systems is very important for feeding back information to the RN. To support this requirement, the ship is fitted with a remote monitoring and data collection system; in parallel, NavyX can draw on a ‘digital twin’ shore-based electronic model of Patrick Blackett that provides a predictive data analytical tool.

Dr Lee Willett

Author: Dr Lee Willett is an independent writer and analyst on naval, maritime, and wider defence and security matters. Previously, he was editor of Janes Navy International, maritime studies senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London, and Leverhulme research fellow at the University of Hull’s Centre for Security Studies.