The Royal Navy purchased merchant ships for high-tech testing

Posted on July 29, 2022 at 6:21 pm by

Navy Executive

The Royal Navy has acquired an upgraded merchant fleet as a testbed for future technologies, including autonomous systems.

The service ordered a 42m Damen 4008 Fast Crew Supplier last year, which was installed to Royal Navy spec and delivered within 12 months. The new “experimental vessel” XV Patrick Blackett will conduct sea trials for the Royal Navy’s test and R&D arm Navix. Providing the department with its own ship will allow the program to be accelerated without burdening the warships.

The Royal Navy decided to name the ship after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Patrick Blackett, who served as the Admiralty’s first director of operational research during World War II.

The ship is designed to support containerized test payloads on its back deck – a system the Royal Navy calls PODS (Permanently Operational Deployed Systems). The idea is similar to the previous mission module concept for the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, which was designed around flexible weapon packages for different missions.

In the future, XV Patrick Blackett will take part in Royal Navy and NATO exercises, possibly upgraded with autonomous technology.

Faster submarines are also in service with the US Navy, which operates two affordable autonomous technology test platforms. They have a capable rear deck and battleship-like speeds, but without battleship-like costs. The Pentagon’s Defense Strategic Capabilities Office (SSO) will buy two used Gulf of Mexico frigates around 2020 and convert them into independent test vessels. The secretive program was successful in transferring the first two hulls to the fleet’s control, and the two boats now operate under operational command of Surface Development Squadron One in San Diego.