Full steam ahead: Taking our end-to-end ASW solution to the seas

Two months of technical integration, four locations, 12 organisations, 50 BAE Systems personnel – one incredible effort.

Those are the headline numbers behind a recent Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) technical demonstration that we delivered, in collaboration with BAE Systems Maritime & Land and a consortium of collaborators, to the Royal Navy aligned to the UK MOD’s Atlantic Bastion programme.

Atlantic Bastion is focused on creating an advanced hybrid naval force to defend the UK and NATO allies against evolving subsea threats in the North Atlantic. It will help enable the UK to find, track and, if required, act against adversaries with unprecedented effectiveness across vast areas of ocean – making it a key priority for the UK government.

This demonstration followed on from a previous demonstration in June 2025 where we validated our ability to support military decision making in an underwater battlespace environment.

Phase one: Rapid sensor deployment from a lean crewed platform

The programme started in Portland with a dedicated trial focused on rapid, cost effective sensor deployment from an uncrewed air vehicle (UAV). Working alongside HeliOperations, Malloy Aeronautics and Ultra Maritime, the team showcased how an agile, lean-crewed platform could support ASW operations through accelerated sonobuoy delivery.

Operating from a lean crewed vessel, the Malloy Aeronautics T 150 UAV was launched carrying a twin sonobuoy payload. Following a pre planned flight path to an identified threat area, the T 150 successfully deployed the sonobuoys before returning to RV Triton for rapid reloading and relaunch. The full deploy-recover-reset sequence was completed in under 41 minutes, evidencing efficient and rapid capability deployment.

Throughout the event, RV Triton remained alongside in Portland, demonstrating that meaningful ASW capabilities can be delivered without the vessel going to sea. This is an important indicator of how future hybrid fleets can operate efficiently with reduced cost and crew burden, while still achieving operational effect.

This first phase set the foundation for the more complex integration activities that followed across the Atlantic Bastion programme.

Phase two: A multinational trial operation

The purpose of the subsequent demonstrations was to prove our credentials by showcasing a complete end-to-end ASW solution from data capture, ingestion and analysis to reporting.

They took place across three geographically diverse and operationally representative locations: the US east coast, the south coast of Norway and the east coast of Scotland. Conducting a trial at this scale enabled us to test different environmental, regulatory, and logistical conditions – while validating the maturity, robustness and deployability of the end to end solution.

Each location showcased a critical system capability that contributes to the overall solution. For the Connecticut element, Thayer Mahan streamed historical uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) mission data to Aberdeen to demonstrate the operational potential of an outpost system, while the Norway component involved a USV deployment for the collection of high-fidelity acoustic data. 

To maintain mission persistence, the USV platform utilised a suite of multiple communication pathways underpinned by NetVIPR to provide robust cyber security and encryption across all data links. The collected data was live streamed from Norway to Aberdeen through our secure Cross Domain Solution, showcasing the solution’s capacity to ingest low side data and securely transfer, visualise and exploit it at high side classifications.  

As the focal point for the demonstration, Aberdeen provided a clear showcase of the flexibility and maturity of our C2 ISR platform – the primary environment for sensor-agnostic, AI-enabled data integration, fusion, analysis and visualisation to provide actionable situational awareness. Secure communications linked various deployed assets and platforms to the Maritime Operations Centre (MOC) via a portable, rapidly deployable remote set-up. This Remote Operations Centre (ROC) required a two-hour set-up and 30-minute tear down with minimal footprint, demonstrating its suitability for forward or temporary locations and surge operations.

All demonstrations met the Royal Navy’s sub-one-hour processing target from data capture to exploitable outputs – including USV and sonobuoy data being presented in the ROC. The consortium members involved in the Aberdeen/Norway components were Acacia, Mind Foundry, Optics 11, Reach Subsea, RS Aqua, SEA Group and Techmodal.

Mission accomplished

Our key objective of the demonstration was to validate that the Royal Navy’s desired Commercially Owned, Commercial Operated (COCO) model can effectively integrate with UK MOD operations to support timely, secure and relevant ASW decision-making – which we achieved with flying colours.

We were also set the challenge to validate three critical performance outcomes: trusted data fusion, sub 1 hour reporting and a secure communications pathway. As a consortium, we achieved all three while offering a compelling example of long range, distributed ASW operations. 

The level of effort and dedication involved was truly phenomenal. We integrated three sensors and seven data providers in two months over the Christmas period, which was only possible thanks to an incredible amount of collaboration, dedication and hard work across Digital Intelligence, Maritime & Land and Techmodal.

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