Oct 9, 2026 05:36 PM
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-...-cold-war/
EXCERPTS: Britain is the lead nation for a NATO programme to bind frigates, uncrewed underwater vehicles, surface relay nodes and satellite links into a single interoperable network, described by the officer running it as the alliance’s most significant undersea domain awareness initiative since the Cold War, the Apex Europe conference in London heard on Wednesday.
[...] Commodore Burton was blunt about what happens if the alliance lets the market take its own course. “The growth in uncrewed systems is exponential, and the challenge as an alliance is, do we sit back and allow that to happen and to take shape? And if we do so, I think there’s only one thing we can guarantee, and that is that we won’t be interoperable,” he said.
The architectural shift underneath that is the one navies have been circling for a decade. “How do we transition from what I describe as a small number of very large assets, conventional assets, to a very large number of small assets? Architecturally, it’s totally different,” he said.
[...] Twelve nations sponsor the programme and he expects that to reach fifteen, with Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States taking part, and Finland, Belgium and Greece either joining or observing. NATO’s maritime research centre and Maritime Command are signatory stakeholders.
[...] The reference architecture was delivered this year, and the programme has now moved into a second phase worth more than thirty million to build and validate the test and reference environment, running to 2028. The architecture is intended to end up codified as an alliance-wide standard.
[...] The sheer number of these [operations] is becoming a problem of its own, he says. “Everywhere we look, there are operational experiments popping up. This is a big drain on industry, and we really have to orchestrate these to maximise the impact of them,” he said, describing them as good opportunities for companies to prove what they can do... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Britain is the lead nation for a NATO programme to bind frigates, uncrewed underwater vehicles, surface relay nodes and satellite links into a single interoperable network, described by the officer running it as the alliance’s most significant undersea domain awareness initiative since the Cold War, the Apex Europe conference in London heard on Wednesday.
[...] Commodore Burton was blunt about what happens if the alliance lets the market take its own course. “The growth in uncrewed systems is exponential, and the challenge as an alliance is, do we sit back and allow that to happen and to take shape? And if we do so, I think there’s only one thing we can guarantee, and that is that we won’t be interoperable,” he said.
The architectural shift underneath that is the one navies have been circling for a decade. “How do we transition from what I describe as a small number of very large assets, conventional assets, to a very large number of small assets? Architecturally, it’s totally different,” he said.
[...] Twelve nations sponsor the programme and he expects that to reach fifteen, with Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States taking part, and Finland, Belgium and Greece either joining or observing. NATO’s maritime research centre and Maritime Command are signatory stakeholders.
[...] The reference architecture was delivered this year, and the programme has now moved into a second phase worth more than thirty million to build and validate the test and reference environment, running to 2028. The architecture is intended to end up codified as an alliance-wide standard.
[...] The sheer number of these [operations] is becoming a problem of its own, he says. “Everywhere we look, there are operational experiments popping up. This is a big drain on industry, and we really have to orchestrate these to maximise the impact of them,” he said, describing them as good opportunities for companies to prove what they can do... (MORE - missing details)