1SL bets on Hybrid Navy but defence experts warn it may not be 'silver bullet'
The First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins' vision for a Hybrid Navy has faced scrutiny from a Defence Committee panel, citing concerns over its deterrent effectiveness, vulnerabilities, and potential costs.
Professor David Blagden's comments came ahead of Sir Gwyn's speech at Royal United Service Institute (Rusi), where he outlined progress on the creation of a hybrid fleet of crewed, uncrewed and autonomous systems.
In his address, Sir Gwyn said the disruptions on the Strait of Hormuz point to the "vulnerability" of traditional systems, adding that in the future, Royal Navy warships will be unable to "fight and survive" without uncrewed support.
The uncrewed dilemma
However, speaking to the committee the previous day, Prof Blagden outlined several concerns with this shift, including the lack of deterrence that uncrewed systems can project.
"If you go out and destroy them but no people die, then it has far less escalatory implications," he explained.
"Even before Iran was at war with the US, it shot down or engaged American uncrewed systems. If you're not killing Americans, then the escalatory implications are far lower."
He warned that adversaries – particularly Russia – may be far less reticent in destroying uncrewed platforms.
"If you're faced with Atlantic Bastion… the thing you do is go and hire some merchant ships and drive around the North Atlantic trying to run them down."
He also added that such platforms could also be vulnerable to capture, saying: "Anything you put on them that's secret or sensitive, you can expect to pretty quickly be nicked and reverse engineered – or at least studied."
In addition, he pointed out that uncrewed systems – specifically minehunting vessels – do not carry the same flexibility and adaptability as crewed, which can act as patrol vessels, in turn contributing to the maritime picture.
No silver bullet
Further concerns surrounding maintenance, support and cost, elements he described as existing in trade-offs, were also highlighted.
"You can say your uncrewed systems are cheap, but if you make them big and complex, it's more like a sloop – effectively an uncrewed ship," he explained.
"If it has some big op def [operational defect] on board, and you have to pull a crewed ship off station to go and help it, or you just concede that it's lost – if you do that a few times, then the overall cheapness begins to not be quite so clear-cut."
His final concern centres on the command-and-control challenges – rather, whether the Navy should fully favour autonomous systems or rely on direct remote control, both of which he explained present problems of their own.
With autonomy, he argued, you cannot control escalation, whereas remote control is vulnerable to jamming, interference, and interception, increasing the incentives to target command-and-control infrastructure.
"If you're operating a largely uncrewed fleet controlled from a few key nodes, then you make your force brittle because those key command and control nodes are more high-value targets."
Ultimately, his remarks err on the side of caution.
"If this is, in fact, a panicked and deficient Navy, and we're telling ourselves hopeful stories that this is going to be a silver bullet that upends the balance of power in the North Atlantic and makes it all okay again on the cheap, then we're likely to be disappointed."
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