Ann: Operations Update, page-12

Yes, Hunter.

Speaking of war and innovation, this keynote form Admiral Sir Ben Key, First Sea Lord Royal Navy is interesting and sobering. They are preparing for more challenging times in a more dangerous world.

Either way, the future is digital with a huge shift toward unmanned craft of various types, aerial, surface and subsurface. You would think Harvest must have a role to play, not saying with the RN, and not just militarily, but generally and more widely around the world in a rapidly growing range of markets and applications - applications that generate a huge amount of data which, as Admiral Key says, needs to be delivered at the front line on time all the time.

Everything points towards Harvest havingthe technology to execute into the opportunity.

All it needs is management capability.

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2023/september/14/20230914-first-sea-lord-admiral-sir-ben-key-dsei-2023-keynote

Like our forebears who struck out into the unknown to chart the world’s oceans, it feels to me that we are once again facing something completely new - a paradigm shift, dare I say it, a Dreadnought moment.

And that future is arriving now. It is with us, uncrewed, automated, it is digital, it is intelligent, blended, hybrid. It offers to fundamentally reshape the way the Royal Navy goes about securing our trade, energy and data for the nation.

And it comes at a time when the world we live in is changing too. The geopolitical challenge and technological race unfolding in Europe and in the Indo-Asia pacific is unlike anything in memory. Now more than ever is the time for strong deterrence and defence.

But if we’re to maintain that mission, we must continue to accelerate the evolution that has been one of the hallmarks of our history. It is why we are undertaking a huge capital procurement programme, growing the Navy for the first time since the end of the Second World War with 16 ships and six submarines on order or in build.

And they will be in large part, if not entirely, platforms oriented around a digital framework, allowing a fundamental shift in the way we crew and operate them.

In CETUS, we are developing the largest and most complex crewless submersible ever operated by a European Navy and we have deployed to the Gulf our uncrewed minesweeping capability, fielding some seriously novel technology to counter the rapidly evolving threat of sea mines.

And just last week, we flew an uncrewed and autopiloted fixed-wing aircraft to and from HMS Prince of Wales at sea off Cornwall, in a first for the Royal Navy.

When Nelson sent his iconic ‘England expects…’ message at Trafalgar it required 32 flags for 9 words. Today, communication is as vital as ever but the volume and complexity of data, the extent of the messages we are trying to send, and the methods we have available to us would be incomprehensible almost just a generation ago, let alone in Nelson’s age. We will only be able to exploit and capitalise on this by becoming fully digital, and operating a Navy fit for the information age.

This means being able to collect, analyse and fuse data about the operational theatre and battlespace, to generate genuine multi-domain, multi-dimensional situational awareness. It means being able to do it at the front line, and being able to do it on time.