“Good morning – and thank you for that welcome, James.

It’s great to be here at Farnborough today among so many distinguished guests, speakers and colleagues.  

CNE is rightly seen as one of the highlights of the defence calendar, and this year’s focus – on fleet readiness, shipbuilding, autonomy and underseas warfare – could not be more relevant to global events now unfolding.

Those themes also align with why I am here today – to set out how we are embracing technological change and refocusing the Royal Navy on its fundamental purpose: to be ready to fight and win wars.

That is my north star; it is the thing that drives every decision I have made, and will make, as First Sea Lord. 

It’s also why I can think of few better places to deliver this speech, given Farnborough’s history as a critical hub for wartime innovation and research. 

Last September, in my first speech in this job, I announced we would deliver a plan to reach warfighting readiness by 2029.  And we have. 

It is a plan focussed on the future, while ensuring we are ready to fight immediately. In other words: fight well tonight, fight better tomorrow.

Eight months on, and the plan has now been updated to ensure our resources, people and funding remain focussed on the genuine priorities that underpin warfighting. 

Today, I am going to talk to you about three things that will help us fulfil our mission. 

The first is creating a Hybrid Navy that ensures we have the lethality, survivability and mass necessary for warfighting.

The second is how we will take our partners in industry with us on this journey. 

And the third is working with our Joint Expeditionary Force partners to seize the generational opportunity to strengthen our deterrence in the High North and North Atlantic.

When I look at the world today, the imperative for doing all three seems more obvious than ever. 

The ‘peace dividend’ we once enjoyed now seems like a distant memory, the geopolitical situation more volatile and dangerous than at any point in my career.

Whether we like it or not, the fabric of the international rules-based order is fraying. Our adversaries are becoming more brazen and more confrontational.

We have moved into a new era of increased state-on-state contestation, with two major conflicts playing out simultaneously in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

In the Gulf, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran has reduced following Operation Epic Fury – but is not yet extinguished. 

And while some of Iran’s military capabilities have been degraded, we can expect heightened threats in the region from it and its proxies for years to come. 

In Ukraine, we are now into the fifth year of the bloodiest, most attritional European conflict since the Second World War. The war on land has rightly captured much attention.

But we must not forget the Black Sea – because what is happening in the maritime domain, and what will happen there when a ceasefire is brokered, will be fundamental to both Ukraine’s recovery, and the shape of future maritime warfare. 

At the same time, Russia is displaying an increasingly reckless and aggressive posture towards us and Ukraine’s other western partners.

Through its grey zone activity, through the probing of our critical national infrastructure, Russia is not merely testing our preparedness. 

It is testing our resolve, our willingness to defend our interests, and desensitising us to behaviour we would have once thought outrageous.

And across the world, we see adversaries exploiting low-cost autonomous systems, long-range precision weapons, and the advantages that come from rapid, iterative cycles of technical development. 

You only need to look at what Russia has done in terms of massively increasing its drone capability and production to know how much things have changed in the space of just four years. We must keep pace to stay credible.

Meanwhile, supply chain vulnerabilities and growing strategic competition for sea control mean that the UK cannot assume that freedom of navigation, or the maritime arteries upon which our nation is utterly dependent, will continue to function as they always have done. 

Because they won’t – not unless we make a concerted and continuous effort to defend them.  

Taken together, these threats have demonstrated that the long-held assumptions about survivability and the superiority of our nation can no longer be taken for granted.

I for one am determined not to stand idly by and let our advantage evaporate. 

In particular, one thing I continue to contend is the vital importance of sea power – without which no nation, particularly an Island like ours, can safeguard its people and its interests.

This is just not a 21st century problem. It has always been the case. 

Anyone who has studied our history will know that our ability to endure two world wars stemmed largely from our naval power – from the ability to protect our homeland, to keep the sea lanes open, and to maintain a global presence.

It is why Sir Dudley Pound, who led the Royal Navy through the first four years of the Second World War, rightly warned that if “we lose the war at sea, we lose the war.”

That is why we need a warfighting ready Hybrid Navy. Because our advantage – in the Atlantic and the High North – can no longer be sustained purely through the sophistication of individual ships, or the brave actions of our sailors and marines.

And let me be clear here, while we are playing our part in the Gulf today, we must not lose our long-term focus on the North, on our backyard.

Because it is here that Russian surface and sub-surface activity continues to pose the most acute and persistent threat, to our critical national infrastructure and the continuous at sea deterrent. 

That threat has not subsided while the world’s gaze has been fixed on the Gulf. 

In fact, all the evidence suggests Moscow is seeking to exploit this crisis – which is why we have been expending significant resource to disrupt and deter Russian submarine activity in recent weeks.

We are at a fork in the road, and the decisions we take now will have seismic and lasting consequences, not just for the Royal Navy, but our nation’s security and prosperity. The capable status quo is not good enough – not anymore.

As for what Hybrid looks like, many of you will by now be familiar with our Atlantic Fleet Series: Bastion, Strike and Shield. 

To recap: Bastion is a defensive net to protect the at sea deterrent and our CNI through the deployment of new anti-submarine warfare capabilities, autonomous sub-surface systems, and a layered sensor network. 

Atlantic Shield is our contribution to Integrated Air and Missile Defence to protect the homeland and our interests against the increasingly sophisticated threats we face

And Strike is about enhancing our conventional deterrence, our reach, and ensuring that if an adversary attacks us, we have the capabilities to hit back decisively. 

Together, these programmes will give us a force that can connect, share information and integrate its capabilities across multiple domains. 

A force that encompasses a mix of crewed, uncrewed and autonomous platforms, with traditional air, surface and subsurface platforms fighting with and alongside drones and other cutting-edge weapon systems

A force that combines the lethality, command presence, and global reach of crewed ships with the persistence, mass, and risk tolerance of uncrewed and autonomous systems. 

A force that can out-think and out-fight our adversaries – in an era in which operational advantage belongs to those who can sense, decide, and act faster than their opponent. 

At the same time, I am determined that we move away from the mindset that we need ever bigger, ever more expensive platforms to stay ahead. That is an outdated approach that no longer holds. 

What we need to do is to reduce the cost per unit and time for production to achieve the scale we need – because the reality is that there is no scenario in which we will have unlimited resources. 

There will never be enough resource; our task is to do the best with that available and be able to scale it rapidly when needed.

The approach is therefore simple: crewed where necessary; uncrewed where possible — and integrated always. 

However, this shift is not only about platforms or payloads. It represents a fundamental change in how we fight at sea. We are moving from a model centred around conventional platforms to one in which capability is distributed across a wider and more survivable mix of assets. 

Modularity, interoperability and digital connectivity must become the norm rather than the exception.

The core functions of the Hybrid Navy — sensing, understanding, deciding, and acting — must be orchestrated across crewed and uncrewed systems alike.

This restores something the Navy has lacked for decades: rapidly scalable and adaptable mass. And it allows us to increase tempo, to complicate an adversary’s targeting picture, and to impose cost at a pace they cannot match. 

I accept there are still some Hybrid sceptics – but we have no time to pander to cynicism or traditionalists, because autonomy is already demonstrably changing the nature of warfare, as evidenced in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

In fact, I’d go further than that: drones and autonomy have rapidly become dominant and decisive.

We also know our plan will work, because we have tested it in our Navy-wide Hybrid wargames.

Compared to our current fleet, the Hybrid model delivered a substantial uplift in combat mass, provided additional flexibility and tactical choice for commanders, and increased our missile capacity three-fold – to the level necessary to win a contest in the North Atlantic.

Across the deterrent, carrier strike groups, our amphibious capability and integrated air and missile defence, our readiness to respond also improved markedly. 

The case for Hybrid is clear. The task now is to get on and deliver it. 

That’s why I want to turn to my second point, which is that our partnership with industry is vital. And it is why I need those of you here today, working in the private sector, to embrace our plan too.

Because the technologies underpinning the Hybrid Navy – advanced communications, artificial intelligence, autonomy, modern manufacturing – are overwhelmingly driven by the commercial world, at commercial speed. 

With a race now underway internationally to set the standards for uncrewed and autonomous systems, the UK has a crucial opportunity to lead in this area, to field credible capabilities and to become a world leading exporter. 

But to establish that credibility requires pace — and that requires that we, collectively, do procurement differently. 

That means multi-year acquisition models giving way to iterative spiral development. 

It means creating an environment that allows commercial and classified technologies to develop side by side. 

And it means enabling talent to flow more freely between the Navy, industry and academia. 

That’s easy to say, and many have, but it’s hard to do.

I also recognise that our current regulation is not fit for purpose. So what are we doing?

For companies selling into Defence, the Defence Maritime Regulator is bringing forward proposals to allow more companies to benefit from a risk-based approach to testing and trialling.  

But the real prize is a regulatory regime for all companies and operators that allows new innovative technologies to be tested, certified and fielded as quickly and simply as possible. 

That’s why I am hopeful that the Regulation for Growth bill, announced last week in the King’s Speech, will provide the means to bring forward those changes.

Finally, we must reward and incentivise agility across the supply chain – because the Navy of the 2030s cannot be created using processes from a bygone age. 

Thankfully, this is already starting to happen. 

To give you just one example, a few weeks ago we received our first fleet of uncrewed vessels as part of Project Beehive – marking a significant early milestone in the creation of the Hybrid Navy. 

Through our partnership with Kraken, we now have at our disposal our first 20 boats. They were delivered at remarkable speed – the first 10 were delivered in just six days – and we now expect to reach full operating capability within 12 to 14 weeks of the contract being signed. 

That is the definition of an agile partnership – and it is also why Beehive will be among the first of our Hybrid systems deploying to the Gulf as part of the UK’s contribution to the multinational force tasked with reopening the Strait of Hormuz. 

If we get this right, the Hybrid Navy will constitute more than just defence modernisation. 

It will become a national industrial programme, strengthening our industries, supporting and increasing highly valued, skilled jobs, and position the UK at the front of the global autonomy race. 

This is an economic growth story we cannot afford to squander.

Now, I know many of you are waiting for the Defence Investment Plan to be published – but I want to reassure you that this is not holding us back. 

As the Defence Secretary confirmed last week, we have already unlocked £115m of funding to get our Hybrid Navy going – starting with our package for the Strait of Hormuz.

That includes autonomous mine hunting equipment and our mine-clearance specialists; HMS Dragon, our Type 45 destroyer; and our Beehive boats, which will enable the multinational force to sense, track, and identify potential threats. 

When you’re potentially dealing with fast inshore attack craft, mines and subsurface threats in one of the world’s narrowest and congested chokepoints, the ability to deploy large numbers of autonomous and uncrewed sensors and effectors confers a clear operational advantage. That is surely something even the sceptics recognise.

The planning for this has been a huge undertaking – but we are now finally ready to demonstrate to the world what the early stages of our Hybrid Navy can achieve.

However, this is just one step on a much bigger journey – because our end destination isn’t just a Hybrid Royal Navy, which brings me to my third point.

The real prize is the creation of a family of Northern Navies – not from scratch, but through a much deeper partnership with the nine like-minded nations that make up the Joint Expeditionary Force.

Since 2014, we have worked together to ensure we can rapidly respond to emerging threats in the High North, North Atlantic and the Baltic regions. 

But we must now go further if we are truly to provide the credible deterrence we need along our open sea border with Russia.

What I am talking about here is a persistent, integrated, multinational maritime force – one which derives huge advantage from its members being politically aligned, geographically close, aligned with common capabilities and acting with speed. 

A force that generates the maritime, air and amphibious strike capabilities we need.  

It would be a force that acts as a Vanguard for NATO, giving us the ability to respond flexibly and immediately to a threat or provocation as the wider alliance takes time to mobilise and determine its own response.

A force that moves beyond episodic activity to training, exercising and preparing together. A force designed to fight immediately if required, with real capabilities, real war plans, and real integration.

A force in which interchangeability – the ability to substitute, swap, or mix equipment, parts, ammunition, or personnel – is made possible because member nations would be operating common systems and platforms, shared digital networks, logistics and stockpiles. 

Already, we are exporting our most advanced warships – the Type 26 – to Norway and Canada, with discussions underway with other partners over the export of the Type 31 and the Arrowhead variant. 

And I know from conversations with my JEF counterparts that they are taking a keen interest in our Hybrid Naval plans. That is why I refer to a family of Northern Navies.

For those of you who missed my speech at RUSI, our vision was endorsed by all 10 JEF nations in London last month.

And today, I can confirm that in a few weeks’ time, the JEF Chiefs of Navies will be meeting again to convert that statement of intent into a meaningful proposition. 

It will be underpinned by shared objectives, including standardised doctrine, training, enhanced readiness, and the development of common capabilities.

By the Autumn, it is our firm intention that a fully formed plan is ready for implementation. If that sounds like we are moving fast, it’s because we are.

As I near the end of my first year in this job, I am immensely proud of the huge strides we have taken in the Service.

In uncertain times and despite significant challenges, we have clarity of purpose, we have a plan, and we have the willingness to change the Royal Navy.

All that is left to do now is get on with it. 

Thank you.”