Our Navy Tech and Seabed Defence 2026 event has drawn to a triumphant close after three days of intensive learning, new and renewed connections, and constructive debate.
Our first speaker won a rousing standing ovation at the end of her speech, which gave first-hand insights from Ukraine’s ongoing struggle against Russia.
It particularly focused on the lessons to be learned from the maritime aspect of the conflict in the Black Sea, charting the successful lifting of Russia’s naval blockade.
When first imposed in February 2022 by 52 combat ships then making up Russia’s Black Sea fleet, at a stroke it cut off the route for 90 per cent of the country’s trade. Yet despite lacking naval assets, Ukraine waged a successful campaign to wrest back control via an integrated series of attacks using Harpoon and Neptune missiles and Magura V5 and Sea Baby drones.
By July Ukraine had managed to exert enough pressure to bring Russia to the negotiating table via the UN and lift the restrictions on cereal exports. Despite Russia later reneging on the Grain Corridor agreement, Ukraine has managed to secure what it dubbed its ‘Humanitarian Corridor,’ and grain trade levels are now back to roughly 90% of pre-war levels.
Significant moments in the ongoing naval campaign included the sinking of Russian flagship Moskva in April 2022, the pioneering October drone swarm attack on Sevastopol, and the uncrewed surface vessel (USV) assault on the Kerch Bridge in July 2023.
The campaign culminated in July 2024 when the last Russian naval patrol ship sailed out of Crimea; current efforts focus on mine-clearing to keep sea corridors secure, keeping merchant ships safe, and targeting sanction-busting ships making up part of Russia’s shadow fleet.
The speaker also talked about wider lessons learned with respect to the necessity of research and development-integrated warfare: the “learn as you fight” doctrine.
Contrasting procurement speeds, she pointed out that while the two-year cycles of organisations such as NATO’s DIANA in the West were considered quick, in Ukraine hardware iterations were being revised in five to ten weeks, and software was sometimes being updated as regularly as twice a day. And pointing out why, she reminded us: “The only other country working this fast is Russia.”
Considerations such as ownership of intellectual property (IP) had become moot in a situation where companies were embedded with end-users on the front line. Brigades have their own budgets to buy systems as operationally required, and provide the locations and contributory expertise to help develop them hand-in-hand with companies.
The speaker added: “You can do the testing here, but overall they are tested on the battlefield, or we are just building beautiful jewellery without any particular use.”
What was most needed, she said, was a shift away from over-sophistication and towards supply-chain resilience, adding: “Sometimes we need to think about how we can downgrade a bit the tech, but make them more scaleable… The things we are working on are grass-rooted.”
She said, for example, that 97% of the five million first-person-drones per year the country was currently using were domestically produced. And she called for industry to start producing its own key products such as fibre-optic cables, rather than having to rely on Chinese exports and being held hostage to both availability and price fluctuations.
Later on, the focus shifted from current conflict to future capabilities, including an update on the progress of the European Defence Agency’s European Combat Vessel (ECV) programme.
It’s a project initiated by seven states who signed an initial Letter Of Intent (LOI) in late 2024: Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands and Portugal.
The aim is to produce a family of three related warships of varying sizes, displacing between 3,000 and 8,000 tonnes, designed via a systems-to-hull approach, and wedded to NATO standards for optimal interoperability.
Originally it was envisioned vessels would start entering the water in the 2040s, but some states are pushing for faster development and bringing the target dates for first results forward by about five years.
In terms of current progress, the audience heard five of the original seven states had already agreed the high-level requirements, with the other two set to follow shortly. Meanwhile, at least four and possibly a fifth nation have recently expressed interest in joining the programme.
The speaker concluded: “This vision is not about giving up sovereignty; it’s about exercising it together.”
Later, there was a presentation on the future vision for uncrewed systems for the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN); a Maritime Uncrewed Taskforce has been established, looking at a timeframe stretching from the decade beginning in 2030.
Its credo is accelerated deployment and further development of uncrewed systems, integrated in the operational concept of the Navy, with the emphasis on increased combat power: a mixture of “technology push and capability pull.”
The speaker suggested replacing the traditional characterisation of tasks to be carried out by uncrewed systems — dirty, dull and dangerous — with a revised set: dangerous, difficult and decisive.
Essentially the vision is for a combination of crewed and uncrewed platforms working in unison, a “system of systems approach” that includes large USVs (LUSVs) delivering defensive and offensive strike capabilities.
As the speaker noted: “If you really want to do air defence in the North Sea you need a big platform — you need to send a lot of energy into the air.”
He said it was necessary to plan for a future which had arguably already arrived, where any ship capable of carrying a shipping container can effectively be considered a warship, because it can carry drone weapons.
The RNN is planning on carrying out its first official Maritime Uncrewed Sea Trials (MUST) in 2027 involving a combination of traditional manned platforms and uncrewed air, surface and subsurface assets. They are likely to feature joint manoeuvre tasks and “find” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
The closing afternoon session included a presentation on Norwegian Armed Forces in the High North, taking in both its current structure and longer-term development programme.
The audience heard how Norway was planning for a wide-ranging renewal of its naval forces, as set out in its 2024 Fleet plan, the first such comprehensive national programme since the 1960s.
Its MCM operations are shifting towards an autonomous uncrewed portfolio, while elsewhere eight classes of vessels will be replaced by a standardised family of ships for the Navy and Coast Guard, modular in design and in two main types, a 90-100 metre platform and one measuring 50-60m. Up to 28 of these ships will be acquired.
In addition the Norwegian Navy is set to acquire five Type 26 frigates identical to their sister ships coming into use with the British Royal Navy; there will also be cooperation with the UK on uncrewed systems as per the recent Lunna House agreement.
And it was confirmed that Norway had exercised its option to increase the number of Type 212 submarines it was jointly procuring with Germany from four to six boats; the speaker admitted that procuring all these systems might well stretch beyond 2036 due to programme scale and platform complexity.
When questioned, the speaker said his highest priority for Nigh North security was ASW, so the new submarines and Type 26 frigates were particularly key acquisitions, and he also welcomed the ongoing upgrading of systems aboard the force’s fleet of P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
And there was also a briefing on the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 66 (TF66) and its use of robots and autonomous systems in both Europe and Africa.
He described the defining challenge as speed of adaptation, adding: “It remains in ‘Beta’ unless it’s used in operations.”
He said what Ukraine had done with USVs in the Black Sea, while impressive, represented “only a fraction of the potential impact uncrewed systems can bring to the battlefield.”
But, he added, used in isolation “they remain novelties” — integrating them with crewed systems was the way to exploit them most effectively. And he added: “In modern warfare, the learning cycle is itself a weapon.”
Recent experiences in the Red Sea, he said, where precision-strike missiles costing millions of dollars had been used to shoot down low-cost drones, had made it clear that “the rapid adoption of C-UAS is no longer optional — it’s a necessity for fleet survivability.”
Meanwhile, recent U.S. operations such as Absolute Resolve, where five months of planning had gone into a three-hour mission, had reinforced the primacy of effective intelligence-gathering.
He was optimistic about the way in which the U.S. Department of Defence and the U.S Navy and U.S. Marine Corps’ procurement bodies were being restructured to facilitate the more rapid acquisition and development of uncrewed systems.
He described it as “a strategic pivot” adding “it’s about making the Navy more agile in acquiring robotic systems.” He described USVs as “no longer experimental” and said: “We are going from a handful, to dozens, and soon hundreds of platforms.”
In terms of TF66’s immediate future, in recent years its focus has been on integrating uncrewed systems with NATO partners in Europe, as well as non-NATO friendly nations in Africa. The speaker said the task force would continue to participate in planned operational exercises during 2026 to refine system integration.
But the audience heard that in the next six weeks — assuming assent from the Norwegian authorities — TF66 activities would also pivot towards developing Arctic and High North capabilities, battling new challenges such as low temperatures and high salinity.
He said initially experiments would focus on USVs and UUVs, rather than UAS, although some integration with existing UAS assets would probably be examined further down the line.
And he had more advice to offer about the best way to approach testing uncrewed systems: “Focus on the command-and-control (C2) stack: if you get the C2 and the autonomy stack right, then after that we are just looking at platform performance.”
This closing afternoon presentation proved a fitting finale to what has been a magnificent week. It’s been a whirlwind ride in Gothenburg this year, starting with Monday’s Harbour Challenge, and holding that momentum across three days of conference at a pace that has never let up.
Navy Leaders would like to extend its sincere thanks to all who have taken part and made this event such a success. We hope to see you all again next year in Sweden!