Arondite and Babcock have partnered to bring autonomy into the Royal Navy’s day to day operations. The two UK companies have agreed a strategic collaboration to co develop maritime autonomy systems for the UK and allied navies, with Arondite’s Cobalt operating system at the center.
The partnership sits inside Babcock’s new “ARMOR Force” concept, shown publicly after the First Sea Lord’s speech at the International Seapower Conference. ARMOR Force, short for Autonomous and Remote, Maritime Operational Response Force, is not a single platform. It is a networked mix of crewed ships and uncrewed systems, surface and subsurface, designed to work together as one force package rather than as separate projects.
“The future of maritime power will be defined by an adaptable blend of crewed and uncrewed systems, leveraging disaggregated sensors and effectors,” said Will Blyth, Arondite co-founder and CEO. “We have built Cobalt to tackle exactly this challenge. We are proud to combine our autonomy and mission orchestration capabilities with the world-leading integration, design and build expertise of Babcock, to rapidly deliver the Royal Navy’s vision of a Hybrid Navy.”
Arondite’s Cobalt platform will act as the autonomy and mission control layer for ARMOR Force. In practice that means Cobalt will sit above a fleet of mixed assets, connect their sensors and effectors, and give commanders a single view they can use from ship or shore.
“A key part of our mission is to allow the British Armed Forces to rapidly adopt new technologies. Cobalt has been designed from day one to be completely agnostic, with the ability to rapidly integrate and orchestrate any hardware or software,” said Blyth.
Cobalt is already in service with a number of Royal Navy and British Army units. It supports multi domain mission planning, autonomy orchestration, AI supported sensor fusion and decision support, and human machine teaming across hardware from many suppliers. For the Royal Navy, extending that into a formal “Hybrid Navy” concept gives a path to scale autonomous systems without tying the force to one vendor or one vehicle line.
The companies have been working on early design work since June 2025 and are already running live sea trials as part of the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Bastion demonstrator, alongside a global group of hardware partners.
Both firms frame speed as a central goal. They want to shorten the loop from idea to deployment for new autonomous capabilities, rather than waiting for long, monolithic programmes. That lines up with the Royal Navy’s own push to move faster on a Hybrid Navy and to treat autonomy as a tool for today’s fleet, not a distant future concept.
“The First Sea Lord and his leadership team are driving forward the Hybrid Navy, which is world-leading in terms of how it will harness autonomous and crewed systems to fundamentally change how we fight,” said Sir Nick Hine, Chief Executive of Babcock Marine. “The partnership we are creating with Arondite represents a bold step forward. We are combining advanced autonomy, modular systems, and digital innovation to create a fleet that is more agile, resilient, and ready for tomorrow’s challenges. What we are proposing will keep the Royal Navy at the forefront of global maritime security for decades to come.”
““Babcock are a fantastic partner and we’re incredibly proud of what we’re building together. We’re very different companies but we’re united in our sense of urgency. We’re already in the water, jointly testing capabilities together. ARMOR Force is really ambitious, working to some rapid timelines – it’s really breaking the mould on how maritime kit of this kind has traditionally been developed. But the Royal Navy and our allies need a Hybrid Navy and they need it fast, so we are proud to lead the way,” said Blythe.
