Atlantic Net: Royal Navy’s £90m Plan to Hunt Russian Subs

The British Ministry of Defence has signed a framework agreement with Hampshire-based Ocean Infinity Solutions for Atlantic Net, a network of underwater sensors, sonar, uncrewed vessels and artificial intelligence analysis intended to detect Russian submarines across the North Atlantic, opening the way to an initial £90 million investment. The deal was announced on November 10 at the International Sea Power Conference in Oslo, held aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales. Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard stated there that the system would become operational next year as the first capability of the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Bastion program. The contractor will run the service under Royal Navy direction, feeding its picture to submarine hunting warships and Astute class submarines. The arrangement marks a significant departure from the navy’s long practice of buying and crewing its own platforms, and reflects how heavily Britain now expects commercial robotics to cover gaps its shrinking fleet cannot.

Pollard told the conference that the sensors would stretch across the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, the main passage through which submarines of Russia’s Northern Fleet reach the open Atlantic. He added that Atlantic Net would have gone from concept to working service in two years, around half the usual time for such programs. He stated: “The threats beneath the North Atlantic are changing, and we are changing with them.” The framework is expected to support almost 200 skilled jobs, and Pollard used the same speech to announce a contract for Saab UK to fit a lightweight counter-drone radar to the Royal Navy‘s Kraken K3 Scout uncrewed boats. The announcement came alongside a Northern Navies Initiative signed aboard the carrier by all 10 maritime members of the Joint Expeditionary Force, and follows Defence Secretary John Healey’s unveiling of Atlantic Bastion in Portsmouth in December 2025.

The urgency behind the program was highlighted on April 9, when Healey disclosed that British and allied forces had spent about a month tracking an Akula class nuclear-powered attack submarine and two boats of Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI), which he said had been gathering information on undersea cables and pipelines. Around 500 British personnel, a Royal Navy warship and RAF P-8 Poseidon aircraft were committed to that operation, a heavy burden for a surface fleet left with only five towed array frigates against a stated requirement for eight. The First Sea Lord, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, told the conference on November 11 that more than 95 percent of the data allied populations depend on travels through cables under the sea. Persistent uncrewed sensors are intended to let the few available frigates prosecute contacts rather than spend their patrols searching for them.

Ocean Infinity, best known for its searches for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the latest of which ended in March 2026 after 151 days at sea without new findings, operates a fleet of remotely supported robotic vessels including the 86 metre Armada 8606 mothership. Later phases of Atlantic Bastion are expected to bring uncrewed systems under direct Royal Navy ownership, including planned Type 92 uncrewed surface vessels, as the navy also launches Nyan drones from its carriers and Australia fields the Ghost Shark autonomous undersea vehicle. The crewed side will improve only slowly, with HMS Glasgow, the first of eight Type 26 class anti-submarine frigates, not scheduled to enter service until 2028.