What Is UKMTO? The Royal Navy’s Shipping Alert Center Explained

UKMTO stands for United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, and it is sponsored and run by Britain’s Royal Navy.

It began in Dubai in 2001, as part of Britain’s response to the September 11 attacks, and later became the main point of contact for ships during the fight against Somali piracy. Today a team of 18 watchkeepers, many of them former sailors, staffs the operations room every hour of the year. The Portsmouth hub was long called the Maritime Trade Information Centre and now carries the UKMTO name. A small Dubai team gives face-to-face security briefings to masters and ship operators in the Gulf.

Its alerts cover the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf. The British Hydrographic Office listed it in 2020 as also supporting safety work in the English Channel, the wider British exclusive economic zone and the Mediterranean, and, through a joint British-French center, the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa.

UKMTO does not send warships itself; it takes the first call from a ship in trouble and passes it to whoever can help, from a coast guard to a navy.

A master who is attacked, boarded or approached by suspicious craft calls or emails. The watchkeepers log the report, alert the nearest responding authority and, once satisfied the information holds, issue a public alert so that other ships can change course or raise their guard. It describes itself as neutral: it collects reports whatever Britain’s relations with the country involved.

Ships, owners, insurers, governments and the public see its alerts at the same moment, which is why one UKMTO line is often the first confirmation that an attack happened at all.

The Voluntary Reporting Area is the stretch of sea, drawn on the British Admiralty security chart Q6099, in which UKMTO asks every merchant ship, of any flag, to keep it informed of its movements.

The scheme rests on three reports. An initial report on entering the area gives the ship’s name, flag, IMO number, satellite phone number, position, course, speed, freeboard and cargo. A daily report, normally at 08:00 UTC, gives position, course and speed. A final report goes in on arrival in port or on leaving the area. Ships can send them by email or through forms on UKMTO’s website.

Reporting is voluntary, though some flag states and many shipping companies require it. The industry guidance that sets out the scheme, Best Management Practices for Maritime Security, was reissued in a combined edition on March 31, 2025 by the main shipping associations, including BIMCO, the International Chamber of Shipping and INTERTANKO.

A warning reports a specific incident that ships nearby need to know about now; an advisory gives wider or less certain security information, such as a threat, a pattern or an incident whose cause cannot be confirmed.

Alerts carry a running number and the year, so Warning 017-26 was the 17th alert of 2026. The count stood at 17 on March 10 and at 201 by November 10, a measure of how busy the war has made the center.

An alert can change class as facts come in. On October 18, 2025, UKMTO issued Warning 036-25 for a vessel hit by an unknown projectile and set on fire 116 nautical miles east of Aden, Yemen. A first update said it could not rule out an accident on board; a second reclassified the alert as an advisory because the source of the explosion could not be confirmed. Advisories have also covered matters such as widespread satellite navigation jamming. Notices carry routine information, for example a change of UKMTO’s own phone numbers.

Read the title for the category, the source line for who reported it, and the body for what was actually seen; the word “incident” appears in almost every notice and on its own says nothing about whether a ship was attacked.

A typical notice opens with “UKMTO has received a report of an incident” followed by a distance and bearing from a landmark. Warning 017-26 of March 10, 2026, for example, was titled suspicious activity: the master of a bulk carrier 36 nautical miles north of Abu Dhabi reported a splash and a loud bang close to the ship. The source line said the master, not a navy, had reported it.

The closing lines are standard. “Authorities are investigating” means no finding has been made, and “Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO” is attached to nearly every alert. Ship names, flags, damage and the attacker are usually left out, both to protect crews and because the center publishes only what it can stand behind. Later updates, numbered 001, 002 and so on, add what has been confirmed.

Because it can publish only what ships report and what it can verify, and in the Hormuz war most ships that are hit have stopped reporting.

In its weekly overview of October 16, 2026, UKMTO said it was struggling to establish the true number of attacks because the majority of targeted vessels were refusing to submit reports, and that it knew of further incidents from other sources but would not include them without sufficient verification. The Joint Maritime Information Center warned on October 15 that ships broadcasting their position faced a higher risk of being targeted, so many now cross with transponders off and say nothing afterwards.

The result is a gap between counts. Iran’s armed forces claimed at least 12 tankers had struck mines between October 31 and November 5, none named, while monitoring forces recorded far fewer attacks, as our report on how many tankers hit mines in Hormuz shows. The International Maritime Organization has counted 130 incidents against shipping in the region since late February, with at least 25 seafarers killed. A UKMTO tally is therefore best read as a floor of confirmed events, not a full count.

UKMTO works alongside the Joint Maritime Information Center, the US-led Combined Maritime Forces’ shipping desk in Bahrain, and the European Union’s Maritime Security Centre for the Indian Ocean.

The Joint Maritime Information Center issues threat assessments and advisory notes in consultation with UKMTO, and its weekly dashboards appear on UKMTO’s website. On November 8 it kept its threat level for the Strait of Hormuz at severe, calling further deliberate attacks highly likely. UKMTO reports the incidents; the Joint Maritime Information Center judges the risk. The day-by-day picture is in our Strait of Hormuz status tracker.

Ships report to UKMTO by email at watchkeepers@ukmto.org or by phone on +44 (0)2392 222060.

Its 2026 alerts also list two emergency mobile numbers, +44 7779 966976 and +44 7585 795608. It also asks ships to report satellite navigation jamming, which its weekly summaries map for the Gulf and the Red Sea.