International multi-disciplinary engineering and ship design consultancy BMT has unveiled a new modular uncrewed ship concept, MODUS.
The concept reflects the ambitions set forth in the United Kingdom’s Strategic Defence Review and broader industry trend towards larger, more capable uncrewed vessels with greater use of autonomy.
The company has developed pre-concept designs for a medium USV (40 metres) and a large USV (75 metres). These vessels are designed for specific use cases, including offshore survey, seabed warfare and anti-submarine warfare.
With a flexible modular architecture, MODUS is ready to meet the next generation of hybrid maritime operations where a mix of crewed and uncrewed vessels will work together in concert, according to BMT.
“Many navies are facing challenges including lack of mass, crew shortages, spiralling cost of building, operating and sustaining complex warships and keeping up with the pace of technology development. The need to adapt is clear and urgent. This requires a change of mindset. MODUS represents a new way of thinking and is a step towards a hybrid fleet where crewed and uncrewed platforms operate together to overcome these challenges ,” Will Alexander , Global Business Development Lead – Maritime Autonomous Systems at BMT, commented.
“We started with a fresh slate, working from the ground up first focusing on three core use cases of Military Data Gathering, Seabed Warfare and Anti-Submarine Warfare. We focused on simplicity of design, which ironically is often harder than a traditional design, as every decision is value engineered and scrutinised,” Jake Rigby , Global Head of Innovation & Research at BMT, added.
The project is built on over six years of research, beginning with the Highly Autonomous Warship Technology (HAWT) program, completed in 2021, which advanced the safe and secure integration of autonomous technologies, lean-crewing, and digital automation into vessel design.
Building on these foundations, the large uncrewed surface vessel (LUSV) initiative, showcased at DSEI in 2023, demonstrated how large uncrewed vessels can add scalable, interoperable mass to naval fleets.