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Navy: Artificial Intelligence

Asked by Ben Obese-JectyConservativeMinistry of DefenceTabled Answered 9 September 2025UIN 74112

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress he has made on developing the Royal Navy’s Force Threat Evaluation and Weapon Assignment functionality enabled by Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.

Answered by Luke Pollard

Force-Level Target Evaluation and Weapon Assignment (FTEWA) is a central part of the Royal Navy’s pivot to a Hybrid Navy, being developed under the Future Air Dominance System (FADS) programme. By networking our mix of crewed and uncrewed platforms together we will be able to use the optimum weapon from across the networked force to deal with each threat. Machine Learning, and eventually full AI, will be a key part of this functionality and be used in the generation of a single force level situational awareness view, the generation of a threat evaluation list and the recommendation of the optimum weapon to deal with each threat. This will allow operators to make the best decision in time to deal with each threat. FTEWA is in concept phase with the various building blocks described above being developed in parallel.

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