Navy's biggest ship might get robot wingmen: Here's what we know

The HMS Prince of Wales its getting ready for an Indo-Pacific trip next year with up-to 24 F-35B jets (which is about two-thirds of UKʼs working stealth planes). The Navy faces a tough situation: they dont have enough crew members and had to get help from Norwayʼs ship for fuel during NATO training last month

The Labour government defense review now looks at smart-drones as a way to fix these issues. These arent tiny quad-copters like in Ukraine but big jet-sized machines that could work with F-35s on the carrier deck

What we need is to boost the lethality and survivability of our overall posture

In the past 3 yrs‚ the ship tested several un-manned aircraft: the QinetiQ Banshee GA Mojave (that carries 4 missiles) and W Autonomous supply drone. Big companies like Boeing‚ BAE Systems‚ and tech start-up Anduril want to join this program

The money-side makes sense too; while F-35s cost about £90m each the combat drones price is in low millions. Right now the UK has just 34 working F-35s (with more coming in 2025) – thats not much for Navy RAF and Army needs

To make this work the ship needs changes though. It would need cat-and-trap systems: special gear that helps planes take-off and land flat instead of jumping up or landing straight down. The project called “Ark Royal“ might add these features but no one knows the cost yet

The carriers huge deck (as big as 3 football fields) could fit many types of drones: from fuel-carriers to missile launchers. Some companies even made shipping containers that release 126 small attack-drones at once – thats the kind of tech theyʼre looking at