A flotilla of uncrewed wolf pack drone boats has successfully been used to escort warships in a Royal Navy and Army trial. The Navy said it was a milestone demonstration of how it could utilise such technology in a real-life scenario. With camera and sensor data being fed back to Patrick Blackett, five 7.2m autonomous Rattler boats safely escorted the two ships playing the role of foreign warships during the 72-hour milestone training exercise, it said. The demonstration was a culmination of months of trials by the Navy's Disruptive Capabilities and Technology Office (DCTO) and the Fleet Experimentation Squadron (FXS). Each of the Rattler boats were operated by a two-person team, with one responsible for piloting the drone and the other monitoring and operating onboard systems, as well as helping to manage live data streams.

Terrorist gangs smuggling Iranian missiles and drugs in the Middle East will soon have a fleet of 100 robo-ships hunting them down, Britain's most senior military commander in the Gulf has revealed. The new naval force, made up of drones that can operate around the clock, will be up and running by the summer, claimed Commodore Adrian Fryer. It comes as the top officer insisted he remained'alive' to the ever-present threat posed by Iran after a series of recent stand-offs, with the Commodore calling the Middle Eastern state the'main destabilising country' in the region. A small number of the unmanned vessels currently operating in the Gulf are already proving their worth, gathering invaluable data and information that's helping Royal Navy warships cut off smuggling routes and ambush gangs at sea. During the past 12 months, frigate HMS Montrose has seized her biggest haul of narcotics in its three years in the Gulf, bagging a whopping £46.8 million, bringing the ship's total during its time in the Middle East to a staggering £111.1 million.

Britain's military will unveil a shift towards more lethal, hi-tech and drone-enabled warfare on Monday as ministers and chiefs attempt to stave off criticism of impending cuts in the size of the armed forces. The plan will be highlighted in a defence command paper setting out the military's ambitions for the next five years and confirming a cut in the size of the army to an anticipated 72,500 troops, and a string of other savings as day-to-day defence budgets are squeezed. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said on Friday it was time to end "the Top Trumps game of numbers" because previous reviews that had emphasised size had left the military with "lots of ships that are tied up and not available, or lots of regiments". Instead, ministers and service chiefs will highlight how forces such as the Royal Marines could use a mobile phone app to locate friends and enemies on a battlefield while using Ghost drones, 6ft-long single-blade helicopter-like devices that can highlight and even fire at targets. Gen Sir Nick Carter, the head of the armed forces, said that "rather than focus on size and shape, I would focus on lethality, the relevance, the resilience and the readiness of our army and our armed forces."

Reconnaissance robots that can be lobbed 148 feet over walls, or into buildings and caves to provide real-time video have been tested by the Royal Marines. The 43 Commando Fleet Protection Group have been trialling the'throwbots' -- and other advanced kit -- during exercises around and in the tunnels beneath Gibraltar. The bots are built to survive falls of up to 32 feet, automatically self-right after landing and can operate for 30 minutes when submerged under 3 feet of water. Marines could throw the robots into unknown or occupied territory in order to get an advanced'lay of the land' without putting themselves directly at risk. When not testing new field tech, 43 Commando's responsibilities include protecting the UK's nuclear weapons arsenal at Her Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde, in Scotland.