Inside the Royal Navy’s new mine warfare mothership programme

Navy Lookout – The RN’s autonomus mine hunting systems will be deployed on board up to three new Offshore Support Vessels (OSV) or ‘motherships’ procured in partnership with Norway. Recent work by Dstl and NDP provides the clearest indication yet of what the ships may need to look like, suggesting something much closer to a large commercial offshore vessel than a conventional naval auxiliary. Here we look at what is known about this programme.