The UK Royal Navy (RN) has detailed the requirements for its future Multi-Role Strike Ship (MRSS), requirements underlining the platform’s importance in providing strike capability to support amphibious operations in littoral environments.
With the programme advancing from the concept phase into the assessment phase in 2026, programme officials speaking at the Combined Naval Event 2025 conference in Farnborough, UK in May set out core designs and capabilities for the planned six new ships that will support the naval service’s evolving approach to delivering amphibious effect ashore. These include: a well dock; longer-range insertion craft; a flight deck supported by a hangar; capacity (including via a mission bay) to operate as ‘drone carriers’ for maritime uncrewed systems (MUS); and being ‘fitted for but not with’ emerging capabilities like directed energy weapons (DEW). Options for installing a vertical launching system (VLS) will also be considered.
With its strike capability emphasis, MRSS is central in re-structuring the Royal Marines Commando force in transforming delivery of effect ashore from the sea in congested littoral regions that encompass key maritime choke points and anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) threats.
Brigadier Chris Haw, a Royal Marine and Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the Commando Force and MRSS programmes, told the conference:
“We recognised that we probably couldn’t continue to conduct amphibious operations in the traditional way we’ve been doing – forming up a task group, moving into a theatre of operations, and putting our ramps down on contested soil – because that would probably be unlikely to succeed in the current environment,”
MRSS is designed to support requirements for the Royal Marines’ 3 Commando Brigade being re-roled and re-equipped as a specialist amphibious force, focused on warfighting at formation scale in the High North, global crisis response enabled by strategic mobility, and maritime special operations.
The UK’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published on 2 June, reiterated the ‘Royals’ role as an amphibious advance force, supporting NATO and other requirements in extreme environments like the Arctic. Amphibious capability also reinforces SDR’s three core UK armed forces’ tasks: protecting UK territories and interests; conducting Euro-Atlantic deterrence and defence, especially to support NATO’s North Atlantic needs; and shaping the global security environment, including through sustained forward-deployed presence and capability.
The six MRSS platforms (three are funded, currently) will support forward deployment of small, dispersed, littoral response groups (LRGs) to deliver specialist capability into the High North and Eastern Mediterranean/Middle East regions, or other areas of UK strategic need, to generate effect ashore in demanding scenarios. LRGs can be combined to make larger littoral strike groups (LSGs), or integrated with carrier strike groups (CSGs), to build significant warfighting and deterrence capability. “It’s a scalable concept that can be operated globally according to strategic requirement,” said Brig Haw.
The increasing A2/AD threat, plus MRSS’s various required operational outputs including employing new capabilities like MUS or DEW, mean the MRSS platform itself must differ from what has gone before.
Brig Haw added that the direction of the UK’s Commando Force transformation has been validated by lessons learned from the Russo-Ukraine war, which is demonstrating daily the importance of dispersed, integrated, and forward-deployed forces using new capabilities like uncrewed systems.
The MRSS capability requirements and their design implications will be considered in the assessment phase, which will include initiating functional design activity.
“As we commence the assessment phase, there will be challenges in trying to balance the space, weight, power, and costs of all these requirements. That’s going to need us to think differently, and to incorporate design innovation, modularity, and technology that can achieve our levels of ambition,”
Captain Derek Powles, the RN’s MRSS Programme Director
“This cannot simply be an Albion class [landing platform dock (LPD)] in the 2030s.”
The ships are set to include a well dock, like previous amphibious vessels. However, Capt Powles explained, the dock will require integration and interfacing with larger and more complex insertion craft (that bring increased range and capability requirements) and with uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs).
The well dock will launch at least two types of future insertion craft, Brig Haw explained. The Commando Insertion Craft (CIC) will be designed to carry strike and intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, alongside delivering vehicles, personnel, and specialist equipment ashore. However, it must do so from longer range, with the A2/AD threat forcing MRSS to stand further offshore. Industry competition for this craft will be open by the end of the current financial year, Brig Haw added. In the longer term comes the Commando Utility Craft (CUC), a programme currently in the development phase and drawing design and capability lessons from CIC. CUC could become a ‘mothership’ for uncrewed systems or containerised strike capabilities.
The MRSS flight deck will be supported by a hangar. “We’ve learned lessons from the LPDs: MRSS will have a hangar because it’s a critical component in delivering operational capability,” said Capt Powles. Focus here is on ensuring the hangar can accommodate future crewed and uncrewed aviation and their differing maintenance, power, and storage requirements.
Uncrewed system operation will also be supported by a mission bay. Based around ‘plug-and-play’ capabilities, the mission bay will need to support and enable spiral development of such capabilities. “It’s not just going to be a mission bay that we put ISO containers into,” said Capt Powles. “MRSS is being designed as a drone carrier …. [Operating] uncrewed systems in all environments – air, surface, sub-surface – is an integral part of this concept,” Brig Haw added.
Integrating uncrewed systems and the resilient data networks supporting their effective operation are core programme aspects, especially in developing capability mass.
Delivering increased mass will be enabled by the prospective addition of VLS cells onboard. Reflecting RN policy, options for incorporating Mk41 VLS fits into the design will be considered.
Modularity is another key design and capability focus. This will be essential in enabling MRSS platforms to be ‘fitted for but not with’ emerging systems like DEW, for the design to seamlessly integrate equipments and capabilities being developed for other RN programmes, and for individual MRSS ships to be re-roled for different tasks. Other tasks include, for example, operating as a command-and-control (C2) platform, delivering mine warfare capability up-threat, and providing the UK’s NATO Role 2 enhanced medical capability. A challenge here, Capt Powles explained, is “How do we achieve true modularity that delivers a reduction in reconfiguration time, so we’re not tied alongside for long periods?”
The concept phase has included extensive operational analysis, wargaming, and design reviews to refine the requirements set, said Capt Powles. Alongside the design and capability areas noted, it raised other areas of required focus, including: embedding design for support early in the design phase; using digital twinning and crew modelling to recognise, respectively, the impact of equipment and systems on maintenance needs and how concurrent operational tasking may increase crewing requirements; understanding the value of the data generated by the platform and its capabilities, and enabling optimal use of such data; the impact of automation and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) in reducing crew size while increasing decision-making speed; and the broader trend of smaller crews.
Generating and optimising use of the increasing amounts of data with reduced crews creates a conceptual and operational challenge. “MRSS is going to be a large platform. With a reduced crew, we cannot afford to have personnel moving to wherever the information and data is. So, we will need to be able to seamlessly access all the information wherever the crew are, to save them time and make them more effective and efficient in operating the platform,” said Capt Powles.
Moving into the assessment phase in 2026 will enable broad engagement with industry to help tackle the programme’s challenges, Capt Powles added.
