UK to buy three new mine-hunting drone motherships under Norway agreement

MILAN — The UK this week formalized plans to purchase three new mine-hunting “motherships” that can deploy unmanned mine countermeasure assets, as part of a defense cooperation agreement with Norway. 

Under the UK-Norway Lunna House Agreement, signed last December, the British government announced its intention to join the Norwegian P1118 Standardized Vessel Program to develop offshore support vessels as motherships for autonomous mine-hunting systems. 

The decision, for which £90 million ($119.1 million) has been allocated, was formalized on Thursday by British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting and his Norwegian counterpart, Tore O. Sandvik, at the Atlantic Future Forum in Oslo. 

“This deal strengthens our ability to protect freedom of navigation, which is critical to our security and our economy…[We are] using the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War to put the latest modern technology in the hands of our sailors,” Streeting said.

The British Ministry of Defense said the vessels, built on the same family as Norway’s naval version of the P1118 design, will help keep sailors “further from danger” and, as a result, support “anti-submarine warfare capabilities on NATO’s northern flank.” 

The first ship is expected to arrive in 2031, and the deal includes an option for London to order three more. 

The threat posed by naval mines, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, has surged since the start of the Iran war in February, when Tehran launched mine-laying operations to restrict navigation of the waterway. In Thursday’s announcement, the British MoD called these operations “illegal.” It said they caused “major disruption to the global trade in energy,” adding that the new mine-hunting capabilities will help the UK stay ahead of this threat.