The UK MOD has announced it will be holding a Project COOKSON Challenge Session on Wednesday 22nd of January 2025 in London and has invited relevant industry partners from NATO, Ukraine and Five-Eyes countries to attend.

The aim of this new project is developing a fast, low-observable long range boat armed with at least 2 “one-way effectors” and with a weapon system providing “some level” of self-defence, hard-kill capability against not just surface but air threats as well. We have just recently seen an Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessel shooting down a Russian helicopter and COOKSON aims to have that kind of capability.

The outline requirements are ambitious, but also still pretty open: most notably, while COOKSON is ideally going to be uncrewed, the MOD is not shutting the doors on proposals for a manned boat just yet and is inviting industry to provide its own outlook at pros and cons.

The boat is required to be compact, fitting in a 40-foot flatbed footprint at most, ideally in a 20-foot one. Top speed is required to be, at a minimum, 40 knots with a range, fully laden, of 800 nautical miles. The vehicle must be low-observable and fitted with the necessary beyond-line of sight communications systems as well as navigational aids to operate in GNSS-denied environment.

COOKSON should be able to operate at least in Sea State 3 and with a minimum endurance of 72 hours. The primary purpose of the boat will be launching 2 or more “One-Way Effectors” (suicide drones, most likely) which should have a range of 30 – 100 km and a sizeable warhead of 80 kg of HE. The primary target set is “non-hardened land target, secondarily another surface vessel”. Ideally, the payload area should be modular to enable evolution and adaptation of the weapon system and role.

In terms of air defence, the UK MOD wants to look at turrets with HMG and/or MANPADS, but is open to an alternative approach in which a specific COOKSON boat variant is developed to provide air defence to other strike boats carrying the One-Way Effectors.

The MOD “anticipates” that within the first quarter of 2025, a procurement activity will be launched “for an initial 10 COOKSON systems, plus a suitable number (likely hundreds) of effectors. It is likely that it will then order 2-3 systems per month for the next 6 months”. Indeed, the requirement calls for a low cost, attritable system that can be built at a minimum rate of 2-3 per month, “from within 6 months of an order”.

However, the timeframe for complete maturation of the system might be longer than the outline requirements suggest because the MOD further notes that “a small number of proposals (2-5), subject to contract will be provided funding to demonstrate the entire COOKSON capability (including the vessel, effector etc) in late 2025 or early 2026”.

This capability is being developed under the patronage of Task Force KINDRED, the MoD's body, set up in March 2022, tasked to provide equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), both from UK stockpiles and rapid procurement initiatives.

The UK MOD has a stated secondary objective of reinforcing UK industrial capability, particularly in the drones sector, through the work done with and for Ukraine. COOKSON’s requirements make the system interesting for the Royal Marines which have their own ambitions for strike solutions from the sea.

Already back in 2021, during the REPMUS event in Portugal, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines had demonstrated the completely autonomous launch of a SWITCHBLADE 300 loitering munition from the MAST 13 “MADFOX” experimental uncrewed surface vehicle.

The Royal Marines also have an ongoing project to acquire an ambitious Surface and Sub-surface Uncrewed Vehicle able to travel at high speed on the surface and submerge for periods to achieve maximum stealth. Some of the activities connected to these demonstrations and projects are undoubtedly assisting KINDRED’s work in aid of Ukraine, and vice versa.

Follow us on Telegram, Facebook and X.