May 21, 2026
HII is honored to have the HII Romulus family of unmanned surface vessels (USV) recognized by Sir Nick Hine, Chief Executive of Babcock Marine and former Second Sea Lord, as part of Babcock’s Armor Force vision for manned-unmanned maritime operations during his keynote address at the Combined Naval Event 2026.
Sir Nick emphasized the importance of “commanded autonomy,” integrating manned and unmanned systems under trusted human authority to deliver greater scale, persistence, and operational advantage.
The inclusion of the Romulus USV within this open, interoperable architecture highlights the growing role of adaptable autonomous systems in strengthening allied naval operations and enhancing coalition resilience.
As Sir Nick noted: “A high-value crewed ship becomes a common command vessel able to command a distributed force of uncrewed systems, modular payloads and mission packages at sea or from ashore under sovereign control. That reframes the value of the warship. The ship is not diminished, the ship is multiplied, because it can direct far more sensing and effect than it can carry organically, and each ship becomes a task force, one that is reconfigurable depending on the task.”
HII is America’s largest shipbuilder, delivering the world’s most powerful ships and all-domain mission technologies, including unmanned systems, to U.S. and allied defense customers. HII is the largest producer of unmanned underwater vehicles for the U.S. Navy and the world.
With a more than 140-year history of advancing U.S. national security, HII builds and integrates defense capabilities extending from the core fleet to C6ISR, AI/ML, EW and synthetic training. Headquartered in Virginia, HII’s workforce is 44,000 strong.
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