The Royal Navy of the future will be dominated by robots, drones and unmanned ships, leading Royal Navy chiefs to conclude there is no need to recruit extra sailors as part of an upcoming defense review.

Admiral Sir Ben Key, the first Sea Lord, believes the Navy must focus on recruiting and retaining talent rather than seeking greater numbers of personnel because as military technology develops, crew size will inevitably decrease. decline.

While fully autonomous warships may still be a long way off, the Navy conducted a week of testing of unmanned inflatable ribs in the Solent Strait last month. Pacific 24, used for interception and rescue, autonomously performed a series of pre-programmed missions during rough seas and snowfall.

Navy insiders admit that the UK’s future maritime force will be a “mixture of manned and unmanned systems” and those without sailors or crews “may become the default” at some stage.

In its war with Russia, Ukraine, a country that began the conflict without a navy, has repeatedly shown that it can inflict damage on Russia's Black Sea fleet using unmanned maritime drones capable of sinking enemy warships and successfully attacked a naval base in Ukraine. Sevastopol.

The Armed Forces services are making final proposals to the five-year strategic defense review. While the review panel is expected to complete its report within the Ministry of Defense in February, the government has only said the exercise will end in the "first half" of 2025.

The Navy has missed its recruiting targets each of the past five years, as has the Army. The total number of trained sailors and Royal Marine commandos is 28,125, according to government figures, below the target of 30,450 set in the last two defense reviews in 2015 and 2021.

"We can ask for all the numbers we want, but the government is not going to keep trained sailors in a cupboard ready to be handed out," said one insider, who acknowledged the Navy's spending bids must remain focused.

The Times reports that the British Army is also not expected to expand as a result of the strategic review. Troop strength is expected to fall below 70,000, below the current target of 73,000 and a level not seen in about 300 years.

When Labor defense secretary John Healey was in opposition, he repeatedly criticized the then Conservative government for allowing personnel numbers to fall.

Defense sources also told The Times that another option could be to create an additional reserve "home defense force" that could be deployed in the UK if a major international crisis meant regular and reserve forces had to fight overseas.

The review comes against a backdrop of rising borrowing costs putting greater pressure on public finances and as incoming US President Donald Trump demands that NATO members significantly increase defense spending to 5% of GDP.

UK defense spending currently accounts for 2.33% of GDP, with Labor only promising to increase it to 2.5% at some point in the future. But it's unclear how serious Trump's comments are, especially since the United States' defense spending, while the largest in NATO in cash terms, is at 3.38%.

A government spokesman said the leaks related to the defense review were "pure speculation". The spokesman described the UK Armed Forces as "one of the best in the world" and said ministers would announce a pathway to boost defense spending to 2.5% "in the spring".