This is the first phase of the two-stage project announced earlier this year.  

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has opened ‘Project Cabot’ – the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine programme – to suppliers, according to a 15 October tender notice.  

The MoD invites companies to bid for contracts to become “commercial mission partners” to deliver the first phase of the project, ‘Atlantic Net’.  

Atlantic Net will deliver undersea intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance ‘as-a-service’, through a “contractor owned, contractor operated, naval oversight” model. This means the Royal Navy will oversee the programme, but the operation of equipment will be done by chosen commercial mission partners.  

Project Cabot was first revealed in February 2025 when the MoD posted a since unpublished market engagement notice about the programme. The notice explained the project would consist of two phrases: Atlantic Net and ‘Bastion Atlantic’ respectively, according to reporting from Naval News.  

Project Cabot is a critical programme that aims to develop a portfolio of airborne, surface, and sub-surface vehicles as well as sensors and nodes to provide a wide area anti-submarine warfare search capability largely focused on protecting critical undersea infrastructure. 

Atlantic Net will be designed to deliver “antisubmarine warfare-as-a-service”, the notice added, using lean crewed, remotely operated, or autonomous uncrewed systems to gather data for the Royal Navy. 

The Atlantic Net tender consists of two separate lots, with the former looking to secure the commercial mission partner or partners. In this lot, successful firms will be awarded individual commercial mission partner call-off contracts detailing the “milestones, deliverables, and commercial terms that are specific and relevant to them”. 

The second lot will look to establish a “potential supplier pool” from those which were unsuccessful in securing a commercial mission partner contract, but that have a solution or service which may be of interest to the UK MoD.  

A maximum number of 10 suppliers is sought, with the deadline for requests to participate set at 26 November.