Nick Martin, Maritime Autonomy Project Manager at BAE Systems, shares the latest with the Herne extra large unmanned underwater vehicle (XLUUV) program during DSEI UK 2025. =====================Herne is a BAE Systems-funded engineering development effort designed to address emerging demand for an ‘attritable’ XLUUV capability able to contribute to a variety of missions, including ISR, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), electronic warfare (EW), and protection of critical national infrastructure (CNI). The company is leveraging commercial off-the-shelf platform technology through a partnership with Canadian marine technology company Cellula Robotics.Herne in its current form represents an amalgam of Cellula Robotics’ 12 m Solus-XR modular free-flooding UUV; BAE Systems’ own Nautomate autonomous control software; a flexible ‘sense, decide and effect’ payload integration engineered through mission-specific plug-ins; and system-level assurance – for example IT security and military communications – to enable use in military applications.