U.K. Navy’s Frigates, Destroyers to Receive New Warship Decoy System

The Royal Navy's new warship protection decoy system, Ancilia will be fitted to all six Type 45 destroyers as well as the entire next-generation frigate force.

This includes eight Type 26 City-class submarine hunters and five Type 31 Inspiration-class general purpose warships.

 Developed by the Royal Navy’s Systems Engineering and Assessment (SEA),  it will replace the existing Seagnat system that's fitted to major Royal Navy ships.

Unlike the Seagnat, the Ancilia can swivel rapidly and adjust the angle the decoys are fired at to maximise their effectiveness. This means there is no need to manoeuvre the ship to counter any incoming threats.

A team of experts' visited the SEA's Barnstaple facility covered technical discussions and culminated with a live demonstration of the launcher being put through its paces.

"It was impressive to witness SEA's pre-production Ancilia trainable launcher put through

its paces in front of all the stakeholders," said Neil Clelland, the senior principal anti-ship missile scientist with Dstl, the government's military laboratories.

Mr Clelland added: "Ancilia provides a paradigm shift in the Royal Navy's capability to deploy electronic warfare countermeasures to meet the threat with new more flexible tactics. Importantly the new countermeasures interface will enable the exploitation of intelligent countermeasures which are currently being researched to meet the evolving threat."