Future
The UXV Combatant is unlikely to have any place in the near future of the Royal Navy. As of December 2012, nothing has been released regarding the UXV, with the only real news regarding the vessel appearing in 2007. The UXV appeared to be nothing more than a design study conducted by BAE to try and expand on the declining orders of the Type 45 Destroyer by the Royal Navy at the time. The Ministry of Defence has no plans of procuring any vessel of this type in the near future based on their recent "Defence Spending Planning Rounds" which have concluded that no plans will develop to adopt a vessel of this kind before 2030 at the earliest, where current plans are to procure as many Type 26 frigates as possible and replace the minesweeper fleet. Even HMS Ocean will not have a replacement as the new carriers will adopt the LPH role. None-the-less, the UXV Combatant has served as a constructive concept that as Unmanned systems develop, will find a solid place in the future. It is possible that some of the design features of the Type 26 "Global Combat Ship" are inherited from BAE's UXV Combatant concept.
Read more about this topic: UXV Combatant
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone
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He seems to say the reason why so much
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—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)