Helsing has announced it will open a “Resilience Factory” in Plymouth, its first such plant in the UK. What the Company calls “Resilience Factories” are a new type of “high-efficiency production facilities, designed to ensure local and sovereign manufacturing capabilities for nation states”.

Helsing has previously expressed its intent of “building Resilience Factories across the European continent, thereby unlocking distributed production capacities for critical defence assets, with each location gaining the ability to source from local supply chains and workforces”.

The first such factory was set up in Southern Germany and has been operational since December 2024, with its main mission being the production of HX-2 loitering munitions, with 6,000 promised to Ukraine. The factory promises to build HX-2 at the rate of 1,000 per month.

The facility in Plymouth will, at least initially, produce SG-1 FATHOM, a new autonomous underwater glider that can patrol for up to three months at a time. In May, Helsing had unveiled LURA, a new software platform and advanced AI system meant to go to sea on the SG-1 FATHOM for wide area underwater surveillance and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW).

LURA “uses a large acoustic model that enables it to detect acoustic signatures 10x quieter than other AI models, even differentiating between specific vessels from within the same class, and at a speed up to 40x faster than human operators”.

Helsing demonstrated the system at HM Naval Base Portsmouth for “a select audience of users and industry partners” and said that the development was supported by the Royal Navy.

Helsing is partnering with Blue Ocean Marine Tech Systems, Ocean Infinity and Qinetiq to scale and deliver Lura and SG-1 to customers, with plans to deploy the system within this year.

Both Helsing’s and the British government’s press releases are actually vague about whether the Royal Navy has placed an order for the system already, but it is claimed that the factory will produce “hundreds” of gliders for the needs of NATO allies.

Helsing’s announcement was made by Ned Baker. Managing Director UK, alongside the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt Hon Rachel Reeves, at the Defence & Economic Growth Taskforce. The Treasury and the MOD have “adopted all of the recommendations” made by the task force to ensure Defence best cooperates with those companies generating value in the UK.

The SG-1 FATHOM and LURA have obvious potential in the wider context of the Royal Navy’s Project CABOT for building up an ATLANTIC BASTION, a largely uncrewed “barrier” of ASW sensors ensuring superiority in the North Atlantic. The choice of Plymouth for the production of this specific system was natural as the city is the UK’s national centre of marine autonomy, with an already well established and varied range of industries and innovators.

Helsing has committed to investing a total of £350 million into the UK and this is a first result of that growth plan.