After the Conference has ended on the 17th of May, there is an opportunity for conference guests to visit the Royal Navy’s experimental testbed ship, the XV Patrick Blackett, which will be alongside HMS President on the Thames near Tower Bridge.

Two Groups of Conference attendees will be invited to tour the ship, and speak with her Captain and crew about her important work for the Royal Navy. The groups will be small enough to ensure maximum engagement and inclusion. Please indicate in the RSVP form which of group timings you are able to fit into your schedule.

XV Patrick Blackett is the only ship of its class in operation with the Royal Navy. Originally designed as an offshore crew vessel, it has since been re-configured and re-purposed for use as the Royal Navy’s Test and Experimentation platform enabling NavyX to rapidly experiment without needing to place excess demand on the operational fleet. The vessel’s namesake, Patrick Blackett, was a renowned scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1948. To this day he remains the only former officer from any of the Armed Forces to have achieved this honour. During the Second World War he became Director of Naval Operational Research, and he served as president of the Royal Society from 1965 to 1970. In 1969 was granted a life peerage, taking the title Baron Blackett of Chelsea.

NavyX are the Royal Navy’s autonomy, technology and lethality accelerator. The team rapidly develop, test and trial cutting edge technologies, with the aim of getting new capabilities off the drawing board and to the front line at pace. Increased speed of learning will be achieved by combining the diverse experience of the NavyX team, industry and academia. NavyX can leverage both XV Patrick Blackett, and BattleLab to test, trial and iterate capabilities of interest. Find out more about NavyX here.

Please register you interest in visiting the XV Patrick Blackett using the RSVP Form below.

To find out more about the First Sea Lord’s Sea Power Conference 2023, please visit the main conference page here.

This form is for in person conference invitees only. Please do not share this link.

Further details, including the group allocation of each individual will be sent out before the conference begins.

For any questions, please contact John Dobson, Policy Relations and Events Coordinator