Hunter

Kongsberg Maritime has unveiled a new fully uncrewed surface vessel (USV) design, which is based on a hardy fishing vessel, intended to meet the Royal Navy’s emerging Type 92 requirement. It calls for autonomous platforms to persistently hunt Russian submarines in the increasingly contested waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic.

Dubbed the Arctic Hunter USV, the vessel combines a proven commercial ship design with Kongsberg Maritime’s remote-control and autonomous technologies. It is being developed around an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission, with a particular emphasis on providing persistent underwater surveillance in the High North.

The announcement, made November 9, comes as the Royal Navy moves ahead with its broader Hybrid Navy concept, which will see uncrewed vessels and other autonomous systems operate alongside traditional crewed warships and aircraft. The Type 92 is one of four new uncrewed vessel types envisioned under this effort, which is intended to significantly expand the fleet’s overall sensing and weapons capacity.

Bruce Balchin of Kongsberg Maritime, which is headquartered in Norway, told TWZ that the Arctic Hunter concept emerged from the Royal Navy’s stated desire to address the submarine threat in the High North with capabilities that could be delivered quickly and in significant numbers, using commercial shipyards.

“We’ve been following the Royal Navy’s Hybrid Fleet and some of the statements that have been coming from the First Sea Lord,” Balchin explained. “The immediate threat is submarines in the High North. I need things at mass to be delivered at mass and at pace. I need commercial shipyards.”

Kongsberg’s response was to look at an existing commercial vessel design that could be adapted to tow a powerful submarine-hunting sonar. Rather than developing a new military ship, the company saw an opportunity to repurpose an Arctic fishing vessel, replacing its fishing equipment with the systems needed for ASW surveillance.

The resulting Arctic Hunter is based on an existing 184-foot hull design. Kongsberg plans to remove the wheelhouse and fish-processing factory, freeing up space for the military mission systems and equipment needed to operate the vessel remotely.

“Replace towing fish with towing sonar,” Balchin said, describing the basic concept. “It’s not a stretch to say we straight away got a vessel which is hardened to that environment, used to working at that sea state.”

There are other advantages to starting with a fishing vessel, too. These ships are already designed to operate for extended periods in demanding Arctic conditions, with relatively straightforward maintenance requirements. They also have the machinery, power generation, and internal volume needed to support substantial mission equipment.

The platform is being designed around a relatively high-performance towed array, the Sonar 2087, developed by Thales Underwater Systems. The Type 92 is intended to provide a significant extension of the Royal Navy’s ASW sensing capabilities, and Kongsberg believes that requires a substantial towed array.

Sonar 2087 already equips Royal Navy Type 23 frigates and will be carried aboard its forthcoming Type 26 ASW frigates.

Another critical consideration is the vessel’s acoustic signature. A sonar platform needs to be quiet enough that its own machinery and propellers do not interfere with its ability to detect submarines.

“You can have the best sonar in the world, but if you’ve got a very noisy ship, it drowns out everything else you’re trying to find,” Balchin said. “You need a very quiet platform to maximize the performance of your sonar.”

Kongsberg has considerable experience in this area, having designed propellers for the Royal Navy’s Type 23 and Type 26 frigates. The company has applied some of that expertise to the Arctic Hunter, optimizing its hull and propeller design to reduce underwater radiated noise (URN).

The fishing vessel design already offered a relatively quiet platform, partly because of the requirements of its original mission. Kongsberg says it is further improving that performance for the ASW role.

The Arctic Hunter also draws on technology from another Kongsberg project called Reach Remote, an existing uncrewed offshore vessel that operates in the North Atlantic, deploying remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for survey work.

Reach Remote: Powered by partnership, proven by performance

Rather than developing an entirely new autonomous control system, Kongsberg intends to transfer the proven remote-operation technology from Reach Remote into the Arctic Hunter platform.

“We’re taking a proven platform, proven flag-approved remote autonomy technology with a proven sonar, and then we’ve also added on another layer of military communications,” Balchin said.

Those communications will be designed to provide secure connectivity in the contested and degraded environments expected in the High North.

Kongsberg is designing the Arctic Hunter for up to 60 days at sea without human intervention aboard. The company’s existing Reach Remote vessels already operate for around 30 days at a time, providing a basis for extending that endurance.

The vessel is uncrewed by design, rather than being a conventional ship subsequently adapted to operate without a crew, and this has significant implications for its layout and cost.

“Putting anybody on it for any period of time massively complicates a ship and adds significant costs,” Balchin explained, pointing to the need for accommodation, a galley, water supplies, and other systems required to support a human crew.

Engineers may occasionally board the vessel for maintenance or servicing, but its normal operation will be controlled from shore.

The initial concept is deliberately focused on a relatively straightforward ASW sensing mission. Balchin described this as a “minimum viable capability,” intended to get additional submarine-hunting sensors into the High North as quickly as possible.

Initially, the Arctic Hunter vessels could operate as an uncrewed flotilla, collecting underwater surveillance data and transmitting it to military decision-makers in the United Kingdom. This would provide the Royal Navy with additional sensing capacity without requiring the vessels to operate directly alongside crewed warships from the outset.

Over time, however, Kongsberg sees the vessels working more closely with the Type 26 frigates as those warships enter service.

“Type 26 at the core, and these acting as autonomous wingmen,” is how Balchin described the longer-term concept.

This would give the Royal Navy considerable flexibility in how it deploys the vessels, allowing them to operate independently or as part of a wider ASW formation. It could also help address gaps in the existing frigate fleet by providing additional sensing assets that do not require a crewed warship to remain continuously on station.

Although the Arctic Hunter is being developed primarily as a sensor platform, its design has considerable room for additional capabilities. Balchin highlighted the vessel’s installed power, payload capacity, and unused internal volume as factors that could allow it to accommodate other mission systems.

“We have resisted the temptation to go on flights of fancy at this time around what else it could do, and instead stick to that very simple: we want to get a program of record in quickly,” he said.

The vessel’s potential flexibility could nevertheless be attractive to other navies. Balchin emphasized that the underlying platform is not inherently tied to British systems. For the U.K. Type 92 requirement, it would carry sovereign British sonar and secure military communications, but other customers could select their own equipment.

“If America said, ‘I want to tow a different sonar, and I’d like to have an American communication system in there,’ that’s very easy as well,” he said. It’s worth noting that a version of the Sonar 2087, known as CAPTAS-4, had been planned for the U.S. Navy’s now-canceled Constellation class frigate. The FF(X) that has superseded it currently lacks any built-in sonar array, fixed or towed, and other anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

Unrivalled Anti-submarine warfare with CAPTAS-4 VDS and FLASH dipping sonar – Thales

Kongsberg believes its underlying platform could therefore provide a common commercial foundation for different national requirements, with the military payload adapted to suit each customer.

For the British program, the company is working with its established shipbuilding partner Balaena Maritime, with construction planned at the latter’s Birkenhead yard.

A commercial approach to construction is central to the Arctic Hunter proposition. Fishing vessels operating in Arctic waters typically spend around six weeks at sea before returning to port to unload their catch, refuel, and undergo servicing. They then head back out again, with relatively straightforward shore-based support.

Kongsberg believes the same model can be applied to the uncrewed ASW vessels. Existing commercial shipyard infrastructure, including dry docks and slipways, could support routine maintenance, with additional facilities required for sonar and military communications servicing.

There would also be a remote operations center in the High North to control the vessels themselves. However, the more important decisions about where the flotilla should operate and how its missions should be managed would remain in the United Kingdom.

The Arctic Hunter is also being presented as a potential export product. Balchin said Kongsberg’s separation from the wider Kongsberg Group earlier this year had given the maritime business greater freedom to work with different defense companies and national partners.

For the Royal Navy, the Type 92 is part of a much broader effort to reshape how the service operates at sea. Under the Hybrid Navy concept, four new types of uncrewed vessels will take on different roles, ranging from providing additional missile capacity to extending the fleet’s ability to detect and engage threats underwater and in the air.

The move toward a fleet built around autonomous vessels represents a new venture for the Royal Navy. However, the service is already beginning to establish the operational structures needed to make that transition.

Last week, it formally commissioned its 1st Autonomous Squadron at Portsmouth, a unit of around 180 personnel that will operate uncrewed surface vessels on frontline missions. Initially equipped with Kraken and Rattler craft, the squadron is intended to develop the skills, tactics and experience needed to bring increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems into the fleet. The Type 92 and other larger uncrewed vessels would represent a significant expansion of that effort, moving beyond smaller boats toward persistent, ocean-going capabilities.

The Arctic Hunter announcement also highlights the growing emphasis on industrial cooperation between the United Kingdom and Norway in the maritime domain. The two countries have been working more closely on security in the North Atlantic and High North, including through the Lunna House agreement, which includes an ambition for both nations to lead NATO’s adoption of autonomous systems in the region.

The proposed Type 92 program also comes amid mounting concern over Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic, where Moscow’s undersea forces remain a significant threat to NATO’s maritime communications, reinforcement routes, and naval forces. Persistent uncrewed sensors could help address the challenge of maintaining surveillance over such a large area, particularly as crewed ASW platforms face competing operational demands.

Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic has been a growing worry for NATO for years, with the challenge involving not just the number of deployments but the increasingly capable boats involved. As TWZ has reported, Russian submarines are operating for longer periods and carrying more lethal weapons, while newer designs such as the Yasen class are quieter and harder to detect. In April of this year, the United Kingdom and Norway disclosed a month-long operation with Norway and other allies to track a Russian Akula class attack submarine and two small, special-missions submarines operating near critical undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic. The episode underscored the demands placed on crewed ships and patrol aircraft to maintain persistent surveillance across the region.

For now, the Arctic Hunter represents an industrially focused proposal for a major element of the U.K.’s emerging Hybrid Navy concept. Its combination of commercial shipbuilding, autonomous vessel technology, and sovereign British ASW systems is intended to offer a relatively rapid route to expanding the Royal Navy’s underwater surveillance capacity.

More broadly, the Type 92 points toward a future fleet in which crewed warships are increasingly supported by uncrewed platforms that distribute weapons, sensors and other capabilities across a wider operating area. While embracing so much unproven technology and concepts comes with risks, the Royal Navy is betting that a combination of autonomous systems and traditional warships can deliver greater firepower, persistence, and operational reach.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, saying the investigation that produced the charges was rushed, overtly political and dogged by “critical mistakes.”

“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a scathing ruling from the bench that dismissed the case against former officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.

He noted that the investigation was opened a day after a primetime speech by President Trump in which he rehashed grievances over his 2020 election loss and that it was mandated and closely tracked by FBI Director Kash Patel. He also pointed out that the Justice Department could have brought the case, which arises from statements made in 2023, at any time but opted to do so two weeks ago, in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm voting.

“I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” Faruqui said.

The decision followed a dramatic hearing in which he scolded prosecutors for their unorthodox maneuvers and an FBI agent who worked the case testified that he had been concerned the investigation would be seen as “political.”

The Justice Department may still have an opportunity to pursue a grand jury indictment against the two former officials, whose lawyers had pressed for dismissal of the charges. But the judge’s ruling nonetheless represents an unmistakable setback for the Justice Department, particularly given the difficulty it has had in persuading grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.

The judge’s concerns about the case were apparent almost immediately, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged the case through a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury’s approval.

Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, he criticized the Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had never seen before.

The hearing also featured testimony from an FBI agent who worked the case, who said that the investigation had been opened right after Trump gave an election security speech last July and that it had been mandated by FBI Director Kash Patel, who kept close watch on it.

The case accused the two former FBI officials of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement in, and knowledge of, efforts to investigate a laptop the Justice Department says was dropped off by Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

But it also sought to echo longstanding grievances by Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI attempted to suppress information during the 2020 presidential campaign that was seen as potentially harmful to the Biden family. Candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, ultimately defeated Trump, the Republican incumbent, in the 2020 election.

The Justice Department’s case noted, for instance, how Floris and Benavides had given lawmakers in 2020 a “defensive briefing” that Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said was used to undermine their investigation into the Biden administration and link it to Russian disinformation.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 27, 2026 12:06 PM PT

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday scolded the Justice Department for its unorthodox handling of a criminal case against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about their knowledge of a laptop the Justice Department says belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of former President Biden.

U.S. Magistrate Zia Faruqui struck from the record an amended criminal complaint filed in the middle of the night by the Justice Department that added a new obstruction charge against the two former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. Such charging documents require sign-off from a judge that probable cause exists that a crime was committed by a defendant, and this complaint lacked that.

“It is not our court’s practice — and I think it is appropriately not our practice — that unsigned complaints are filed on the docket,” Faruqui said.

He later added: “I want to know why the United States is reticent or averse to putting before a probable cause determination that you must believe is righteous. Why today on this one case have you changed the entire history of how you charge cases?”

The dismissal of the superseding complaint was an embarrassing setback for a Justice Department that has undertaken a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections. But the original false statements case against the former officials, announced Friday, remained intact as Faruqui proceeded Tuesday with a preliminary hearing.

The case says officials falsely minimized what they knew

The case accuses the former officials of falsely playing down their knowledge about a laptop the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a computer repair shop in 2019.

But beyond that, it represents a Trump administration broadside against a since-disbanded FBI task force that was set up to monitor foreign influence. Congressional Republicans have long criticized the task force, saying it tried to discredit their own investigations into the Biden family.

Defense lawyers were set to challenge the case at the preliminary hearing Tuesday in Washington’s federal court, including by highlighting the unusual fact that the ex-FBI officials were charged via a criminal complaint signed by a magistrate judge rather than an indictment voted on by a grand jury. The Justice Department repeatedly has struggled in high-profile cases to persuade grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments.

Hours before the hearing, the Justice Department added a new obstruction charge that said the former officials’ alleged false statements allowed them to avoid questioning about their knowledge of Hunter Biden and impeded an investigation by House lawmakers into the Bidens.

“What is going on at the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office?” lawyers for Floris asked in a statement early Tuesday. “In the middle of the night, the government filed an unsigned and unsworn complaint attempting to fix the issues with their original charge against Ms. Floris and adding a new charge just as meritless as the first one.”

“In our combined decades of DOJ service,” the lawyers said, “we have never seen or even heard of something like this being filed.”

It is a very intricate saga

The prosecution, a rare Justice Department criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race after the New York Post revealed the existence of a laptop it said had been dropped off by the younger Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop about a year earlier.

The Post said it obtained a hard drive of the laptop from Rudy Giuliani, a close ally of President Trump, and reported on some of the contents of the computer, including emails that appeared to show some of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

The curious circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian involvement, particularly when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community had assessed that Moscow was attempting to undermine the candidacy of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who went on to defeat Trump in 2020, and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens.

But Trump’s then-national intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, quickly sought to quell speculation about the laptop’s provenance by saying there were no signs it had anything to do with Russian actors. The FBI said it had nothing to add to Ratcliffe’s statement and investigated the younger Biden on gun and tax charges that later resulted in felony convictions. President Biden pardoned his son in late 2024.

The accused led the Foreign Influence Task Force

The FBI officials under scrutiny, Floris and Benavides, were leaders of the Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established in the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation.

In that capacity, the FBI officials briefed Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in August 2020 as the lawmakers were doing their own investigation into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. News of the briefing leaked, and the senators lashed out at the FBI, saying their efforts to scrutinize the Biden family had been discredited and falsely linked to Russian disinformation.

The criminal complaint accuses them of lying to lawmakers in 2023 by denying contemporaneous knowledge of the Biden laptop or participating in internal FBI conversations about it. Their lawyers have denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

The task force was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Tucker, Kunzelman and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Lawyers for two accused officials say Department of Justice seeking to revive scandal before midterm vote.

Two former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have been charged in connection with a 2020 probe into a laptop belonging to former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The former officials, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, were charged with lying to Congress. They made their first court appearance in Washington, DC, on Friday.

Lawyers for the officials accused the Department of Justice of filing the charges to revive the salacious saga just days before the November 3 midterm vote, in which Republicans face an uphill battle against Democrats to maintain control of Congress.

A lawyer for Floris said she “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years”, while accusing the Justice Department of building its case on hearsay.

“Yet today, the DOJ [Justice Department] has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” the statement said.

“It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”

Floris and Benavides had overseen the Foreign Intelligence Task Force (FITF) at the FBI when Hunter Biden’s laptop was found. The pair testified to Congress that the unit, which focuses on foreign interference in US elections, was not involved in the laptop investigation.

In a criminal complaint, federal prosecutors alleged the statements contradicted messages sent during the same period.

While launched by Trump during his first term, the FITF was heavily targeted by Republicans under former US President Joe Biden. They charged the unit was politically biased and used to cover up information about Biden’s laptop.

The unit was disbanded when Trump took office for the second time in January 2025.

Scandalous saga

The existence of the laptop became known in October of 2020, just weeks before Biden and Trump faced off in a presidential election.

Its strange origins, having been dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop and apparently abandoned by Hunter Biden, prompted suspicion. Its contents were first reported on by the New York Post, based on information provided to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Several former intelligence officials warned that the laptop had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. However, the FBI later seized and verified that the laptop and its contents, including messages related to the younger Biden’s foreign business ties and explicit photos of his drug use, were authentic.

The laptop was later used to back federal gun and tax evasion charges against Hunter Biden, although no wrongdoing related to his business ties or connection with his father was found.

Trump FBI Director Kash Patel has pledged to investigate the agency’s conduct throughout Biden’s presidency. Critics have accused him of flagrant politicalisation.

“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said in a statement posted on X.

The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public and overt investigative acts in the direct lead-up to an election that involve candidates or that risk influencing an outcome.

But officials in the last two weeks have made a series of bold moves in cases with political undertones, including a search of Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s house in an immigration fraud investigation.

The department also unsealed a corruption indictment on Thursday against powerful Democratic Virginia state Senator L Louise Lucas.

Oct. 23, 2026 9:08 AM PT

WASHINGTON — Two former FBI intelligence officials who specialized in foreign election interference were charged on Friday with making false statements to Congress about their roles in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides surrendered Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington, where their lawyers pressed for a speedy hearing at which they could contest the allegations against them.

The Department of Justice says Floris and Benavides lied to Congress in 2023 about the involvement of a specialized foreign-influence task force in investigations into Biden as well as their knowledge of the laptop.

Floris’ attorneys called her “a patriot” and said she has “served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years.”

“Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts,” her attorneys said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election.”

The case was filed 10 days before the Nov. 3 elections and marks the latest in a series of splashy and politically charged investigative actions the Department of Justice has undertaken in the run-up to the midterm contests.

The prosecution, a rare Department of Justice criminal case against a former employee, revisits a tangled and peculiar saga that roiled the final weeks of the 2020 race. It also comes amid a broader, backward-looking effort by FBI Director Kash Patel, who before taking over the nation’s premier law enforcement agency was a harsh critic of it, to scrutinize high-profile episodes from the bureau’s recent past that for years have animated President Trump’s conservative base.

“Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law,” Patel said in a statement posted on X.

The revelation of the laptop’s existence in October 2020 injected a thorny storyline in the race between Trump, the Republican incumbent, and Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic challenger, who went on to win the race.

The laptop’s contents were publicized by the New York Post, which said it had obtained from Trump ally Rudy Giuliani a hard drive of a computer dropped off by Hunter Biden at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop. The laptop contained emails that appeared to show discussions of the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings.

The peculiar circumstances of the laptop’s discovery raised concerns among Democrats and former intelligence officials about the possibility of Russian disinformation, particularly when the Trump administration’s own intelligence community was assessing that Russia was attempting to interfere on Trump’s behalf in the election and as Giuliani had traveled abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens.

Hunter Biden was subsequently charged with, and convicted of, gun and tax offenses during his father’s administration. President Biden pardoned him in his final weeks in office.

The Justice Department historically looks to avoid public and overt investigative acts in the direct lead-up to an election that involve candidates or that risk influencing an outcome. But officials in the last two weeks have made a series of bold moves in cases with political undertones, including a search of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house in an immigration fraud investigation and a corruption indictment unsealed Thursday against powerful Democratic Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas.

Floris and Benavides, two experienced intelligence officials, led the FBI’s since-disbanded Foreign Intelligence Task Force, or FITF, when the laptop was discovered. They are accused by the Justice Department of making false statements in Congress in 2023 by saying that the FITF was not involved in investigations related to Hunter Biden when contemporaneous messages proved otherwise, according to a criminal complaint filed against them.

The case brings renewed attention to the work of the task force, which was established in the first Trump administration to police influence campaigns staged by Russia and other nations aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation. The task force became a magnet of congressional Republican criticism during the Biden investigation and was disbanded in February 2025 by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in one of her first acts on the job.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.