Feature: Royal Navy works to update bridge simulation and training

The Kongsberg Digital/Metaverse VR full mission bridge simulator replicating a warship leaving Portsmouth Harbour. (Metaverse VR)

Ship handling, conduct of navigation and bridge watchkeeping are core skills for a Royal Navy (RN) warfare officer, and are taught and practised from the earliest stage of training. While there is still no replacement for experience on the bridge of a warship at sea conducting different evolutions, the use of bridge simulators increases training capacity, permits mistakes without damage, enables repetition, and allows comprehensive after-action review (AAR).

The RN has had bridge simulators for at least 20 years, but there was a longstanding requirement to upgrade and increase their capacity. Achieving this was an early achievement of Project Selborne, the 12-year contract to deliver and modernise RN individual training, now in its fifth year. Selborne is run by Team Fisher, a consortium led by Capita and including Raytheon, Elbit Systems UK, the University of Lincoln and Fujitsu. The contract has four three-year blocks of modernisation activity known as Epochs; the consortium has nearly completed Epoch 2.

The programme has been delivering “individual, shore-based training across 14 sites, broadly about 80 to 85% of the shore-based training the Navy delivers to its people,” Ade Morley, managing director of the Team Fisher consortium told Janes during a media briefing in July 2026. He noted that as well as the Tier 1 members the consortium includes a supply chain of smaller defence companies.