Modularity can enhance flexibility in future naval vessels, but its value depends on the application. Combining Modular Function Deployment, Analytical Hierarchy Process and Knowledge-Based Engineering, a structured assessment framework reveals where modular designs improve effectiveness and where conventional solutions remain preferable, offering sharper insight for early-stage design decisions.

Digital transformation is reshaping naval sustainment through shipbuilding-specific lifecycle management, digital twins and model-based maintenance. By creating a connected digital thread across design, production and in-service support, emerging approaches reduce lifecycle costs, improve fleet availability and accelerate maintenance planning, helping navies enhance readiness for evolving operational demands.

Advanced waste heat recovery and energy storage technologies are set to redefine power efficiency in future defence platforms. By identifying high-impact, operationally viable solutions and modelling integrated power plant architectures, researchers demonstrate potential efficiency gains of up to 20%, supporting sustainability goals, reducing energy losses and strengthening long-term operational effectiveness.

As autonomous military systems evolve, understanding risk to human life is becoming more complex than simply removing people from hazardous environments. This perspective examines emerging challenges in human-machine interaction, command authority and learning systems, exploring how military organisations can identify, assess and manage life-critical risks in future defence technologies.

Digital technologies are accelerating the maritime sector’s transformation toward smarter, cleaner and more autonomous operations. By combining digital twins, advanced simulation, lifecycle management and AI-driven predictive analytics, organisations can optimise performance, meet sustainability goals and enhance safety, revealing new opportunities for the next generation of intelligent maritime capabilities.

Medium and Large Uncrewed Surface Vessels are emerging as versatile force multipliers for future naval operations. By adapting commercial vessel designs and applying mission-focused sizing methods, new concepts demonstrate how mixed crewed-uncrewed fleets could expand capability, accelerate deployment and deliver flexible, cost-effective support across a broad range of maritime tasks.

Stern energy-saving devices could significantly improve warship efficiency without compromising high-speed performance. Using high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics and virtual towing tank analysis, researchers compare fixed and adjustable stern-mounted technologies, identifying solutions that deliver the greatest energy savings across operational profiles while supporting future demands for sustainability and naval capability.

The Carbon Intensity Indicator is entering a critical phase of review as industry experience reveals anomalies that may affect fairness, effectiveness and operational decision-making. With regulatory refinements under active consideration, emerging proposals could reshape how maritime emissions performance is measured, creating important implications for compliance, fleet efficiency and decarbonisation strategies.

Warships face a unique decarbonisation challenge that cannot be measured using commercial shipping models alone. By examining whole-life emissions across design, construction and operations, emerging research reveals new opportunities to reduce environmental impact, helping naval programmes balance sustainability goals with mission effectiveness, capability requirements and complex supply chains.

Alternative fuels are set to transform maritime operations, but recoverability remains a critical challenge. Examining ammonia, methanol and hydrogen, this research evaluates fire, toxicity and damage-response risks arising from accidents or hostile action. The findings outline practical mitigation strategies to help future navies safely integrate low-carbon fuels while preserving resilience.

Immersion cooling could offer a significant advancement in maritime energy storage safety, helping prevent thermal runaway from escalating across lithium-ion battery systems. Drawing on lessons from automotive and data centre applications, this research explores integration challenges, battery chemistry considerations and decentralised architectures, revealing new pathways to safer naval electrification.

Human factors remain a leading contributor to maritime incidents, demanding more effective methods to understand complex failures. By combining SHIELD-HFACS, influence weighting and causal mapping through SOAM, a new framework exposes how organisational, supervisory and operational weaknesses interact, enabling deeper safety insights and supporting more targeted, evidence-based risk reduction strategies.