UK and Netherlands Order 8 Amphibious Ships in £2.4B Deal to Boost NATO Littoral Power.

The United Kingdom and the Netherlands will procure eight new amphibious transport ships under a £2.4 billion agreement signed on 7 July 2026, giving both navies renewed capacity to move troops, vehicles, drones, and autonomous systems into contested littoral areas. The programme matters because it strengthens NATO’s ability to project force from the sea at a time when amphibious mobility, distributed operations, and rapid reinforcement are becoming central to European deterrence.

Each navy will receive four ships based on a Dutch design, with the vessels expected to measure around 160 metres and displace about 15,000 tonnes. Their mix of payload, endurance, aviation support, and unmanned-system capacity will give the UK and the Netherlands a more flexible amphibious platform for crisis response, coastal operations, and allied reinforcement missions.

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The future UK and Dutch Amphibious Transport Ships will provide NATO with a common capability to transport troops, vehicles, equipment and unmanned systems during amphibious and littoral operations. The final ship design has not yet been officially disclosed; the image shows a Damen Naval concept (Picture source: Damen Naval).

The military requirement is not simply to replace ageing hulls. For the Netherlands, the programme follows a March 2024 decision to replace two large amphibious ships, HNLMS Rotterdam and HNLMS Johan de Witt, and four Holland-class offshore patrol vessels with a single new class. The Dutch Ministry of Defence stated that modern amphibious doctrine requires lighter, faster, and more dispersed operations, while the current patrol vessels were designed mainly for lower-intensity tasks such as counter-narcotics patrols in the Caribbean and are not optimised for high-threat wartime missions. The Dutch schedule calls for the first new ship to enter service in 2032, followed by one ship per year, with the final vessel planned by 2038.

For the United Kingdom, the agreement fills a gap created by the retirement of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark in March 2025 and the interim reliance on the three Bay-class auxiliary landing ships and RFA Argus for Royal Marines support. UK parliamentary reporting noted that the former amphibious assault ships had been held at reduced readiness and had not been at sea for extended periods, which made the new ship programme less a discretionary modernisation project than a force-structure repair. The operational question is whether four new amphibious transport ships can provide enough availability for training, NATO commitments, maintenance cycles, and crisis response without recreating the readiness problems seen in the previous force.

The closest public technical reference is Damen Naval’s Enforcer family, although the final UK-Dutch configuration has not yet been released. Damen’s Enforcer 15628 design is 156 metres long, 28 metres in beam, has a 6.25-metre draft, displaces about 14,000 tonnes, uses diesel-electric propulsion, reaches 18 knots, offers an 8,000-nautical-mile range and provides 1,530 square metres of roll-on/roll-off vehicle space. The larger Enforcer 16828 data sheet lists a 1,400-square-metre flight deck, a hangar for four medium helicopters, a UAV deck and UAV hangar, a 650-square-metre dock for two LCU3607 landing craft, four davits for fast assault craft or landing craft, 1,700 square metres of vehicle space, 680 square metres of supply stores, 60 square metres of ammunition storage, a crew of 147 and accommodation for 510 to 680 embarked troops depending on mission duration.

Those figures explain the tactical concept. The ship is intended to act as a sea-based logistics, aviation, command, and insertion node rather than a single large assault vessel driving toward a defended beach. A stern dock allows landing craft to embark vehicles and troops in a sheltered internal space, and Damen states that the Enforcer dock arrangement supports landing craft operations up to Sea State 4, which increases the usable weather window for ship-to-shore movement. In practical terms, the ship can support dispersed Royal Marine or Dutch Marine Corps detachments, move light armour and logistics vehicles, launch helicopters or drones for reconnaissance, and sustain small units ashore without requiring an immediate port facility.

The armament has not been formally confirmed by London or The Hague, but Damen’s public Enforcer 16828 reference configuration lists one 76 mm main gun, one RAM close-in missile system, four MASS decoy launchers and two 30 mm secondary guns. A 76 mm gun would give the ship a medium-calibre weapon for fast attack craft, uncrewed surface vessels, low-end air threats and limited fire support against coastal targets. The RAM missile layer is intended for self-defence against anti-ship cruise missiles and asymmetric threats, with the U.S. Navy noting that the missile does not require shipboard illumination after launch, while RTX states that RAM Block 2 improves guidance and manoeuvrability against evolving targets. MASS would add a soft-kill layer against radar, infrared, electro-optical, and laser-guided threats, and the 30 mm guns would address short-range boat and drone threats in confined waters.

This defensive fit would not turn the amphibious transport ship into an area air-defence frigate. It would still require escorts, mine countermeasure support, secure communications, intelligence preparation, and air cover when operating close to adversary-held coastlines. The value of the armament is that it gives commanders more options during transit, logistics transfer, evacuation, special operations support and limited littoral entry, especially where the threat comes from small boats, loitering drones, uncrewed surface craft or single-axis missile attacks. The final selection of sensors, combat management system, electronic warfare suite, and ammunition type will matter as much as the gun and launcher count, because detection and reaction time are often the limiting factors in coastal waters.

The joint construction model has three main purposes: commonality, cost control, and industrial resilience. The UK and the Netherlands already operate the 53-year-old UK-Netherlands Joint Amphibious Force, and the new agreement links that operational relationship to a common ship, common training pathways, shared maintenance assumptions and more interchangeable embarked forces. This matters for NATO because the UK-Netherlands Amphibious Task Force is described in the bilateral statement as NATO’s high-readiness advance force for shaping the littoral operating environment before larger follow-on forces arrive. It also supports the Joint Expeditionary Force and NATO Regional Plan North West, especially in the Baltic, High North, Arctic and North Atlantic approaches.

The strategy behind the programme is therefore more specific than ship replacement. NATO needs amphibious forces that can reinforce islands, fjords, ports, seabed infrastructure, and exposed coastlines without concentrating too much combat power in a small number of vulnerable ships. The UK also wants a “hybrid” fleet with crewed ships, uncrewed systems and autonomous aircraft, a direction already reflected in naval drone integration and NATO amphibious modernisation. The UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review also placed greater emphasis on Euro-Atlantic deterrence, industrial mobilisation and protection of critical undersea infrastructure, all of which align with a medium-sized amphibious transport ship able to carry sensors, drones, Marines, vehicles and command staff.

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