Royal Navy drone boats found sending data to China-linked IP address

Chinese-made camera components inside the Royal Navy’s £12 million K3 Scout surveillance drone boats sent repeated “heartbeat” data to an IP address in China during a routine cyber vulnerability assessment, exposing a supply-chain failure inside a platform used by the Royal Marines and Royal Navy special forces. The finding has sharpened concern over how foreign-made electronics enter sensitive British military systems before anyone notices.

The Ministry of Defence said there was no evidence that any MoD data or systems were accessed, compromised or transmitted externally, and it said no sensitive data were leaked. After the issue was identified, the department removed internet connectivity from the camera equipment.

The K3 Scout fleet was supplied by British defence contractor Kraken Technology Group, which had sourced the cameras from a third party that had provided security assurances. The episode has put those assurances under scrutiny, because the problem was not a confirmed breach but the fact that equipment inside a frontline military system was able to communicate with an address in China at all.

The vulnerability surfaced during a routine cyber assessment, a reminder that the weak point in modern defence systems is often not the platform itself but the unseen components embedded inside it. The cameras were reported to contain Chinese-made parts, and those parts were repeatedly sending the heartbeat data while the boats were in service with elite British units.

That detail has widened the issue beyond a single camera system. Defence-focused coverage framed the discovery as a military supply-chain security problem, not evidence of espionage, but it adds to broader UK anxieties about Chinese-linked technology in sensitive military and surveillance equipment. For a fleet built to operate in contested environments, the episode showed how quickly procurement shortcuts or incomplete vetting can create a cyber risk before any classified information is touched.