Isode’s Role at Excercise Trident Sprint 2

Following our participation in Trident Sprint 1 last year, we were thrilled to have been invited to take part in Trident Sprint 2. Hosted at HMNB Portsmouth, this two-week exercise once again brought together Royal Navy personnel and industry partners to demonstrate how current and emerging technology can enhance the Royal Navy’s capabilities.

The exercise focused on testing off-the-shelf technology that, when linked together, creates a mesh network (enabling ships, drones, and uncrewed systems to share data directly with each other rather than relying on a single hub or traditional satellite links).

A key objective of this exercise was to see the Royal Navy collaborate more with industry. This strengthens the relationships and brings together expertise from both sides to solve emerging threats and improves the speed at which deployment can be achieved. This is only possible by ensuring the technology from different companies works well together, which is where we played an important role.

At Isode, our focus is on ensuring organisations have secure, reliable communication even when satellites are down, maintaining a continuous flow of communication when networks are disrupted. This helps teams stay connected even in challenging environments.

Isode’s Role:

Our participation involved providing secure XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) chat using our M-Link for Mobile Units server (designed for XMPP instant messaging for low-bandwidth and/or high-latency networks) alongside our Swift (XMPP client) to ensure reliable and secure communication across constrained links.

This allowed ship-to-shore transmission of information without the use of traditional SATCOM over an HF (high-frequency) network. This resulted in the flow of data between two shore-based nodes in Portsmouth. Some testing for future Trident Sprints was also carried out on the HMS Prince of Wales.

The exercise was a valuable experience, and we were proud to have played a key part in the communications infrastructure. As the Royal Navy continues its transition to a hybrid force, exercises such as Trident Sprint 2 highlight just how much can be achieved when industry and the military work together. We look forward to continuing that collaboration.