Royal Navy ships could in future be controlled remotely by captains on land using new augmented reality headsets and artificial intelligence technologies being developed by a UK defence company.

The technology could pave the way for semi-autonomous naval vessels with much smaller crews, according to BAE Systems.

Transferring naval command rooms that are currenttly always on-board vessels onto land could reduce the risks to sailors and improve safety during combat, according to the British defence company.

Frank Cotton, BAE chief technology officer for naval systems, said: “The concept of the future Navy control room that we are working with is that it will not actually be on-board the ship. We think this will work because we know that you can have pilots in a Texas desert controlling drones that fly over Afghanistan. So why not have the officers somewhere safe, instead of on-board?”

The concept is likely to take time to be adopted because it runs strongly against naval traditions which dictate that a ship's captain needs to be on board but was already technically feasible, he added.

“I think the Navy would be very suspicious of the idea at first."

Control rooms, or operations rooms, on warships are where all of the information that is continuously collected by the vessel’s equipment, including radar, sonar and cameras, is relayed to captains so that they can make tactical decisions.