The Fleet Solid Support Ship project has been given an “amber/red” rating by the Infrastructure Project Authority, warning that the cancellation and resumption of the competition to build the vessels placed the £1.6bn project at significant risk.

The project was suspended in October 2019 following suggestions that efforts were being made to relaunch the project with a requirement that the ships be built in the UK. The competition was later relaunched, more about that below.

According to the 2021 Annual Report on the Government Major Projects Portfolio from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which can be found here, The Fleet Solid Support Ship project is categorised with a level of risk.

“Compared to financial year 19/20-Q2, the Infrastructure Project Authority’s Delivery Confidence Assessment rating increased from Amber to Amber/red.

This is primarily due to the following factors:

  • A Programme re-set, including approval for a revised Outline Business Case following the cancellation of the Fleet Solid Support competition in October 2019.
  • Progress has continued spanning the reporting period, achieving a number of key activities and advancing through the approvals that are required to enable a new procurement to start in 2021, as announced publicly and directed by the Secretary of State for Defence on 21 October 2020.
  • The Outline Business Case was considered and passed through Navy Command and Defence Equipment & Support assurance processes in November 2020 and completed Investment Approvals Committee consideration as expected in December 2020.
  • As of 31 March 21, the final Departmental approval is still awaited. This approval will enable the new competition to commence, with the internal project and commercial aspects in place and ready to proceed. Delivery confidence remains under constant review.”

What does ‘Amber/Red’ mean?

The IPA describe this rating in the following way:

“Successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas. Urgent action is needed to address these problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible.”

The Tempest jet project is also rated as “Amber/Red”, you can read more about that here.

Tempest jet investment ‘significantly less than required’

What are the Fleet Solid Support Ships?

Earlier this year, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace launched a competition to build three new Fleet Solid Support Ships to provide vital support to Royal Navy operations across the world. The vessels will provide munitions, food, stores and provisions to support the UK Carrier Strike Group at sea.

DE&S’ Director General Ships, Vice Admiral Chris Gardner, said previously:

“The launch of the Fleet Solid Support competition presents a really exciting opportunity for the shipbuilding industry to support the design and build of a new class of ship that will primarily resupply our Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers. It is also another step in implementing the National Shipbuilding Strategy and increasing our domestic maritime construction capacity and capability alongside the Type 26 and Type 31 programmes already underway. The FSS ships will join the QEC Task Group, carrying out replenishment at sea to supply stores and ammunition to sustain operations, which is essential to meeting the UK’s defence commitments. To do this the ships will be able to transfer loads of more than two tonnes at a time while at high speed.”

The manufacture contract award is expected to be made within two years, following approvals.

Competition for three Fleet Solid Support ships launched

You can read more by clicking here.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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64 COMMENTS

      • I am 100% that they will be built as @Deep32 says it would be unacceptable not to given the political capital that has been put into CSG etc

        The question is what other functionality is bolted onto them? And I suspect that this is what the delay actually is.

        Do they get a lot of flat top etc?

        They already had some degree of aviation facilities.

        Could they be used for drone launching with a limited catapult as well? They would always be with the CSG. They are long and have the beam to accommodate off-deck servicing.

        Problem with bolting on functionality like that is that you end up with Swiss Army knife platforms that are very expensive as opposed to the QEC/T31 approach of simplifying the things as much as possible. Those platforms are then vulnerable to bean counters.

        The counter argument is that you end up with too large a number of single function platforms.

        • Hi Supportive Bloke,

          You have just perfectly described ‘mission creep’ as applied to the equipment procurement programmes. It is the single biggest reason programmes over run and in my experience is down to a lack of focus, suitable understanding of the engineering cycle and leadership within the procurement system.

          If you want a successful programme:
          1) Sort out the requirements properly up front. This often means spending MORE initially, but do this bit RIGHT because it will save x10 later;
          2) Always build in a reasonable amount of flexibility e.g. build ships big or give armoured vehicles a bit of excess power and a spacious turret. This is the real application of ‘fit-for-not-with’ i.e. DO NOT hold the programme up for a promise of more goodies tomorrow. They are ALWAYS just around the corner, usually the same corner they were around 10, 15 or 20 years ago;
          3) Write a nailed down contract which once signed CANNOT be fiddled with later;
          4) Focus on time and cost once the ‘quality / requirement’ is sorted, get it delivered. The project team should totally judged on these two factors;
          5) Discipline, fire or Return to Unit, any stupid twerp who comes along later thinking they know better. Grrrrr!

          My guess is that there is someone somewhere questioning the requirements and slowing the process down – let’s do another detailed study – stupid. If the requirements are not right now then someone really has dropped the ball…

          Cheers CR

          • From reading the comments from those here who know item 5 is common.

            Can we employ you as head of DES from your home mate?

          • I’d echo that.

            The number of meeting I’ve sat in a meeting where a bright idea, often from an academic that has not been properly stress tested, becomes part of the development curve was frightening. It was also frighteningly expensive and time consuming.

            This is why I like the T31 / QEC model of procurement. Keep it big & simple to separate out the build from the up-armament costs.

          • Uh, loud thunk as CR’s head hits table in a vain effort to dull the memories of loooonnnnng boring pointless meetings with zero outcome…

            Or worse… a short sharp meeting on returning from a couple of days off to find a project I was in charge of had been completely derailed by the customer… Aghhhhhhh!

            I can laugh now, but…

            Cheers CR

          • Hmm, I sure we could come to a suitable agreement mate 🙂

            To be fair even if DES did everything prefectly there would still be issues as complex technology based projects are never straight forward and always fraught with risks, but too many projects are bedevilled with clever and smart people doing, frankly, stupid things, often because they simply do not have the experience or personal ‘tools’ to make the right decisions.

            Officers trained to make decisions on the battlefield or in humanitarian situations simply do not have the tools to deal with the long drawn out engineering process. They need to see results! Often when they make a decision it will be the next person in post who will see the outcome!

            I once had a boss who was ex-army Commando (gunner I think). He would tell us to come to him with solutions not problems. In engineering and systems analysis identifying and understanding the problem is the first and most important step. I have no doubt he was a smart guy, but that was a stupid thing to say to experienced analysts who had been doing the job far longer than he had!

            To underline the point I spent the first 8 years of my career working on a laser radar concept that either needed vast sums or money to be useful or was simply a solution looking for a problem. It was dropped before silly money was spent. To be fair it was a research project not a development programme. Few realise that research more often than not finds ways of NOT doing it rather than ways to do something. So I had experience of coming up with clever ideas / solutions before the problem was understood…

            Learnt a lot and had lots of fun mind 🙂

            Cheers CR

          • That is the beauty of research and the other interesting and sometimes useful things you trip over in the journey.

            It can all be a lot of fun.

            They key is having practical people in the room who are going at getting to the end result.

            Although I did once run into the “if it that easy it can’t be any good” issue when we did over a weekend what someone else said would take nine months and ££££……

          • Completely 100% agree with you CR. Also could be that in the time between the last procurement being cancelled and this one being re-launched, the original money got squirrelled away on other things and the money men are now desperately looking who to rob of funds not yet committed to fund this lot. Often seen that happen. Another moral of the story: Once you launch something, DON’T stop it and try to re-launch it thinking you can do it better second time round!

          • so correct, money will have been moved and now there is no pot. should of never of stopped the procurement it kill projects

          • A really good illustration of what happens when you don’t adhere to your 5points is the Ajax programme. What started out as a 19 ton vehicle is now 40 tons(light tank?) and at least 4years late and wildly over budget. It appears that at no stage in the project did anyone stop the latest good idea being absolutely what we need, and “mission creep” is exactly what has happened.
            If anyone is interested the last issue of Private Eye has a very good piece about General Dynamics appearing in front of the Defence Select Committee. You don’t have to even read between the lines to realise that the programme is never going to deliver.

          • Excellent analysis, and from experience would place 3) near the top of the list! Would it be fair to say that there is something seriously wrong with MoD procurement. They have had over 20 years now to figure out the answers to the above, and yet here we are now with 2 active carriers without the supply chain essential to any serious deployment, and a key part (FSS) not even ready to order.

          • May I remind you that the MOD is a Government department. It is entirely controlled by whichever government is in power. The current Government could have overhauled the entire department and fixed the long standing issues. The fact that they have not is entirely on the shoulders of our PM.

          • I suspect it’s mainly about games of polictics. The MOD keep making the same mistake of wanting to building specialist platforms rather than more universal ones. Then the next cuts arrive or the process to trigger the next one’s is started and the dedicated platform is suddenly seen as a way to cover other capability allowing cuts elsewhere in the fleet and so needs to be redesigned and as the programs are very long this probably happens multiple times.

        • I like the idea of drone launching, it has some ‘first thought’ logic to it and could help free up the carriers and their deck space somewhat to concentrate on their present/future duties even if they exercised control of those drones once launched. I guess with the big rethink on tactics and platforms inevitably effected by progressive drone development over the next decade or so, before it starts (in terms of purpose/capability) to solidify/mature through actual experience much has to be considered. Building in some flexibility for drone exploitation to offer opportunities for using them to the fullest as and when that finally resolves itself, would on the surface make sense. But complex issues to consider I expect well beyond my pay grade and up for much debate.

    • Yeah my initial thoughts too and it’s good to see others of a similar stance instead of us seeing the headline and working ourselves up to a death spin over it.

    • Amber red is not a mark of if the project will be completed, it is an indication that the project will cost far more then it needs to and will likely not deliver the full capability it is supposed to. Any project can be delivered, Nimrod could have been delivered, it just could not be delivered with the required capability for anywhere near the required price.

      Tempest though is a different matter. I would love it to be successful, however I can see it being a project designed to keep people thinking Boris cares while it is actually far below the funding needed to actually deliver. Then another future Government will have to cancel it and will be blamed for the cancellation despite the issues being caused by the current Government. We need to be spending billions right now in order to deliver tempest not the mere few hundred million.

  3. I understood that most of the major projects were amber/red. More to do with long term accepted risk managment than any real possibilty of it being canned. They are essential, and even the dumbest politican could be made to see that.

    • I’ve put this comment in response to the Tempest programme elsewhere, its just as true here…

      I do wish the trade press (and the press in general) would actually get a real understanding of IPA RAG statuses. Yes there is a clear definition of what each level means (Red, Red/Amber, Amber, Amber/Green and Green) in writing, but the actual RAG status assigned to GMPP programmes is given in a rather opaque manner. Reviewers are brought in to an IPA review (either at a defined Gateway, or at the request of the SRO for a semi private PAR) and assign a RAG status and issue a report. They are exceptionally conservative with this, after all no one will ever criticise them for a programme that they assign a Red RAG to that goes on to be successful…giving a Green to a programme that fails is an issue however…when reporting at regular intervals to the IPA for the annual Transparency returns you’re mad if you try and stray too far from an internal review RAG status that has been assessed recently.

      Speaking from experience I recently completed a GMPP programme, we were rated Red for 4 years, before making a brief foray into Amber/Red. By any reading of the definition we should failed or have been stopped. We were given a Green rating only at the final Gateway….as we had delivered a ‘novel and contentious’ programme early, under budget, with rave reviews from industry/users and with provable cash benefits over twice as great as the business case stated (and we were told for years that it was overly ambitious)….

      Basically… treat RAG statuses with a degree of caution….Red and Red/Amber do not always mean what the definition says…other variables are factored in with a great big dollop of reviewers caution and bias.

      • Well I guess there is a balancing force for the conspiracy of optimism I used to encounter, espeically when some new tech (usually from the ‘Americans’) was being touted. For every force…

        And very well done for delivering…

        Cheers CR

        • A lot depends on the Programme Team as well. We purposely wanted a Red RAG status initially…Why? Because it meant we got noticed politically and got assigned resources and funding when we asked, the consequences of not delivering were too onerous for anyone to get in our way. My SRO actually stated once that if the IPA reviewing team had tried to give us anything other than Red then an argument would have ensued…they would have been ‘persuaded’ to give us a Red….

          • Oh what games we have to play…

            Of course if you had got amber or heaven forbid green then you would have been starved of resources until you were in the red, only you would have been blamed for the situation to boot!

            Strange and silly world we live in sometimes  😂  laugh and weep at the same time.

            Cheers CR

      • Spot on, people need to understand the difference between Risks and Issues. Risks that are not adequately mitigated will mature into an issue. Like you I’ve had red risks throughout the entire program’s life cycle and still had successful program. No one thanks you when a green risk turns into a red issue 🙂

      • ye but the tempest one had to do with the funds. everyone went nuts cuz there wasn’t enough money going into it apparently. we know baes capable of doing stuff like this, but apparently there wasn’t enough money. but that’s been solved now. i think.

  5. These will Go as per the Tide Class, we can only build so many ships in the UKs yards.

    there Cargo ships painted Grey and best price is better then given more Money to the SNP to waste

    • Better stay up to date with UK legislation: FSS is classed as a Warship and therefore under UK law must be build in a UK shipyard. Also they won’t be built in Scotland since all the yards up North are full up.

      • Is it U.K. law that warships are build in the U.K. of government policy? I’d be interested if you have details of which law is involved.

        • I don’t think you need to go further than the EU procurement rules which specified open tendering for Government contracts throughout the EU as a minimum. One of the exceptions was defence contracts. So simply bidding it as a defence contract changes the rules …

          • That’s all true, but whilst it made it possible to restrict warships contracts to U.K. yards it didn’t require them to be built in U.K. yards.
            But for better or worse that’s all in the past. I done no of any current law requiring warships to be built in the UK, but I’m interested if Dern can quote one.

    • FSS as a programme are certainly not “Cargo ships painted Grey”, the stowage requirements for munitions are complex, these vessels will need specialised compartmentalisation and fire suppression systems. Their complexity is part of the reason the programme is Amber/Red. These vessels will present a major challenge to the yards looking to build them especially H&W Belfast who have not built anything like this in decades.

  6. I wonder when they do their budget estimates of they take into account the procurement bungling and delays at MoD? The idea of building all our ships in our facilities is absolute common-sense. It means that tax-payers money is recirculated in and supports our economy and not exported to someone else’s.

    • Except is it common sense if that means we get 1-2 ships instead of 3-4? Is the RN primarily there to circulate money back into the economy or to project force on the ocean waves?

      • The cost to the wider economy is not factored into the equation. This is not about primacy but having a circular economy. The local workforce pays taxes, and without their pay we couldn’t afford the equipment we are buying. Buy in raw materials yes, but do the assembly and construction here. Fewer people earning money in UK means lower tax revenues. Lower tax revenues because of a loss of jobs, means that society cannot afford the things it needs or wants.You cannot (despite Tory profit management thinking) separate the two functions. And you also have to factor in the relevance or otherwise of so called ‘power projection’ which one hand is standing up for ourselves (good), but on the other it is bullying and coercion (bad). And we have to have an economy to project power in defence of. The prime reason we used to rule the waves and much of the world was because we used that power to make profits from what were seen as easy targets in lesser countries. Fine in the 18th/19th centuries but the world has moved on. And arguably in more dangerous ways too. So there is a point in power projection but we have to be able to afford that power and it has to be used in a worthwhile manner for worthwhile objectives. We couldn’t afford to keep going in Iraq and Afghanistan so big assets like QE really only have a role in small scale policing operations, with the advent of modern missile technology they are at risk, and it’ll only take two or three hypersonic missiles to lose all of that investment. If we are going to power project it has to be done properly in support of a vibrant and sustainable economy. Why export tax payers money and be required to increase the amount of basic subsidy for low paid and non-workers? Far better we spend that money on our own people to do jobs that a) we used to do for ourselves (until we exported manufacturing to China), and b) means that they are actually doing something instead of sitting around being a drain on the rest of us. Shipbuilding (and other manufacturing) are very much part of the same economy that justifies that equipment in the first place. Too much in politics fails utterly to look at things holistically preferring instead to simplify by ignoring or dismissing inconvenient facts that detract from their goal.

  7. Good article… shining the mirror image on a project team trying to deliver a much needed defence asset. The truth is, we need robust analysis, and IPA reviews allow project teams (driven to deliver) the time and space to ensure we get the Asset the Nation needs at the best Value. Amber Red doesn’t mean stop… its been a waste of time, effort and money. It means, address certain issues to ensure we are getting what we need. The review of the business case should (if done robustly) help focus the minds of ALL concerned (Including the Market Place!) With our outward-facing partner-driven national strategy, emplified by our superb carrier led CSG serving in the southern hemisphere… We need this type of support vessel more than ever. Good luck and fair winds to all those working on the project!!! John Dew OBE

  8. Is this ridiculous procurement / consultancy chain just a way of delaying buying capital defence equipment ? Thank heavens this pedantic process didnt exist in WW2.

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