Rolls-Royce will provide long-term service support for all mtu generator sets powering the Royal Navy fleet.

Rolls-Royce business unit Power Systems and the Ministry of Defence have signed a contract covering the preventive and corrective maintenance of more than 90 mtu engines for the next five years. The contract, which is the first of its kind for Power Systems, includes an option to extend for a further two years.

  • The agreement covers preventive and corrective maintenance for 5 years with option for 2 more years
  • More than 90 mtu engines in five different types of vessels included
  • Exchange of engine data to enable optimized operations

It covers mtu generator sets of Series 183, 396 and 4000 fitted or to be fitted into a wide range of surface vessels and submarines, including Daring Class (Type 45) destroyers, Duke Class (Type 23) and City Class (Type 26) frigates, Hunt Class mine hunters and Astute Class submarines.

“Rolls-Royce will provide maintenance and repair support both on and off the vessels, provide spare parts, assist with diagnostics and commissioning, and will also deliver design solutions for the modification and improvement of components if necessary. The contract includes the sharing of engine data between the Royal Navy and Rolls-Royce. Based on its advanced digital analysis of this data, Rolls-Royce will be able to suggest through-life efficiency improvements and deliver cost savings by optimising deployment and maintenance of the vessels.”

Cdr Michael Thomson, Marine Diesel Equipment Group leader, at Defence Equipment and Support, said:

“It is our duty to deliver the optimum level of equipment availability to the Royal Navy to enable our forces to fulfil their important missions at all times. We are delighted to have placed this support contract with Rolls-Royce which will capitalise on the use of data analysis to continually improve availability and support efficiencies for our fleet of mtu engines.”

Knut Müller, Vice President Global Governmental at Rolls-Royce business unit Power Systems, said:

“This remarkable agreement gives a new dimension to our long-lasting and proven relationship with the UK MoD and establishes Rolls-Royce Power Systems as a complete solutions provider for the Royal Navy. We are proud that the Royal Navy now also puts trust in our maintenance and service capabilities, after having invested in mtu propulsion solutions for many years. With our maintenance know-how and growing digital skills we will help the Royal Navy optimize the operation of their vessels, ensuring highest availability at lower costs. The agreement may also serve as a model for other Rolls-Royce customers who are interested in optimizing the service and maintenance of their fleets powered by mtu engines.”

https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2022/19-10-2022-rr-provides-long-term-service-for-all-mtu-generator-sets-powering-royal-navy-vessels.aspx

Lisa West
Lisa West
Lisa has a degree in Media & Communication from Glasgow Caledonian University and works with industry news, sifting through press releases in addition to moderating website comments.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

36 COMMENTS

    • You aren’t going to be putting a Harpoon on your shoulder and hefting it into the tube: that is for sure!

      At nearly 2t Harpoon is awkward to insert into the tube with it in location. So usually it is pre loaded into the tube (vertically) and the tube is lowered onto the mounts. That way it is a standard slinging operation that can be balanced round the centre of mass. So **potentially** you could reload at sea.

      VLS/soft launch are easier and quicker to reload on the ammunition jetty, for sure. But virtually impossible to reload at sea.

      • There was an article I read sometime ago about reloading missile systems at sea. VLS was clearly not so much fun, but the reload system on the T42 / Sea Dart apparently worked OKish. As the missile was aligned with the loading mechanism using a built in deck mounted fork lift system that took the missiles in a horizontal sling and pivotted it in the vertical position were the reloading system took was run in reverse and fed the missile back into the magazine.

        The article did say that reloading at sea was only possible in calm conditions and wasn’t done very often, although if I remember rightly it did give an example of it being ‘operationally’. Can’t remember the details so could be wrong about that.

        Cheers CR

        • USN dropped vertical reloads even though the Mk41 did have a retractable crane that went into one of the slots.

          Dart, as you say, could be reverse loaded at sea. I don’t know if it ever was, in anger, as it needed such calm seas to avoid damaging R2D2 (the launcher arms). Dart was a big heavy missile.

          The Dart magazine on a T42 was massive (although smaller than on Bristol).

          Wether time if war would change the perspective in at sea reloads is really the question.

          Very often the issue of reloads was fudged as the RN ships went to sea with the missile inventory. Now inventories are common (Ceptor) and therefore much deeper the dynamics are once again changing.

      • Wikipedia – MTU derives from Motoren- und Turbinen-Union meaning ‘Motor (Engine) and Turbine Union’. MTU Friedrichshafen remained a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler until 2006 when it was sold off to the EQT IV private equity fund, becoming a part of the Tognum Corporation. Rolls-Royce Holdings and Daimler AG acquired Tognum in 2011.

    • Stands for Motor and Turbine-Union (MTU) which was a company founded by Willie Maybach before the war. It’s been brought by RR and supplies diesel engines for both maritime and land customers.

          • Intriguing…would be willing to wager that Boxer application is more prominent in MTU advertising at the moment than Ajax …at least until it passes acceptance trials. 🤔😳

          • If you want a good V12 or V16 multi turbo unit then the MTU is in a class of its own, be it main propulsion or DG. CAT offer similar spec but the engines are heavier, although very good. the power delivery on the MTU is perfect for these type of applications. Pretty much all naval small interceptors, patrol boats and coastguard units will spec an MTU – in laymans terms, engine porn.

          • Yes, forgot about CAT, but there are others too – MAN for one, but as you say, here MTU is head and shoulders above the rest.

        • As I’m sure you are aware MTU also do some very good turboshaft engines…

          RR made a smart move acquiring them and keeping them going as a seperate business unit. Lots of extra know how. People really matter in tech businesses.

          RR have done remarkably well since they were bailed out in the 1970’s after the inital failure of the RB211 – the original engines had carbon fibre fans which unfortunately shattered when the frozen chickens where fired at them. Bankrupted the company at the time.

          Seems they’ve learnt a few lessons since then.

          Cheers CR

          • Hmm, frozen chickens. I wonder if the Ukrainians could weaponise that

            “The American have run out of Stingers and want to know if we can use 2,000 Rhode Island Reds.”

          • Knew RR had had some difficulty in the past; never knew specific cause. Didn’t RR also have some sort of a financial issue during the pandemic?

          • the chickens were not supposed to be frozen, upon doing the bird strike test they realised they had no chickens so some wag was despatched into town to get some – unfortunately they shopped at Iceland and came back with a rock solid chicken which was launched into the engine intake and lunched the bypass fans which were then ingested right through the engine along with the chicken

          • Ah, that’s where the ‘frozen’ came from… I didn’t think it should have been a real ‘Frozen’ chicken but it was what I had always heard over the years.

            “What a mistaka to maka..!”

            Cheers CR

          • The story is a little more mundane than that as I knew some of the people involved in the original tests who manufactured the ‘chicken gun’ by RAE in Farnborough… can’t make this up! They originally used fresh chicken but as they fired it with compressed air it would disintegrate before it got to the end of the tube, so they went to frozen chickens. This was considered worse case as is often the case for testing aerospace systems (always go for the worse case so you cover 99.9% of all probabilities) but I am not sure if it is still in use as a test today. I have seen a lot of crazy worse case scenarios from aircraft manufacturers which has meant equipment has been subjected to ridiculous tests, an example would be as follows.

            A standard power supply test on the 115V/400Hz AC supply of an aircraft would be to apply an offset of maybe 1v DC. However, one manufacturer wanted us to apply a 28VDC offset as apparently sometime in the distant past this may have occurred. We warned them that this would damage the system under test and was not going to happen on an active aircraft unless it was intentional due to the different connectors used. We still had to do the test and smoke ensued….

  4. How much electricity can one of these big engines generate? Ukraine could use a lot for winter.
    Maybe we will see lines of T72 hulls with generators in the hull. Armoured for drone strikes🙈

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here