Onboard the world’s most advanced anti-submarine frigate

As HMS Glasgow moves through the final stages of construction at BAE Systems’ Scotstoun shipyard, the Royal Navy’s newest frigate is already drawing comparisons not to her predecessors, but to submarines and aircraft carriers.

The last time I stepped onboard HMS Glasgow, she had not even touched water. The visit felt more like walking through a construction site than a warship. This time, the transformation was striking. From bare steel and scaffolding to a ship with clear shape, identity and purpose, Glasgow now feels alive.

As someone who spends a great deal of time boarding ships to tell you, the reader, about them, I can say this is perhaps the most spacious frigate of its class I’ve ever been on. The scale of the internal layout, the finish of the compartments, and the sense of quiet capability throughout all contribute to something remarkable.

Described by those overseeing her build as quiet, intelligent, and capable of withstanding serious attack, Glasgow represents a pretty big change in antisubmarine warfare.

Speaking from the bridge, Sean Scott, Supply Chain Director at BAE Systems, urged visitors to remember one thing: “Keep in the back of your mind—this is a frigate. When you look at the size of the available space and the level of capability, it really is state of the art.”

The ship’s size is immediately striking. “The bridge here is actually not far off in size from what’s on the carriers… for a frigate, that’s good,” Scott said. “You’ll have a navigator’s chair and a captain’s chair as well. We’re trying to give the RN as much capability as possible with the space available.”

That design philosophy extends throughout the vessel. From automation to survivability, the approach is based on precision and layered capability. “The five-inch gun, the magazine housing, the magazine feeds—it’s pretty much all automated to be controlled by one or two people, and at a rapid rate of knots,” Scott explained. “It’s designed to take an element of torpedo attack or enemy attack of any sort, shut that element down, and still carry on.”

Sir Simon Lister, Managing Director of BAE Systems Naval Ships, underlined the operational intent behind those design choices: “The basic requirement of the Type 26 is to hold a Russian submarine at risk in the North Atlantic.” That means not just finding a submarine but doing so undetected. “This ship is designed to beat the Russian submarine at that cat and mouse game, that stealth game.”

To achieve that, Glasgow has borrowed heavily from submarine design. “We’ve made sure that every equipment that makes noise on board has either been designed out or designed to operate quietly,” Lister said. “That’s bringing the disciplines of building a nuclear submarine into this ship, so that this ship puts very little acoustic energy into the water.” That design extends to the hull itself: “That hull is designed to cope with heavy weather. It’s designed to slip through the water quietly.”

Scott expanded on how that theory is executed in practice: “All the bracketry, all the pipe work, everything has been suppressed to stop any noise coming through as much as possible. So everything’s encompassed with sponge boots all the way through every single bracket, every single pipe hanger.” He added: “Every stud, every bracket, every pipe, every cable run, everything specifically in the design gives us the ability to maximise the space as much as possible, down to 0.5 millimetres.”

Acoustic performance is not just a matter of insulation, but of engineering tolerance. “Now we get them to measure to the millimetre to make sure it’s in line with the model. It also allows us to transfer the model into different programs digitally and keep that continuity all the way through the build.”

HMS Glasgow is still undergoing commissioning, but her capabilities are already becoming clear. “The current stage of the build that we’re in now is doing all what we call the termination, which is pretty much happening across the whole ship,” Scott said. “This is where we’re starting to venture into commissioning… that allows us to get everything signed off, which means that we can start to make the ship go live under its own accord.”

At full load, the ship weighs nearly 8,000 tonnes. “She’s built strong—built stronger than the Type 23,” Lister noted. “It’s the scale and the stability and endurance that means she’s… a really capable platform in rough conditions.”

From a weapons perspective, Glasgow brings a range of advanced systems online. “The Mk 45 gun… has a rate of fire, has a range, and a fire weight that far exceeds everything that was on the previous ship,” said Lister. “Sea Ceptor is a self-defence system first and foremost, but it does have area air defence capability too.”

That capability may grow over time. “Because the Mk 41 is there, we expect in time for this ship to be equipped with longer-range air defence missiles as well,” he added. “There’s something called the Mk 41 launcher which is a universal US launcher capable of taking a range of missiles to give it a strike capability.” “The Artisan 3D radar is very powerful. It’s selling very well around the world.”

But the heart of the Type 26 lies in integration. Lister describes the ship not as a platform, but as a node. “Whatever goes into that Mission Bay becomes a node of the combat system,” he said. “That Mission Bay is configurable in all sorts of ways to bring to sea the latest capability. Today it’s drones. Tomorrow it could be EW-equipped drones. The next, it could be hypersonic missiles launched from containers.”

That modularity is enabled by automation. “It has a multipoint crane… capable of launching and retrieving equipment… in sea state five.”

“The ship can take two Merlin helicopters,” Lister said. “The flight deck is huge, much bigger than anything on a Type 23. The Merlin helicopter is an extraordinary anti-submarine warfare helicopter… very powerful… can maintain a dip for long duration.”

“That ship really takes a supercomputer to sea,” he said. “It takes several server farms to sea, connected to communications, sensors and weapons.” The architecture is tightly engineered. “We’ve put all the computing applications onto shared infrastructure… that’s reduced the cooling and power consumption of the ship significantly.” Artificial intelligence plays a growing role. “Artificial intelligence [is] playing an increasing role in sorting the signature from the mass of data that you obtain.”

Scott emphasised that the design choices on Glasgow are tied to future export opportunities. “Every equipment type that you will see on the ship has gone through a rigorous amount of land-based testing and integration before it arrives on ship.” He added: “Once we’ve proven that capability, I’d say watch this space… between ourselves, Canada, Australia and potentially Norway, you will have a fleet of over 32 Type 26s.”

“The ship is capable of going in harm’s way,” Lister said. “Anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic is team sport.” And the Type 26, now fitting out on the Clyde, is designed to lead.

As Sean put it, “from a defence picture, it’s a really good deterrent… if you come across an ASW frigate with this level of capability, you’ll think twice about taking it on”.