The Ministry of Defence has said the Royal Navy is carefully managing the transition from its ageing Type 23 Duke-class frigates to the new generation of Type 26 and Type 31 warships.
The clarification follows questions in Parliament about whether the joint Type 26 programme could affect the out-of-service dates for the Royal Navy’s existing fleet.
Responding to a written question from Helen Maguire, Liberal Democrat MP for Epsom and Ewell, Defence Minister Luke Pollard said “the Ministry of Defence welcomes Norway’s defence procurement deal which will see a fleet of Type 26 Anti-Submarine Warfare frigates operate jointly by Britain and Norway in Northern Europe, significantly strengthening NATO’s northern flank.”
He added that “the Royal Navy is carefully managing the transition from Type 23 to Type 26 and Type 31 frigates, with the Duke Class Type 23s currently due to exit service in 2035.” Pollard confirmed that the Navy “continuously reviews out of service dates to achieve maximum availability of its platforms and ensure that it can meet its operational commitments.”
The Type 26 frigate, built by BAE Systems at Govan and Scotstoun on the River Clyde, will replace the Royal Navy’s current anti-submarine warfare fleet. It is designed for operations in contested environments, featuring advanced quieting technologies, the Sea Ceptor missile system, a 5-inch Mk 45 gun, and facilities to host uncrewed systems and a Merlin or Wildcat helicopter.
The first ship, HMS Glasgow, is undergoing fitting out, while HMS Cardiff and HMS Belfast are under construction.
The planned Norwegian order of five represents a growing trend among NATO members toward shared design and production of advanced maritime platforms. For the UK, it reinforces the role of the Type 26 as a common anti-submarine warfare asset across the alliance, strengthening joint operations in the strategically vital North Atlantic.
According to the Ministry of Defence, maintaining a balanced frigate force during the transition remains a top priority.
Stupid questions being asked by stupid people at least a decade late.
We are lucky If we can get 3 Frigates to Sea now. (16 were deemed the minimum requirement when ordered).
I wish I could work in the upper levels of MoD procurement where nothing ever seems to be a problem and you can take as long as you need to get a job done or sometimes not even bother finishing.
It seems like a very relaxing work environment.
I just can’t understand how the top brass keep screaming at us that we are in a state of war and that we need to gut health spending and jack up taxes yet they take longer to finish a frigate than all of World War I and II took to fight and we are still two years away from the first being handed over.
Boom.
Exactly.
We should call for a meeting.
I suggest we use HMS Daring as the venue, shouldn’t take too many £Billions to sort the Accomodation.
Just have to check we have the tea and biscuits as set forth in the protocols.
No doubt we will have to make sure we have the proper jacket and hat for the occasion.
It’s the dress code that makes the UK armed forces what it is don’t you know.
Not its Anti Submarine Warfare capability.
I think we need a Committee to discuss this matter, at least hopefully we should have some feedback by the time HMS Glasgow is decommissioned.
“carefully managing”. In other words business as usual. Slow, disorganised and fitted for but….
The time has already come to admit defeat on Richmond sight unseen and put all resources on getting Kent fixed up as soon as possible. There’s no point in spending tens of millions before deciding Richmond can’t be fixed, even though it’s had the PGMU upgrade. Having Kent worked up and operational from next year when Portland goes in for a refit is the most critical short term aspect of keeping the highest number of ASW frigates available. In the highly unlikely event it turned out that Richmond could be refit, delaying it by a year would mean little, because it wouldn’t be operational for three years starting Q1 next year, by which time the Navy will be struggling to onboard Type 26s and Type 31s. Instead plan to storob it blind from the start, maybe recyle the new engines into Portland, and forgo the tuppence-hapenny we could get from Chile if we sold it to them semi-fixed up.
This frigate shit show hasn’t been well managed so far or Somerset wouldn’t have been the NSM lead, nor would Lancaster have been the lead on Peregrine. And someone might have been able to satisfactorily explain Argyll. Fingers crossed they do better in the future.
Wonder if T22 might just outlast them. Will any of the T-23s be salable? If not might be a close run thing.
Total bollocks, the time for careful management has passed, this is a crisis of our own making.
We really need to have some things that are decided/ funded cross party to ensure continuation of the acceptable minimum.
The stated minim7m escort fleet is 19 vessels. I would be surprised if we have 10 available.
Sickening that the effects are that the whole system is to save money for existing Govt’s by piling it onto the next Govt or two down the line so costing us a lot more in the longer run while leaving us seriously weak in the meantime which makes the whole point of having a navy pointless for long periods. National politics is on a completely different priority to the very international events that demand defence spending in the first place.
Agreed, plus we are being outsmarted and out delivered by those countries (South Korea, Singapore, China) who think longer term.
Governments need to think in 50 yr time spans, ours thinks in months possibly 3 yrs and hopes for the best, it’s simply not good enough
So we are transitioning to a shared design and construction system? What happened to keeping naval production entirely sovereign? Could the same process be applied to armoured vehicles too. We already outsource aircraft and associated systems. It seems like the Navy is modernising. Just the Army to catch up now.
We could have saved millions if the army bought off the shelf cv90 and k9
They’re being built in Britain with a little bit of help from the Norwegians in steel cutting. The design collaboration is just that if we upgrade our ships we will also upgrade theirs, and the Norwegians have a say in which upgrades we do.
So we are just assembling them from a lot of bought in parts. So much for keeping the production in the UK. That is the point! All defence procurement nowadays is collaborative, and each partner wants a share of the action.
We fully produce our Type 26, it’s the Norwegian Type 26 they’ll do bits on. did you really expect Norway to accept an agreement where they have no input or production at all for ships they are about to use?
Not really we still buy stuff in for them!
This is the key sentence to which we RN and MoD seem to be agreeing with and to which I was referring:
“represents a growing trend among NATO members toward shared design and production of advanced maritime platforms.”
Shared production means sharing bits of the ships! Sharing production and design means collaborating with other countries!
Isn’t it a good thing that our yards have so many orders they are struggling to keep up with demand?
The majority of block fabrication will still be in the UK, the Norwegians are just helping us top up the ones we don’t have capacity for following their order.
This is the key sentence to which we RN and MoD seem to be agreeing with and to which I was referring:
“represents a growing trend among NATO members toward shared design and production of advanced maritime platforms.”
Shared production means sharing bits of the ships! Sharing production and design means collaborating with other countries!
That made me chuckle!
By carefully manage does he mean run 30 year old frigates until they are literally rotten and have to be scrapped whilst replacements are still years away.
Good bye HMS Lancaster, that will bring the RN Frigate count down to 7
Replacements? …..nowhere near commission.
Spin and nonsense. What else is the MoD expected to say. The truth printed in every national newspaper and on every TV news bulletin would be brilliant. Alas, fingers in ears and heads in the sand for most of the public and MPs.
“Oh, yes, well the previous administration took so long ordering the new ships, and us ( Labour ) previous to them cut several more. So we are at rock bottom. But it is a top priority, honest.”
Why is there no national enquiry where previous Defence Secretaries, Chancellors and Prime Ministers are brought in to face questions?
The establishment covering its arse, as usual.
Hi M8, There is one simple reason for no National Enquiries into the actions or inactions of ministers or civil servants and it’s called “dangerous precedent”.
If the present Government authorised an enquiry into ….for instance…the idiotic delay in ordering the T26 Frigates, it would go so far back it would drag in 2 Labour PMs namely Blair and Brown. Everyone knows they should have been in build to follow straight on from the T45, but the Sand Box Wars and Browns interest in the QE’s accounted delaying it and then Cameloone was so fixated on “Give Peace a chance” and enshrining foreign aid into law, he didn’t order them till 2013 (10 years too late).
FYI if you look at the timelines the last T45 was launched in 2010 so B1 T26 (C1 GCS back then) should have been ordered @2003 for 1st steel cutting (laid down) in @2007/8 to be launched in 2012/13.
Same goes for the biggest financial disaster of the lot, not ordering any SSNs to follow on from the Vanguards (that cost Billions to rectify).
Anyone in power knows damned well that if they go muck raking it will eventually be their turn because when they lose power any muck ups on their watch would result in their heads on the block next. Whats more the advice from their respective CS and Defence Chiefs will be not to rock the boat either because of their muck ups (a certain CGS seems to be mainly responsible the present state of the Army).
Odd thing is in the US no one seems to have pointed this out to Mr Trump, but then again the way he is going there may be no one left to stand against his MAGA successor or he takes a leaf out of Putins book and he just abolishes elections that don’t result in a 99% vote for them.
This is a complete pile of steaming shite 💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩
Stupid decision 1 The simple fact of the matter is the 16 steaming piles were build cheap for 18 years of service.. that was inescapable mistake number 1, yes you could keep them in harbour and work them less, patch them up more and maybe get 25 years of services. That was a stupid pile of shite idea because an 18 year life on a fleet that needed 20 frigates mean that the new design would need to be commissioned as soon as they stopped building the type 23..
Stupid decision 2 The mod did not fund the replacement frigate concept programme until 4 years before that last frigate was due to be commissioned.. which anyone could tell you was stupid because the first type type 23 was due for decommissioning in only a decade…
Stupid decision 3.. With the time limits as they were and financial constraints the RN stuck its thumb up its arse and spend 7 years deciding what a frigate actually was instead of designing a will do the job replacement they could build 20 of.
Stupid decision 4 the treasury would not provide adequate funding for the 20 frigates the RN needed and the RN then spent another 5 years trying to figure out away around that.
Stupid decision 5 the navy and treasury had finally agreed what a frigate was and Cameron came in and told them to scrap that idea and make it cheaper.. five years later they essentially ordered the same concept they had 5 years before..So instead of the first new frigate coming on line without a break from St Albans.. as it should have if the type 23s were to be decommissioned after 18 years.. the first ship was essentially Laid down 23 years to late.. ( the first type 26 should have been laid down next to the last few type 23s in the late 1990s.. because of the stupid 18 year cheap design)..
So the lessons is don’t build cheap ships.. build them like the US does to last 25-30 years…don’t waste decades on concepts and arguments about budgets just build an adequate ship.
Anyway as I have said before there is no management of this the T23s are clearly well beyond knackered and not a single one of them has lasted more than 6-7 years after their mid 2010-2020s lifex.. so simply put the last one is not lasting to 2035 it will be decommissioned on or around 2030-31 and the navy will be down to about 4-5 operational frigates..and only 2 of those ASW frigates..a shameful 30 years of failure and penny pinching meaning we are looking down the barrel of WW3 without a fleet worth shite…