The Royal Navy’s planned Type 83 destroyer has been dropped in favour of at least six new Common Combat Vessels built to coordinate uncrewed systems in the air, on the surface and beneath it, under the government’s long-delayed Defence Investment Plan, the Sunday Times was first to report.
The six Type 45 air defence destroyers now in service had been due to be replaced by the next-generation Type 83 class, a concept that sat within the Future Air Dominance System and never moved beyond an early design phase. In its place, the department said the hybrid Common Combat Vessels would deliver more resilient air defence by acting as control hubs for drones across all three domains, and would extend the Navy’s “reach, resilience and firepower without a proportional increase in crew or cost.”
Delivery is expected from the early 2030s, and the ships are to be built in the United Kingdom.
Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis, as reported by the Sunday Times here, said the new class as a response to a changing threat, saying the vessels would give sailors “hybrid ships that are designed and built for the increasing threats we face.” He added that the ships would be “British-built, supporting jobs across the nation” and would hand the Royal Navy a capability built for modern warfare.
This a big one, a shift from large destroyers towards a distributed fleet in which fewer crewed warships orchestrate networks of autonomous platforms. It aligns with the Hybrid Navy direction set out in last year’s Strategic Defence Review, which spans Project Beehive’s uncrewed surface vessels and AUKUS work on underwater drones. Steve Reed, the Housing Secretary, said the full plan would be published within days, telling Sky News the country had to be ready for “any future war,” not the last one.
The Type 83 had long been named as the Type 45’s successor but stayed thinly funded. Defence minister Luke Pollard told Parliament earlier this year that around £1 million had gone on platform-specific design over three financial years, part of roughly £6.9 million of broader work under the Future Air Dominance System, and that the concept had been inherited in an underdeveloped state.
Industry thinking had pointed to the shape of the new vessel for some time. At DSEI 2025, UK Defence Journal reported, BAE Systems set out a system-of-systems vision for the future surface fleet built around a large Air Warfare Command Ship carrying sensors, missile batteries, guns and directed-energy weapons, paired with smaller, highly adaptable combatants. One concept, based on the Triton trimaran demonstrator, was shown as a lean-crewed sensor and effector platform fitted with Artisan radar, a 40mm gun, vertical launch cells and a towed sonar array, with full autonomy under study.
Gavin Rudgley, a BAE design lead, pointed to reduced crewing as a central driver, telling the briefing that lower complements would come through “automation, autonomy and the embodiment of artificial intelligence.” Geoff Searle said the company was modernising its combat management system under the Re-Code contract to create what he called the “foundation of the sovereign core” capability, able to integrate partners, equipment and uncrewed systems. Asked by UK Defence Journal whether the future ship could evolve from the Type 26 frigate, given the resemblance of the concept, BAE representatives confirmed it was one option under review, with one official describing the proven design as “an obvious thing to build on.”
A competing route has come from Babcock, which has previously pitched its Type 31 frigate for the role. Under a concept it calls ARMOR Force, the firm would turn the Type 31 into a controlling node for a fleet of large autonomous surface vessels built by the United States shipbuilder HII, dispersing anti-submarine, air defence and strike capability across wide areas of ocean. The proposal centres on HII’s ROMULUS family of uncrewed surface vessels, fitted with swappable containerised payloads moved by a modular handling system that Babcock would develop at its Rosyth yard, and is presented as the industrial answer to the First Sea Lord’s call for a Hybrid Navy and an enabler of the Atlantic Bastion, Atlantic Shield and Atlantic Strike concepts.
Babcock pitches Type 31 frigate as command platform for uncrewed systems
Sir Nick Hine, chief executive of Babcock Marine, described ARMOR Force as “our response to the First Sea Lord’s call for a re-imagined Hybrid Navy,” built on open NATO standards to operate alongside allied forces, with the company saying its autonomous mission system would be deployable by the end of 2026.
The Conservatives attacked the wider plan as inadequate. James Cartlidge, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said the reported changes amounted to “too little, too late from Labour on Defence,” arguing the settlement carried barely more money than its predecessor and pointing to the resignation of former defence secretary John Healey, who he said had warned the funding would leave Britain “less safe.” Andrew Bowie, the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, said it was extraordinary that ministers did not accept the plan must “fund both drones and destroyers,” warned that failing to invest in the Navy would damage the shipyards on the Clyde and at Rosyth, and said his party would redirect money from the government’s agreement to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius towards a new frigate fleet.
Healey stood down earlier this month after a dispute over the plan, saying the government had not committed the resources needed to keep the country safe, before Jarvis secured around £1 billion of additional funding that took the settlement to at least £14.5 billion, short of the £28 billion officials had identified as required.
With the full Defence Investment Plan due before NATO leaders meet in Ankara on 7 and 8 July, the Common Combat Vessel now carries the weight of the Royal Navy’s future air defence, a role that until this weekend belonged to a destroyer the service has yet to design and that must be ready before the Type 45s are due to leave service in 2038.
This makes a lot of sense, just knock them out on T26 hulls. Finally the MoD is starting to see sense, you can’t go around expecting budgets for a new form of warfare while desperately clinging to the sacred cows of old. T83 was always a bd idea. An evolved T26 with T91 sloops was always the obvious answer. An evolved T31 may also be more than capable. No Gucci Class Cruisers costing £3 billion each required.
Hopefully the Army starts seeing sense now too.
With their 10,000 drones, seems like the BA might be coming around.
Not sure, they still seem offly attached to their Apaches, chinooks, paras, special force, armoured recce and light artillery but here hoping 😀
Those bloody Apaches need a firm re-evaluation. Chinooks are useful for transport, but I just don’t see how one looks at Ukraine and then concludes that Apache is a good investment.
This is clearly one more cost saving measure. These ships will never be as capable as the Type-83s let alone surpass them! Hell, they may as well sell the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales now. (and get it over with)
Good. Drones-carried armaments systems offer major advantages, this is a good move IF the CCVs carry a large radar system.
So the Royal Navy is supposed to have a core strength of just 19 hulls based on either type 31 or type 26 or what ever they decide to come up with and a few dozen optionally maned vessels?? and all of this is based on what’s happening in Ukraine??
it’s poorly thought out and will poorly implemented when it eventually happens
Yes, they’re supposed to operate on 19 hulls. That’s not going to increase if the only approved ship design is a 12000t cruiser.
Mass through smaller, scaled assets is a solution.
Tell me where a heavy air defence radar and accompanying drone systems have been deployed in the naval theatre in Ukraine?
The thing is though by switching from a hardware defined navy to a software defined navy, the Royal Navy have introduced a single point of failure.
and I think that question that you ask is misleading
Not at all. You claimed this is drawn from Ukraine, I ask where it has appeared there.
Your single point of failure is?
I think this might turn out to be a big mistake
Agreed, it will not happen for years. Google ‘Rogue Rattler Yacht’ to see how well the ‘Hybrid Navy’ is doing. However something has to change we cannot take 20 years to design, build and equip a class.
You keep posting one incident as though it’s unusual.
Wait till you see how many accidents conventional destroyers are involved in…
Isn’t the T31 designed to co-ordinate uncrewed systems?
Given they’re very close to becoming operational surely anyone with a grain of sense trials uncrewed systems off a T31 before committing to a completely unproven naval strategy.
I remain totally unconvinced that experience in Ukraine which is basically a static front line is a valid reason to completely redefine the future Royal Navy.
That’s not to say I’m not open minded, only that I see it incredibly foolish to commit to a future naval strategy that isn’t proven.
Hopefully not. They should know what they’re doing with this. Last thing the UK wants is to leave itself even wider open on the high seas. But expect this to be done by others including adversaries who are still building up their traditional ship and sub numbers so how long will any advantage last? Like to see a few more T26 /T31 and new OPVs in the fleet to back all this up.
How does this leave us more open on the high seas, Quentin?
If command ships are taken out them drone ships may have a limited ability to operate independently. Once all that is gone what is there left, potential exposure and gaps if nothing to back it all up? No subs at sea, T45s being upgraded and limited availability so less escorts for any CSG.
I’m actually with you on still wanting to have even a few more manned ships, including T83 types and being less obessive on drones.
Is announcement a blending of T32 with T83 and even a bit of MRSS?
Meanwhile our enemies edible their efforts to jam the datalink between mothership and drone or worse take the thing over,
How could it go wrong ?
I love how people assume this hasn’t been considered…
so how do you think they will address the issue of the single point of failure that has been introduced??
If you believe that these large drones will have just one mode of communication, or one mode of software-based self-defence, you’re living in the 90s.
Similarly, why do you assume that a manned warship would not have similarly exploitable deficiencies.
The RN needs mass. It’s the thing people consistently note as an issue on this platform. This is an attempt to address it. Manned warship numbers remain the same. Hulls increase overall.
They do need numbers but not at the expense of capabilities! That is the problem with the UK Government they promised much but never deliver on it….The Royal Navy only got half of their Type-45 Destroyers and the same will happen with the Type-26 Frigates. In both cases not fully equipped either. Oh, and even the Queen Elizabeth Carriers didn’t arrive fully equipped with Weapon Systems nor Aircraft.
I will simply cite the example of the near continous assault our digital infrastructure and the continuing battle Ukraine armed forces has with the Russians attempts to jam them. This drone control ship is a single point of failure with a ship sized target painted on it,
CCV + Type 91, 92, 93, and the new 94, with sensor and radar🤔
The key to air defence is a powerful radar able to cue effective missiles on to multiple targets. Using a dedicated ASW design as the basis for this new platform seems odd. The cost of the command vessels and their unmanned linked companions is sure to cost more than conventional replacements for T45.
If it is to be capable of controlling subsurface, surface and air sensors and weapons, expecting it to be low manned is ambitious, to say the least.
Not sure that BAE have the capacity to build these for delivery by the early 2030s, given the T26 programme for UK and Norway.
I’m not convinced this is anything but a way of justifying delay and making the inadequate DIP look vaguely credible.
If we can afford these and new maritime transport ships, why did Healey feel he had to resign?
Because Healey was offered £2b less than Jarvis, mostly because Jarvis has the ability to threaten to resign.
I’m not sure well this has been well thought through. I would love to see some decent analysis of the options. e.g. by RAND Corp. Of course the MOD has occasionally done this in the past (UK Naval Shipbuilding, CVF, T45), but then ignored the recommendations.
Well, from after speaking to someone who claims to be apparently working on the project, the type 83 hasn’t been dropped, and the ccv was what the type 32 was going to be. We will see.