The United Kingdom is to abandon its bespoke Multi-Role Strike Ship and instead pursue a joint amphibious fleet with the Netherlands, building the future of the Royal Marines’ Commando Force around the Dutch-led Amphibious Transport Ship programme, the Defence Investment Plan said.
The plan said the Multi-Role Strike Ship “was too complex and did not reflect the UK Commando Force we are now pursuing,” and that the department would therefore pivot to explore opportunities for the United Kingdom with the Netherlands-led Amphibious Transport Ship programme.
The Ministry of Defence has cast the move as an investment in new amphibious assault shipping for British commando operations, aimed at creating a joint fleet with the Netherlands, and Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said the government was “investing in new attack drones, high-speed boats, and amphibious assault ships” to give the commandos what they need to stay ahead of adversaries.
The commitment forms part of the wider Future Commando Force transformation, backed by more than £500 million, which has reoriented the Royal Marines towards operations on NATO’s northern flank and in the Arctic.
The Netherlands is already building towards six Amphibious Transport Ships of its own, intended to replace its two Rotterdam-class landing platform docks and four Holland-class patrol vessels, with deliveries planned from 2032, and bringing the British requirement into that programme would draw the two national efforts into far closer alignment than the subsystem-level cooperation the two navies had most recently settled for.
Retire, retire, retire, what’s replacing it… Replacing it, nah, we’re not bothering.
A intergenerational system of systems with cutting edge next gen AI system that have a module ecosystem, but built for but not with reality, then cancelled due money and stupidity, errrr sorry, didn’t match evolved threats, must start new 10 year concept phase and rise and repeat😊👍
MRSS never existed so it can’t be retired.
There is a big picture above of what they are look at to meet the requirement.
They scraped the requirement to save money and and went for something less capable. Same with fleet air defence.
I find it so funny that they cancelled the original project with the Netherlands and replaced it with MRSS, then changed the acronym, then cancelled it and gone back to the Netherlands 😂
Sounds a bit like Boxer.
Sounds like someone finally got the admirals by the scruff of the neck and beat some sense into them. Exactly like Boxer but thankfully this one was caught early on.
But with Boxer, it was the right choice for front line roles (taking the underfunded and tracked arguments out), with the cheaper less capable Cavs now providing less protected vehicles in roles where Boxer isn’t necessary/not affordable, how it should be, will the navy be getting the same hi/lo mix with the MRSS replacement ?
Pretty certain they won’t be “investing” diddly squat until they have finished “exploring opportunities”. And we all know how that usually works out.
I am finding this all very hard to follow. To be clear, is this a shared *design* with the Dutch, or the ships themselves will be shared?
Hopefully it’s a shared design and the UK will order 3-4 (5-6 would be better) for ourselves to cover Commando and wider drone use.
How do you start off a joint program, leave it because it doesn’t meet the requirements you’ve set, to then go back to the program that didn’t meet your requirements ?
Is this new ship going to be able to do what is needed, or will requirements take back over and push back towards MRSS original targets. Obviously there is no link to funding levels!