The Defence Investment Plan confirms £1.6bn to bring the Type 31 frigates into service and arm them with Mk 41 launchers and Norway’s Naval Strike Missile, plus new gun ammunition to defeat drones and surface threats.
The Royal Navy’s new Type 31 frigates are to be armed with a powerful anti-ship missile and a flexible vertical launch system, as part of continued investment of £1.6 billion to bring the class into service, the Defence Investment Plan said.
The plan said the five general-purpose frigates would have their “lethality enhanced with Mk 41 launchers and Norwegian Naval Strike Missiles,” pairing the Kongsberg-made Naval Strike Missile, a sea-skimming anti-ship weapon with a range of more than a hundred nautical miles, with the American-designed Mk 41 vertical launching system that can fire a wide range of current and future missiles. It also committed to new gun ammunition so that the frigates can make full use of their weapons and defend themselves against drones and other surface threats.
The decision is a big step up in firepower for ships that were conceived as affordable, general-purpose vessels carrying mostly defensive weapons, and it answers years of criticism, including a 2021 parliamentary report that branded the surface fleet well-defended but lightly armed, by giving the Type 31 the means to strike ships and, in time, land targets at long range.
The plan to fit the Mk 41 was first set out in 2023, when the then First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key, said the Navy needed to deliver “lethal long-range offensive fires against our adversaries,” and the Type 31 had been designed from the outset with the structural space for up to thirty-two strike-length cells, leaving the launchers to be added as the ships are built and upgraded.
The two systems do different jobs and are fitted in different ways, since the Naval Strike Missile is carried in deck-mounted canisters and is the same weapon already going to sea on the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers as a replacement for the retired Harpoon, while the Mk 41 is a below-deck silo that can in due course launch weapons such as the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Weapon being developed with France, opening a path to a deep land-attack and anti-ship punch the class was never originally meant to carry.
The new gun ammunition, for the Bofors 57mm and 40mm guns the frigates carry, is aimed squarely at the cheaper end of the threat, giving the ships programmable rounds able to bring down drones and small fast craft without spending a missile on them.
I guess the NSM isn’t an “interim” solution any more then.
The gov just making a big announcement from what was already planned. The dip been very underwhelming as expected.
Wasn’t the NSM going to be cross-decked from the retiring Type 23s to the Type 31 anyway? They were also planned to get MK41 VLS so I fail to see how this is new news???
It concerns me how slow the procurement of NSM has been. It was announced 4yrs ago and only three of the planned 11 ships has actually received it. Is HMS Defender going to have it fitted for when she comes out of her refit here soon?
“. . . . and the Type 31 had been designed from the outset with the structural space for up to thirty-two strike-length cells, leaving the launchers to be added as the ships are built and upgraded.”
The Mk 41 cells shouldn’t be an upgrade, but as standard equipment already installled. Until the RN acquires Tomahawks and the Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Weapon, the cells could be used to carry additional CAMMs, possibly the ASTERs, for additional air defense.
The UK also needs shore-based ASMs – especially for the south coast and Faslane.
So few of them it’s pointless. No other ships to serve with them either. The navy isn’t a funny joke anymore it’s a total international disgrace
Waking up at last.
Now, let’s make sure the first two T31 get those Mk 41s fitted within a reasonable timframe.
And give these ships hull sonar so they can at least detect subsurface threats.
Is £1.6bn the total program cost including CIP with the systems upgrades noted ? If so £320m per ship is pretty good value for the capability, a shame there won’t be more of them.
I think there will be more….we’re just calling them ‘common combat vessels’. I suspect that when Arrowhead 140 was selected for T31 it was always envisioned that it would become the mainstay of the RN frigate fleet: affordable, configurable mass.