Babcock has signed an agreement with a Danish industrial consortium to develop a joint British and Danish approach to building the Royal Danish Navy’s future frigates in Denmark, an arrangement the company estimates could support around 2,000 direct and indirect jobs there, the company stated.
The letter of collaboration with Danske Flådeskibe was announced at DALO Industry Days in Herning this week, and builds on a framework agreement the two signed in early 2026.
Danske Flådeskibe brings together OMT Group, Terma, PensionDanmark and Semco Maritime, and was established to offer an integrated Danish solution for the design, construction and through-life support of the Royal Danish Navy’s future vessels, covering multifunctional Arctic ships as well as potential frigates.
Under the agreement the two organisations will work on frigate solutions and on a joint industrial model covering delivery of the programme and through-life support. According to Babcock, the intention is to build a long-term Danish naval shipbuilding capability through knowledge and technology transfer, construction and integration in Denmark, and sustained participation by Danish suppliers.
Sir Nick Hine, Babcock’s chief growth officer and a former Second Sea Lord, said: “Our new agreement with DFS, together with our growing partnerships across Danish industry, demonstrates our commitment to building the future together. We are offering Denmark far more than a ship. We are offering a genuine industrial partnership that puts Danish companies, Danish skills and Danish shipbuilding at the heart of a programme already founded on Danish innovation.”
Hans Schneider, chief executive of Danske Flådeskibe, said: “For DFS, this agreement is about ensuring that Denmark’s future frigates strengthen both the Royal Danish Navy and Denmark’s sovereign industrial capability. Together with Babcock, we can combine an internationally recognised frigate platform and programme experience with a strong Danish set-up for building, integrating and supporting the ships throughout their service life.
“Our ambition is clear: Denmark should have the responsibility, expertise and capacity at home to support its frigates from the outset and for decades to come.”
Babcock’s Arrowhead 140, the design behind the Royal Navy’s five Type 31 frigates being built at Rosyth and since selected by Poland and Indonesia, was derived from Denmark’s Iver Huitfeldt class. A Danish frigate order built on that design would return the lineage to where it started, with the intervening development work and export record now attached to it.
Denmark’s Iver Huitfeldt class was assembled at Odense Steel Shipyard, which closed in January 2012, leaving the country without a yard of that kind. Danske Flådeskibe’s approach is not to build a replacement. Its stated strategy is to fabricate modules at several sites around Denmark and assemble them in one place, an approach it describes as the same thinking used in Poland and the United Kingdom, with final assembly at Semco Maritime’s facilities in the Port of Esbjerg.
Semco Maritime joined the consortium in March 2025, and the group changed its name from Danske Patruljeskibe to Danske Flådeskibe at the same time, reflecting a widening from patrol vessels to naval ships generally. The consortium is already preparing to build the Danish Armed Forces’ new Arctic vessels.
The agreement follows three separate memoranda of understanding Babcock signed at the same event with STORMBORN, CUBEDIN and SH Group, covering uncrewed systems, autonomous integration and modular mission equipment.
The Danes need legs. The IH-class are surprisingly long-endurance ships, offering nearly 10,000nm of range at 15kts. That’s around double their ranges of the other two APAR/SMART-L classes, the Dutch De Zeven and German Sachsens. The Danes need this to cover their deployments into the High North, given their lack of accompanying auxiliaries.
Currently, there are three contenders:
– France’s FDI.
– Britain’s AH140.
– Germany’s F127.
Of these three, none fit Denmark’s requirements well.
The FDI is small, and offers just half the range of the IH. It has a capable radar, but a limited magazine. There is a proposal for a cold-launch VLS to increase missile capacity, though. FDI lacks the Mk41 VLS, and isn’t integrated with the American ESSM, which could be a particular issue for the Danes. FDI is the most rapidly procurable, though.
The AH140 is larger, and has comparable range to the IH (for obvious reasons). But it struggles with the ‘air defence’ part of the mission. The most capable variant of the AH140 is the Polish Wicher-class, whose SM-400 radar sits between the French SeaFire and the currently used APAR (from the IH). It does have the 32-cell Mk41 VLS, but the TACTICOS is already both familiar to the Danes, and integrated with their ESSM stocks. Seeking Polish-built ships would also mitigate the other issue of the AH140 – lethargic delivery.
The F127 is obviously the chunkiest air defence combatant, but lacks the legs of the AH140. It’s also the furthest from delivery. It’ll likely be the most expensive as well, but would offer collaboration with Germany and by far the most capable AAW system in Europe.