Babcock International and BAE Systems Bofors have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to provide long-term support for the Royal Navy’s Bofors naval gun systems, both firms announced.
The agreement covers the 40mm Mk4 and 57mm Mk3 guns being fitted to the Royal Navy’s five Type 31 Inspiration-class frigates now under construction at Rosyth. The companies said the partnership combines Babcock’s role as the prospective in-service support provider with Bofors’ position as the original equipment manufacturer.
According to Babcock, its Mission Systems gunnery team already leads UK in-service support for the 4.5-inch Mk8 naval gun, the Phalanx close-in weapon system, and the GSA9 gunfire control system. The firm highlighted its track record in logistics, maintenance, and independent safety assessments.
BAE Systems Bofors, based in Sweden, brings what it called “deep technical knowledge and design authority expertise” for the Bofors systems.
Neal Misell, chief executive of Babcock Mission Systems, said: “These assets will provide a vital part of a ship’s defence and the signing of this MoU brings together our unmatched team of experts to support these critical naval gunnery systems through life.”
Patrik Selling, director of naval sales at BAE Systems Bofors, added: “We are looking forward to contributing to an in-service support solution for our 40 and 57 mm naval guns that will fulfil the needs of the UK MOD and the Royal Navy, ensuring that the guns will be in effective service for many decades to come.”
The MoU follows ongoing collaboration during the integration of the Bofors systems onto the Type 31 frigates, where Babcock and Bofors teams are overseeing acceptance and UK service preparations.
Personally I don’t know why they don’t take the opportunity to rationalise the number of medium guns and have the 4.5inch go out of service with the last T23. Shift the T45s over to 57mm MK3s. The cost in capital expenditure I would imagine would be balanced by the reduction in cost from the elimination of a gun type.
Capital investment
Shipyard capacity
Integration into BAE CMS
Certification and test
Remaining use for 4.5”
Lack of NSM proving to hand ASM function over
That sort of thing not necessarily in that order.
Spend to save involves spending….that requires money….not much of that about….
Also replacing the 30mm with 40mm on T26, T45 and the QEs, because not only is it more capable but it also requires less maintenance and so is cheaper on long deployments.
Let’s just get PIP, Sea Ceptor, NSM and Dragonfire fitted to the T45s and then use them for what they were designed. Fitting another new system on them that isn’t critical to their function or survival is a waste of money and dockyard time and they’ve already had plenty of both. If they are given a life extension as most of us suspect they will, then take the 4.5 off if it’s no longer worth supporting it. It’s not like we can afford to use them for shore bombardment.
I’d tend to agree.
Maybe swap the 30 -> 40mm as it is a much more effective system as well as being cheaper to run.
The 40mm swap would be good but that is a very big commitment your essentially looking at 50 systems to completely replace and remove the 30mm mounts.. that’s a lot, removing the 4.5inch fleet wide is only essential 6 systems.
Really that isn’t the calculus at at.
Changing the 4.5” for anything would be a major dockyard job – the 4.5” system is very integrated into the hull, magazine etc. Never mind the integration and clearance issues.
Changing 30 -> 40mm is all on a surface mounted pedestal. So the mechanical part is dead simple. The more major part is integration into the CMS.
Could they repurpose these 30mm onto the Paladin truck mounted 30mm or into the Boxer Skyranger systems?
Phalanx and 30mm I imagine would still be utilised on the RFA ships? The 30mm may still have its place.
But you could go the easy route and simply decommission the magazine and leave it at that, the 57mm can be deck mounted. That’s still 120 rounds available. It’s not the best way but it’s cheap. Do it at the time you decommission that last type 23 and you’ve made yourself a saving that could go towards the cost of the 57mm. Just the external maintenance contract on the 4.5inch gun is 10million a year.
In the end if the 4.5inch gun had any utility whatsoever on the T45 it would be worth keeping, as it is the magazine is just an explosion risk and the gun, magazine and rounds are just soaking up money and man hours. There is a case to simply decommission the magazine remove the gun and seal up the deck space once CAMM is inplace as a AsUW system and it’s got NSM, because at that point there is literally no possible case for needing the 4.5 inch gun unless the RN decides to send probably it’s only available AAW destroyer within a couple of miles of a hostile shore to sit and provided NGFs..which I simply cannot see happening as it would be less risky to send a wildcat with 20 martlet missiles to provide close air support.
Respectfully I disagree as there are other naval targets a 4.5” is useful against.
It is also useful for impactive warning shots. You are not going to fire of a £1+m NSM as a warning….
True and it’s all viewpoint really.
For me it’s about likely use and after all the only shot over the bow a rivers2 can give is a 30mm cannon shot.
In reality there is a very limited Use for the 4.5inch gun for a rare as hens teeth AAW destroyer.
If it wants to warn it can use a 30mm, if it wants to sink a pirate it can use a 30mm. If it wants to seriously attack a small surface combatant it would use a CAMM or small ship flight, if it wanted to attack a major surface combatant it would use NSM or the small ship flight. In reality the modern naval medium guns most significant use is against air targets within the 10km.
Let’s be honest if there was a serious surface combatant threat an RN ship would first engage it with the small ship fight, as a last ditch it would use its anti ship missiles CAMM and NSM.
I don’t recall there is any significant modern engagement involving a western major surface combatant that has seen the use of 4.5 inch or 5 inch guns against another surface combatant ? It’s always been small ship flight, then use of duel use anti air missiles and finally heavyweight anti ship missiles ( in order of number of times used).
So the Iranians try and swarm a T45 on the surface with a mixture of largish boats and very small fast boats as well as in the air at the same time.
The 4.5″ has the ability to take out the large boats at range. You are not going to deplete your CAMM shots or NSM doing that. It also sends a very clear message. As well as having potentially loads of reloads.
The smaller boats are then dealt with by the 30mm or the 4.5″ – the 4.5″ shell would probably kinetically smash the boat to pieces.
No precious and hard to reload missiles have been expended and the 4.5″ magazine can still have 200 shots in it. Next RAS the 4.5″ magazine can be replenished.
No martlets have been expended either at this point.
The Cab is aloft with a full Martlet load out and takes out the most dangerous drones which have a return that suggests that they are not decoys. The decoys are moped up by the 30mm and one leaker by Phalanx.
I don’t think that is that unlikely a scenario.
On your reasoning the 5″ needs to be taken off the T26s as well…..
Not so much, is more about use and resources .personally I would put a deck mounted 57mm on the front of a T45 if there was no money to do the magazine work as that is better use of resources.Thats because is very likely in how it’s deployed a T45 will need to fire a medium gun at an air target.. but will the RN ever deploy a T45 on its own as a single deployment into the gulf or the littoral ? and if it is will it find its depending on only a medium gun against surface targets ? Thats a vanishingly small risk and keeping those 4.5 inch guns on 6 type 45s in the 2030s and 2040s is going to cost a lot of money ( probably 200million ballpark). So for me simply remove the expensive to maintain capability with an almost vanishingly small need.. after all if your iyou’re facing a fast attack boat swarm CAMM is probably the most effective system available as it can essentially swarm the swarm.
The 5inch on the 26 is a useful all purpose modern weapon system that can engage air targets could undertake precision strike out to about 100km and even in the future act as an ASW sensor launch and effector launch system. We both know it’s a different beast to a 4.5inch in its present state..now if they reinstalled the Air defence software and airbust rounds for the 4.5inch that would be a different equation as that would have some use on the front of an one of the RNs AAW destroyers…
But my personal view is the RN should take 4.5 out of service when it only has 6 left ( and essentially is counter to the role of the platform it’s on) and replace with either deck mounded 57mm or magazine feed 57mm on the t45, It should also as you say change the difference 30mm mounts to 40mm mounts. 5inch is fine on the t26 as it has wider roles .. but I suspect If the RN could have what it wanted it would have put the 5inch on the aT31 and 57mm on the type 26
All in all it makes Sense to reduce the number of RN gun mounts as at present I believe it will have types 8 in service when it could get that down to 3 or 4.
“now if they reinstalled the Air defence software and airbust rounds for the 4.5inch that would be a different equation as that would have some use on the front of an one of the RNs AAW destroyers…”
All the shells have been tried-fuzed and airburst is one of the three modes.
So it is a matter of the software.
There is also a usage case range as you probably wouldn’t use a 4.5″ against supersonic targets but against slow flying drones or missiles it would be very useful.
Part of the issue is getting enough of a radar ‘paint’ on small polystyrene targets and how that works with the fuze system without going into too much detail. Which goes back to creating big shrapnel clouds with a medium calibre gun is ideal for as it would cut a polystyrene drone to bits.
AAW is not a simple business and a wide range of ‘solutions’ are needed!
I too would like the 57mm fitted to the T45. Not instead of the 4.5″, but to complement it. By having it mounted on the hangar roof. This would give the gun a very good arc of fire, plus fill in the dead zone aft of the ship.
I would say a good medium AAW gun is a pretty primary requirement of an AAW frigate. Really the only effective way to manage cheap swarms is a good solid medium gun system and a 57mm is the cheapest about and it’s pretty good. The 4.5inch is now essentially pretty much ballast and a waste of money on a T45.
Honestly not having a medium gun that can engage air targets on an AAW destroyer is essentially bonkers.. every other nation has a good AAW capable gun medium gun on its AAW ships, Italian sticks at least 2 76mm and or 5inch on each escort.
Maybe add some truck based 40mm Tridon 2 for shorad base defence, might be handy?
I disagree Stuart, since the ( of doubtful use anway) anti air mode for the 4.5″ gun was deleted, its a pretty much pointless system on the T45, a total chocolate teapot.
A useful washing line perhaps???
Let’s remember the T45 is a purely Air defence asset, adding twin 40mm and the 57mm would massively increase useful anti drone swarm capability..
Not going to sink much with a 40mm pop gun. Why are RN warships always so poorly armed with anti-ship capability
To be fair you don’t have to sink it just break it.
With 57mm v 4.5/5″, isnt there a risk of under-gunning and disempowering the RN unnecessarily especially with the newer 5″ mounts having greater versatility. With the RAN recently going with the 11 Mogami light frigate they’ve all got the 5″ rather than a 57mm which was earlier vessel proposals. That plus the 6 Hunter and 6 Hobart’s is going to be lot of non missile fire-power. If the RN fleet is not going to be much bigger the gun choices could add to or take away very easily. If the T45s are going to be around for 10+ years more a new forward gun mount could be worth it and as DB suggested a 40/57mm on the hangar. And aren’t they adding Dragonfire and Ancilia with the upgrades? Got to squeeze all that in.
The problem with sticking the 5inch gun on everything is that they are insanely expensive, you probably not getting much change out of $100 million for 1 5inch gun system.. so essentially to get 6 five inch guns for the T45s would get you 2 fully kitted out T31s I believe on the otherhand a 57mm gun system is cheap as chips, I’m sure I’ve heard mention of 6-10 million pounds per system.
It’s horses for courses. We’re not talking all ships. Australia having it on 21 ships, surely the UK can afford do something similar? I think it’s s quite a bold and pragmatic
choice by Australia. Japan also has a large frigate force with the same. A ships operations may dictate its equipment and o am no expert on any of this but I hope we always have enough of the right missile stocks and artillery at sea. And, we’re all complaining about the lack of land artillery too…lol.
Hi mate the problem is at the moment with government spending it’s not even an either or type question around bells and whistles ( like a 5inch gun) or appropriate numbers of major surface combatants, it’s at the neither stage. The RN in peaceful stable times was assessed to need around 30- 32ish major surface combatants but the funding is still not inplace for it to be anywhere near that level, with present funding for 19 ships.. so for me getting the numbers up first is key and essentially you can have a whole type 31 for every 3 5inch guns.