Babcock and BMT team up on Type 31e Frigate bid

Babcock and BMT signed the cooperation agreement yesterday, the agreement will focus on the recently announced Type 31e Frigate to offer a design partnership to the MoD.

Babcock were originally offering the ‘Arrowhead 120 while BMT were offering the Venator 110, the companies now say that they will be exploring both available designs to determine the best possible option.

The companies say that new arrangement draws on the combined strengths of Babcock and BMT and will deliver ‘innovative, capable, affordable and flexible customer solutions, within a fast changing and increasingly demanding environment’.

Craig Lockhart, Managing Director – Naval Marine at Babcock said:

“Babcock and BMT will work closely together to create a strong design alliance at what is an exciting time within UK and International ship design and build.”

Jeremy Berwick, Managing Director for Defence at BMT said:

“This is the beginning of a deeper strategic relationship with Babcock founded on many years of working together successfully both with the Royal Navy and navies around the globe.

The T31e programme is the catalyst where excellence of design, innovation and certainty of delivery combine to offer a highly credible contender for the Royal Navy’s next warship. The agreement will provide a strong basis for understanding and serving the different needs of many other navies.”

Both organisations will jointly explore their available designs to determine the best possible option that meets the cost, capability, and delivery requirements of the Royal Navy but we’ve outlined them both below.

Arrowhead 120, say the company features an ‘adaptable configuration’ which acknowledges operational roles will change through the life of the ship with multiple mission bays incorporated into the design allowing for rapid reconfiguration and re-role to meet changing operational needs.

Babcock said they have been advancing operational and data analysis technologies at a rapid pace.

“Arrowhead is cleverly designed to reduce through life costs by embedding key innovations such as real time equipment health monitoring during the build enabling information to be collected during deployment on the fitness of its systems to inform future service and maintenance arrangements.”

With the vessel able to accommodate a variety of equipment choices and with flexibility at the centre of the design philosophy Arrowhead can be deployed for a broad range of roles from low threat security operations to task force deployments.

Babcock say that the Arrowhead design lends itself equally to either a single build strategy, or a cross–site build strategy bringing together modules – an approach used for aircraft carrier assembly at Rosyth.

There are three variants of the Venator-110, each designed to suit specific roles and levels of affordability. The three variants are the ‘General Purpose Light Frigate’, the ‘Patrol Frigate’ and the much lighter ‘Patrol Ship’.

The General Purpose Light Frigate variant is designed to meet the expected requirements of the Type 31 Frigate programme.

The design is billed by BMT as the “optimum balance between capability, survivability and cost“.

With an estimated displacement of 4,000 tonnes, a top speed in excess of 25 knots and accommodation for over 115 personnel in addition to a crew size of 85 personnel the craft is “designed to cover a multitude of general purpose and specialist roles”.

BMT also describe the vessel as being intended to counter the recent problems the Royal Navy have had with regards to ships becoming ever more expensive and complicated.

The Venator-110 design adopts a Combined Diesel And Diesel (CODAD) configuration and features two shafts combined with four prime movers.

The design uses off the shelf equipment, which BMT say ensures simple maintenance procedures and leaves room for future capability growth while requiring minimum levels of personnel to operate.