BAE Systems targets faster shipbuilding with eyes on exports

Inside a conference room in a building overlooking the Janet Harvey Hall on Glasgow’s River Clyde, Sir Simon Lister laid out a clear ambition for British warship production: pace, precision, and purpose.

The new shipbuilding facility, one of the largest covered yards in Europe, is central to a transformation that aims to deliver Royal Navy frigates faster than ever before—and potentially bring export orders back to the Clyde for the first time in decades.

Lister, Managing Director of BAE Systems Naval Ships, described a future where warships are not just built, but engineered as “nodes in a network of military capability.” Speaking at a media briefing, he explained, “The word I never really understood when I was the customer of this organisation was ‘integrating.’ Integrating complex things—like the programme, like the technology—that’s what BAE Systems does. We take the customer’s requirements, which are really quite sophisticated in terms of lethality and stealth, and we translate those requirements into metal, into nuts and bolts, into a computer system.”

He emphasised that while many associate warship construction with steel, the true complexity lies elsewhere. “People tend to focus on the steelwork. Actually, that’s a small part of what we do. It’s the spectacular part, but that ship really takes a supercomputer to sea.”

Cutting build time by a third

Inside the new hall, shipbuilders are working to compress the build time of the Type 26 frigates significantly. “We’re aiming to build the fourth Type 26 in 66 months,” said Lister. “From ship one to ship four we aim to improve the performance of the yard by 30 percent.”

That’s a substantial leap forward from the first-in-class, HMS Glasgow. “We’re moving from building a prototype—HMS Glasgow—and the prototype is always a giant. No surprise there. But we’re now moving into series production of a ship that we are confident we can produce one every year,” he said.

According to Lister, weatherproofing alone has transformed the productivity. “We’re taking a third out of the time to build the ship. The quality and efficiency with which we build will be so much greater because we’re building it in the dry.”

Reclaiming export ground

As BAE Systems works through its batch of eight frigates for the Royal Navy, international orders may soon follow. Norway is actively considering the Type 26 design, and discussions with the UK government are said to be well advanced.

“There have been intensive discussions since that MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] between the UK Government and the Norwegian Government,” said Lister. “Those negotiations are largely concluded and the Norwegian government is entering a decision-making phase, looking at the results of those discussions with the four bidders before making a decision sometime later this year.”

He confirmed that if Norway selects the Type 26, it would “interleave” with UK builds from Ship 4 onwards. “Because the ships are so similar—or frankly, identical—this brings with it the possibility of taking the efficiency up and the cost down.”

If confirmed, it would mark the first major warship export from the Clyde in decades. “We haven’t built warships for export for some time. If they do come in our direction, we’d be very, very pleased.”

Built strong, built to last

Each Type 26 will have a design life of 30 years, but Lister suggested they could serve even longer. “They’re built strong—built stronger than the Type 23.” Fully loaded, each weighs just shy of 8,000 tonnes. “That’s a big ship,” he added.

The design’s roots are anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, and its form follows function. “The basic requirement of the Type 26 is to hold a Russian submarine at risk in the North Atlantic. That means the commanding officer of a Russian submarine is always in doubt if he knows that there’s a Type 26 deployed in the area.”

Key to this are stealth and detection. “Every piece of equipment that makes noise has either been designed out or designed to operate quietly,” he said. Pumps, engines, and fans are tested and installed to minimise acoustic transfer to the hull. “We’ve brought the disciplines of building a nuclear submarine into this ship.”

The ship’s modular mission bay allows it to adapt to future warfare needs. “Today it’s drones. Tomorrow it could be electronic warfare–equipped drones. Then hypersonic missiles. Whatever it is, this mission bay is designed to take that capability to sea.”

A digital yard for a digital ship

This leap in capability is made possible by a digital overhaul of the yard itself. “What we’ve done is take the shipyard digital,” said Lister. Workers now use ruggedised laptops on the shop floor instead of paper drawings. “We wanted to communicate the design of the ship digitally. It’s one thing for the designers to have this model—but now everyone on the shop floor has access to it.”

The transformation extends from fabrication to fit-out. “We’ve modernised the panel line at a cost of just shy of £20 million. It produces panels at twice the rate of the original manual line. Our operators are much safer. Welding is intrinsically dangerous—we’ve removed the person from the hazard as much as we possibly can.”

That same digital thinking continues after the ships go to sea. “We run a team that is in constant connection with the operational fleet. The availability of the combat management system is absolutely up there—right up at 98 percent.”

Lister compared it to real-time telemetry. “It’s not the same as Formula One, but there’s a version of that happening in real time with the deployed fleet.”

UK supply chain, but not UK steel

Despite the UK setting steel procurement expectations, the Type 26 programme has largely sourced its steel abroad. “The British steel mills were invited to tender. They chose not to,” said Lister. “The grade of steel that we require is high strength and in plate thicknesses that aren’t a standard output for British steel mills. So it’s sourced from Sweden, mainly, and some Dutch.”

Still, he stressed that the value-added component of the ship is overwhelmingly British. “The engines, the computing network, the stabilisers, the rudders, the valves—every valve on board is just being sourced from a supplier in the UK. The equipment comprises 55 percent of the ship’s cost.”

Looking forward

BAE Systems expects to deliver Type 26 frigates annually by the time Ship 5 enters production. “That’s the objective,” said Lister. “The ambition in all of this is to build a warship every year—and to build them well.”

As foreign navies look closely at the Type 26, Lister sees a strategic opportunity for Britain to reassert its presence in global naval shipbuilding. “The SDR [Strategic Defence Review] was a very clear endorsement of this requirement and of shipbuilding in Glasgow. It was brilliant to see the Prime Minister announce that here in Janet Harvey Hall.”

For now, BAE’s focus remains on keeping pace. “The Navy wants us to build these ships as quickly as we can. That’s the cheapest way to build the ship: in the right order, at the highest pace you can safely achieve—maintaining quality all the time.”