The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has outlined efforts to enhance productivity and accelerate delivery of the Type 26 frigates.
In a written response to Mark Francois MP, Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence, acknowledged the delays but detailed key investments to improve build times at BAE Systems’ Govan shipyard.
Eagle explained: “Investment in new facilities at Govan to increase productivity include a new Shipbuilding Outfit Hall, Shipbuilding Academy and steelwork panel lines. The new Shipbuilding Hall will enable the construction of two ships undercover simultaneously. This will improve schedule performance and the pace of delivery, allowing the time between ship deliveries to be reduced.”
The £300 million investment in Govan, including the development of the Janet Harvey Hall, aims to reduce construction time for the frigates. BAE Systems has ambitious goals to shorten the build duration from 96 months for the first vessel to 60 months for the eighth, while compressing the interval between ship deliveries from 18 months to 12 months.
Sir Simon Lister, Managing Director of BAE Systems Naval Ships, spoke to myself and other journalists earlier this year on this, telling us:
“We aim to reduce the build duration from the first of class being 96 months to the eighth being 60 months. More than that, we intend to compress the interval between ships from 18 months to 12. Being able to do that gives the gives us and gives the government choice. The quicker you build something that cheaper to build something. The improvement in productivity puts us in a good position for future work.”
The Janet Harvey Hall, named after a pioneering World War II shipyard electrician, will play a critical role in achieving these targets. The state-of-the-art facility will enable the construction of two frigates side-by-side under one roof and feature advanced technology, including robotic welding systems and heavy-lift cranes. The hall will sustain 1,700 jobs in Scotland and support 2,300 jobs across the UK supply chain.
Despite the delays, Maria Eagle assured Parliament that there would be no operational impact on the Royal Navy: “This will not result in a capability gap; Type 26 will be a world-beating frigate, and the class will be delivered in time to take on the anti-submarine warfare duties of the retiring Type 23 ships.”
The Type 26 frigates are essential to the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities, as well as supporting broader missions such as counter-piracy, and humanitarian operations.
The first four frigates – HMS Glasgow, HMS Cardiff, HMS Belfast, and HMS Birmingham – are already under construction, with future deliveries expected to align with the improved build timelines.
Canada did this earlier this year to Irving in Halifax for the River Class. Looks like Canada will have to do another investment to speed this up. Having completion date 25 years form now is not sitting well with the Canadian public.
we were told that venturer would be launched by the summer. it wasn’t and the reassurance for it has not been divulged WHEN WILL WE SEE THAT SHIP?
I remember George Osborne proudly staring into the cameras in Portsmouth declaring that the UK will henceforth build an escort every two years. His precious drumbeat. Forced an uneconomic and inefficient rate of build in order to minimize Treasury annual payments. 2nd worst CoE ever.
Well Gordon Brown was the worst, Racheal Reeves has made a great start for being second worse.
In many ways he was one of the best chancellors. Benefit caps. Public sector pay cuts. But yes, he eviscerated the armed forces…. but then again which Chancellor hasn’t!
Yep. I didn’t really appreciate what he was up to at the time but I can now see he was the architect of so many of our current problems. He saw the 2008 GFC as an opportunity to cut back the size of the public sector. And we can all see the result of his headline grabbing approach: anemic growth, poor productivity and the spiralling decline of our public services, not least Defence. The UK has had one of the lowest investment rates (both private and public) of any developed country for decades now and his approach effectively double-downed on… Read more »
5 years to build a frigate or destroyer is an absolute joke . Any time span more than 5yrs is just criminal and a total neglect of defence of the realm
Yes. You only have to look at JMSDF’s Mogami’s. Concept defined in 2015, shipyards selected in 2017, building started in 2019, and the first pair commissioned in 2022. the next late 2022 and early 2023, and the next pair this year. These are sophisticated gas turbine ships built from a new design. Compare and contrast with T31.
8 years to build a frigate is utterly pathetic. It’s amazing we secured any export orders for T26. The Japanese Mogami frigates and Frances FDI frigate where designed and built with more complex sensor suites at half the cost and half the time in construction.
The quicker you build something the cheaper it is. Well that’s not entirely true. If I remove all the manaul labour from a product line but it takes 20% longer to build it will be cheaper. On the flip side I double the manpower and only get a 30% decrease in Production time it’s costing me more. I’ve been to too many factories in my career where labour is thrown at problems to solve Production problems effectively reducing productivity. It’s good BAe are updating the build processes and investing but lets be honest this is just playing catchup other yards… Read more »
Thats the thing if you have the orders and the money is spent you can build the ships, the RNs problem as well as the ship builders is the fact the orders were not made and even when they were the money was not spent. Essentially the UK could produce 2 warships a year, if each warship has a life of 25 years that’s active 50 warships or about 20,000 tones of warship a year, Which gives the potential for a navy of: 30 major surface combatants ( 12 AAW, 9ASW and 9GP/ASuW). 6 MRSS 5-6 patrol vessels/ mine warfare… Read more »
30 major combatants was sustainably wishful in 1995. Even with a production rate of two major vessels a year, we really can only keep about 20 combatants and the patrol fleet active at once. Building ships designed to serve for 10-15 years then sell them on or scrap them with the idea of maintaining a constant fighting fleet of ~20 highly modernized & competitive vessels with extremely high readiness rates as a result of them being young hulls (8 ASW, 8 AAW & 4-5 GP hulls hypothetically) would be better – you can keep up the ship yards with a… Read more »
SeaCat was not ahead of anything.
especially their targets Alex!
You say that but the Italians are planning a 26 surface vessel fleet..the UK could have maintained a fleet of 30 major surface combatants if the political will had been there, it was only a few decisions that have decimated the fleet. They could have: 1) sped up the T45 line and built 10 2) not sold any T23s keeping all 16 running 4) kept the T 22s batch 3s running until the middle of the last decade 2015 This would have given a fleet in 2010 of 30 Then if the navy had ordered replacement frigates in 2010 from… Read more »
As for advanced systems…nope the RN pre 1980s produced a lot of low end ships with low end capabilities..especially in AAW..sea slug, sea cat were profoundly bad systems, out of date before they were deployed.
we were told that venturer would be launched by the summer. it wasn’t and the reassurance for it has not been divulged WHEN WILL WE SEE THAT SHIP? can we get a HLP/assault ship for the .marines too? and a bigger submarine fleet where boats costing 1 billion and take seven years to get are not on the agenda.
I wonder what other NATO countries and the Chinese and russian build timeline is compared to our jokers
Did a simple Google search on how long it takes China to build a destroyer – first one up said ‘China typically takes two and a half to three years to build a destroyer or frigate-sized vessel. This is much faster than the average of seven to eight years in other countries.’
I suppose we have to wonder about such fast build times and quality of work perhaps?
Well the FREMMs were built and commissioned in 4 years..( five for the first in class) so china around the same as the better European builders.
The French and Italians took 4 years to build a FREMM.
The class will be delivered in time to take on the duties of the retiring ships? Really? If that was true they are already several years late then! These people really do talk our of their arse.
Hopefully there are more knowledgeable people on here than me. Are any of the retired T23 the ASW variant? If yes then this statement…..
“This will not result in a capability gap; Type 26 will be a world-beating frigate, and the class will be delivered in time to take on the anti-submarine warfare duties of the retiring Type 23 ships.”
…..is literally a bare faced lie. If all the retired T23 are GP then she is correct.
Not necessarily, a frigate in (towards the end) build is basically in the same position as a frigate in refit ( ie. Not operational), so if a ship reaches the end of its life and is scrapped instead of being refitted then a ship in build with a completion date equivalent to the return of the (scrapped) ship would have been if it had been refitted is the perfect scenario.
Correct some are ASW !
Several were ASW so it’s a lie. As usual nobody calls them out on it though!
HMS Northumberland and HMS Westminster were both ASW frigates
The Hull fabrication is only the first part of the construction process, it does indeed look like this is picking up pace.
However, the fitting-out processes now seem to be the bottleneck now
Everyone involved should be pulling out all the stops to get HMS Glasgow and HMS Venturer commissioned within an urgent timescale (say 18 months) geopolitical events will simply not wait another 5 years for us to be ready
Yes we need these first two frigates commissioned by 2027..end of 2026 would be better.
2028 is IOC date
Yup, l believe in unicorns that fart fairy dust.
The caveat to BAe speeding builds up is that the investment “can” speed it up, not they will ! What’s missing from Sir Simon Listers quote from April this year is it is completely reliant on more orders be they more T26, MRSS or T83 otherwise it all goes bang, no work means no money hence redundancy’s. As for the “delays” that’s a bit spurious as the T26 build is actually on the agreed contractual schedule as per MOD agreement. Its political diversion to cover the truth which is BAe is doing what it has been paid to do, no… Read more »
You are completely correct in all that. But I would take it back a bit further than 2010…Cameron is the villain that allowed our fleet to go below the low 20s..but Blair’s government allowed it to drop below 30…the only forgiveness to the blair government is they were not faced with the reality of a peer war..but by 2010 the indicators were there and by 2014 we were being smashed in the face with the fact we had peer enemies. The reality is you can build a commission a frigate/destroyer in 4-5 years if it’s full funded to be build… Read more »
Not necessarily, a frigate in (towards the end) build is basically in the same position as a frigate in refit ( ie. Not operational), so if a ship reaches the end of its life and is scrapped instead of being refitted then a ship in build with a completion date equivalent to the return of the (scrapped) ship would have been if it had been refitted is the perfect scenario.
The problem we have is lack of long term investment and not enough people
Yeah the UK has always benefited from immigration not that certain groups with agendas to push will tell you that
Given we have had high to very high levels of immigration for a quarter of a century you would think the U.K. economy would be booming. Like a lot of simplistic statements both for and against it just isn’t that simple.
An economic model based on cheap low skilled immigrants, poor levels of investment and training leads to our current predicament.
Until we get away from that short sightedness and incentivise innovation, training, investment whilst pulling in limited numbers of high quality people into the U.K. we will not progress.
That would explain our stellar economic performance from the end of the 90s… GDP has completely stalled despite vast numbers of immigrants, GDP PPP is falling. The country is undeniably poorer and less cohesive for mass immigration.
What is the probability of any immigrants being skilled shipbuilders/engineers? ….very low I would think.
The answer is more apprenticeships or traineeships.
There is no reason why we could not train up older people who have relevant skills, or the right level of aptitude.
It depends on the quality of immigrant and their motivations. The current wave in the main have sod all in the way of skills and sod all motivation to offer anything of value.
You are correct shortage of skilled workers is a huge problem and will get worse the UK female reproductive rate has now dropped to 1.4 so essentially 2 people are only making 1.4 future workers we need to financially encourage young families to have more kids.
Good news. Well done Bae. Now, how about two more T26 and three more T31 from Babcock. That would be a real Christmas present for the Royal Navy..
Good news, but still second class in build performance timescale to the Far East Japanese and South Korean shipyards, just watch the Naval News videos e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rnTh5N-G8c – MHI Japan will be building 12 of the new upgraded Mogami class in 5 years, very similar to build of the current 12 Mogami class.
We’ll need all the speed and productivity we can if we were to win the Norwegian naval competition. I would be tempted to keep the existing hall going and have 3 ships under construction simultaneously.
The PM was in Norway yesterday and most probably discussing the T26 for the Norwegians? Any new news regarding this?
If the best they can do is 5 years, it reemphasizes the fact that combat losses could not be replaced in the timeframe likely to be needed. The only remedy, given the problems of retaining manpower, is to have some vessels in reserve. This would also allow rotation of hulls to increase available numbers by covering periods of major maintenance. Instead of double crewing an inadequate number of active ships, we should have more ships than crews. If the need is for 19 destroyers and frigates, we should build 5/6 additional ships. The same approach needs to be applied to… Read more »
What is not clear here is if we are actually trying to deliver above the already baked in assumptions. We know the build hall inclusion and last ships are slated to take less time , around 60 months. Is there some other new action in play to speed up delivery to our assumption before Labour got into power, or is this just a statement of what the situation is now, so no change whatsoever and a pointless post, basically still delivering as planned. As a project manager myself I’d say no deviation from plan, is not an update.
The later. A statement of where they knew we would be several year ago. Basically meaningless spin!
Assuming the 8th T26 is laid down in 2027, fabrication of the first T83 must start in 2029 or 2030 at the latest to avoid a dip in workload at the Clyde shipyards and also to replace Daring on schedule in 2035. So basically SDR will need to approve an order for T83 Batch 1 – but not a whisper that that is under consideration! It’s far more likely that the official service life of the T45’s will be extended from 25 years to 30 or even 35.
Personally I think we need to return to 20 frigates as a baseline.. so order 2 more T26s as well as 5 more 5 T31s..for the 2030s then order 10 T83s using both yards.. takes you to 2040 and a navy with 30 major surface combatants… there will then be a need for around 10 partrol and mine warfare mother ships ( basic 2000-3000 ton lightly armed vesssels)..that takes both yards to the mid 2040s at which point they will need another 20 frigates…
Brown buggered it all up by cutting off flow of of warship development in the 2000’s by setting the Type 23 replacement into an eternal project loop of the Future Surface Combatant, did the same with the Minewarfare and Survey & Patrol ships, capped the Type 45 at 6 instead of the intended 10-12, shoved the RFA fleet on hold and then used the Carrot of the Carriers to force a Shipyard merge, which spelled the end of Vospers, Swan & Hunter and Cammell laird leaving BAE as a monoploy which then focused on its Goven yard winding down both… Read more »
I will again pop out a tale of two navies and how all governments from 2000 onwards have utterly destroyed the RN major surface combatant fleet. Removing all the spin and politics of in year budget the reality is the UK is capable just like every other major nation of building complex warships in 4-5 years, we are also able to build one a year no problem.. But simply if there had been any political will at all to perverse the navy at the levels needed to protect the UKs interests, deter our enemies and if necessary to fight a… Read more »
And the most bonkers aspect is that UK defence spending has been about double Italy’s during the period in question.
Ships coming in so there’s not a capability gap ? HMS TARDIS being built is it ? have a Darlek for a main gun and Captain who as the commander! It would have to be this because these ships are already 10-15 years late and too few . Where are the 34 escorts? Which is the minimum the navy needs ? £22.6 billion for the NHS black hole would have covered it . Cut the train drivers pay and boost the pay for the armed forces /RFA and you’d also get the crew needed…scrap DEi and actually actively recruit Britons… Read more »
5 years to build a bloody Frigate!!! Enough said!!!