HMS Iron Duke has been withdrawn from active service, leaving the Royal Navy with just five operational Type 23 frigates, NavyLookout has revealed.
The naval analysis website broke the story today in a detailed piece well worth reading in full. The withdrawal comes less than three years after a £103 million refit that by any measure was extraordinary in its scope. The work took 49 months and more than 1.7 million man-hours, and was described as the most complex ever carried out on a Type 23.
Iron Duke had been laid up in Portsmouth since 2017 and arrived at Devonport in such poor condition that the structural work on her hull was almost twice what had been needed on any previous ship in the class.
As we reported last year, Iron Duke was very much in active service as recently as October, when she and her Wildcat helicopter from 825 Naval Air Squadron spent three days tracking the Russian Kilo-class submarine Novorossiysk and her support tug through the English Channel near Ushant before handing over to a NATO partner as the vessels moved into the North Sea. Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said at the time that Russian vessels had been passing through the Channel more frequently and that the Navy was watching around the clock.
We also reported that the MoD had scrapped a plan to fit Iron Duke with a Type 2087 towed array sonar from a decommissioning sister ship. Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard confirmed in a written answer that after a comprehensive assessment, the numbers simply did not work. Given “the platform’s remaining service life, the time required to complete the conversion, and competing operational priorities, the benefits of proceeding did not justify the additional cost or extended period out of service,” he said, with resources re-prioritised elsewhere.
NavyLookout’s full piece on Iron Duke is at navylookout.com and goes into considerably more detail on what her withdrawal means for the surface fleet.
Another warship quietly withdrawn – Royal Navy now down to just 5 frigates
The relief
The Type 23 fleet has been shrinking steadily as ships reach the end of their service lives, and Iron Duke’s departure leaves the Royal Navy in an increasingly stretched position ahead of the Type 26 City-class frigates entering service. Five of the eight Type 26s now have steel cut, with HMS Glasgow and HMS Cardiff both fitting out at BAE Systems’ Scotstoun yard. HMS Cardiff, as we reported recently, completed her flood-up at Scotstoun. HMS Belfast, Birmingham and Sheffield are at earlier stages of construction at Govan.
At Babcock’s Rosyth shipyard, four of the five Type 31 Inspiration-class frigates now have steel cut. HMS Venturer, the lead ship, has floated off and is currently fitting out, with HMS Active having also completed her float-off. HMS Formidable is under construction, and steel was cut on HMS Bulldog earlier this year. Keel laying for the fifth ship, HMS Campbeltown, is expected later this year. That puts at least eight frigates currently in build across Scotland simultaneously, a shipbuilding effort not seen in the UK for decades.
Beyond those five Type 26s, HMS Newcastle, Edinburgh and London are still to have their keels laid and assembly to begin, with the programme targeting completion of all eight hulls by the mid-2030s and the build interval between ships reducing from 18 months to 12 months as the programme gathers pace.
With the surface fleet now at five frigates and the Defence Investment Plan still unpublished, the question of how the Royal Navy sustains its commitments in the years before the 13 new hulls arrive remains one of the most pressing in British defence.
Time to give up on any deployments outside of the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately yes for a while. One T45 on operation outside the Atlantic is all that will be available.
It’s even more upsetting when you consider the amount of money wasted on T23 life extensions and the vast sums of money paid by the government for the five batch II rivers that we could have started frigate production earlier.
The government spent in the region of £1.25 billion on the batch II rivers and £1 billion on the Type 23 life extension. It could have used that money to basically order the type 26 frigates in 2014 producing around one a year.
Hi Jim The T26 design wasn’t ready to be ordered then, what stuffed it up was the 2008 decision to cancel T45 no’s 7 & 8. That left BAe and the supply chain with roughly a 10 year gap ! Problem was BAe had a TOB agreement with MOD which required the infill work of the OPV.
Do I think that was right hell no, it was purely down to money needed to fund the “Sandbox” wars and the 2 Carriers. What made it worse was the blatant lie that this would enable the speeding up of the T26 (GCS C1) development. In effect the exact opposite occurred as the design funding was slowed down and BAe workforce just withered away.
Then in 2010 Cameloon got in and just kicked the can further down the pitch till 2014 when BAe was gearing up for 13 T26’s and a new Frigate Factory and he cut it to 8 and another funding slow down.
As it was the OPVs may be very limited but they and the Bays have proven to be the reliable and flexible RN vessels of the last 50 years, it’s just a shame they didn’t order up the enlarged and armed GCS C3 to follow on in the gap.
Politics, Politics and more damned politics (RN politics means they didn’t want the C3 as it could impact on future frigate orders).
What stuffed is that T26 takes 11 years to be in service and T31 probably 6. Instead a FREMM more than a decade ago the first one 5 years, last ones less then 4 years from laid down to commission.
Antonio Marceglia
9 Jul 2015/3 Feb 2018/16 Apr 2019
HMS Glasgow
20 Jul 2017/3 Dec 2022/ ? 2027/28
At the moment only 3 T26 are supposed to be in service by 2030.
If Glasgow would have taken 5 years it would have been in service by 2022.
Btw i have no idea how the BAE shipyard can be profitable with this output.
It’s not. It’s loss making. So budgets are cut, employees are laid off and work slows down further.
Simple, UK Tax Payer foots the bill.
I recall that GCS(T26) as it was originally know, was nearly ready in about 2011 to build, but Cramron ordered it back to the drawing board, to make it smaller!
recent events have shown that the type 23 is still a very,very effective and top quality platform. i’ve been against the retiring of ships and submarines that still offer the potential of additional years of service. billions have been spent on life extension refits. but none of rhose ships lives have been extended by much, the submarine service has been culled as badly as the service fleet. the swiftsure class were refitted at the cost of millions to be able to use the tomahawk. once it was done. the whole class was withdrawn to make way for the trafalgars which we also retired earlier than neccessary. my son was on torbay when t left service. he is adament that it had YEARS OF SERVICE IN HER.
Keep a stuff upper lip… It is not the first time, nore the last. Dismoralizing lead nowhere.
You would not want to become « French » in attitude 😉
And luckily, for once, we are allies! If for once we can bail you out of misery, it will be done with pleasure. 😉 (just a pun, no offense)
Soon many ships will arrive, and as allies and Friends, Europe will build soon the strongest navy the continent as ever seen, with Royal Navy as the cornerstone of it!
Let’s be patient.
Yes Andy, still have potential! The Chilean Navy have managed to keep running Ex-RN T23’s, one
even older than Iron Duke!
We should bring in the Chileans to run the RN!
Yep, the T23s do pack a lot of punch, the problem is the hulls were only designed to last 18 years. (lack of foresight there)
Then we entered the FFBNW period, which is still affecting some T45s, saw the 2 aircraft carriers get minimal self-defence. and will affect the first 2 T31s.
But even if HMS Glasgow was ready for commission tomorrow, what would go into her MK 41 VLS tubes?
I’d go along with that it’s embarrassing when all we have to shadow the ruskies is a river boat
Don’t we have to provide at least one Type 26 to the Norwegian navy by 2030? I think a second batch of Type 31s should be ordered.
Great idea, but it doesn’t help us between now and 2030.
Nothing can help us in the short term. I saw an article recently that reported Russian frigates are escorting shadow tankers through the English Channel and the only response the RN has is OPV’s…
The MoD needs to start ringing up aluminium shipbuilders on the south coast and producing converted CTV hulls with Kraitline, otherwise ASW capacity is going to be effectively nil around 2028.
The River’s need it urgently. Even if it’s just as a monitoring system.
Rivers could have something larger like UM’s Sea Lancer but anything goes now to get TAs to sea.
Orders are not the issue, the UK has more large surface combatants under construction than any other country in the world except China. But fleet numbers won’t rise for over half a decade.
Getting all the T45’s back must be the near term priority.
The problem is the glacial pace at which they’re being built, We really need to speed up the build and fitting out. At Babcock they only have one dry dock for fitting out and despite the fact the second Type 31 is in the water, she’s waiting in a queue behind Venturer which is still in that dock.
Jim be serious ! US has on Sea Trials or in build, 3 CVN, 2 LHA, 2 LPD, 10 DDG, 2 FFG and 1 LCS, followed by Japan 2 ASEV, 6 FFM and 2 New FFM plus 12 more on order.. I’m not sure but counting exports France and Italy are probably not far off having more in build.
By contrast we have probably 4 T26 and 4 T31 in various stages of the actual build process.
Hi ABC, major surface combatants, the reference being to frigates, destroyers and escorts. The US is quoted as having 10 under construction to the UK’s 13.
Agreed. Then get the DIP published!
We need to place an order for 3-5 T31s to cover the delays of T26 coming on line if Norway gets any of Belfast/ Birmingham/etc.
I doubt if there are any real priorities on anything. We’ll see what the DIP says, and what money it actually puts on the table, but I am not sure that there are any real national interest-driven objectives other than to muddle through and carry on. … the comment on numbers of escorts being built is ridiculous. Both Type 26 and Type 31 are years behind schedule and there is no certainty in either program. And we need to start by being honest: Type 31 is really little more than a glorified OPV and will remain so unless substantial money is added to the program.
Crack the whip on getting the fitting of the T26’s and venturer don’t and get those shops into the fleet sooner
Our current problems are not due to lack of orders, but are down to the slow build pace of new ships and ordinance
Labour government 97-2010, Tory government 2010-2024.
👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
No Frigates ordered from 1996 to 2017.
The demise of the RN deserves greater national recognition by the mainstream media, though many in the UK now will have little to no interest.
YET NO RN LEADERSHIP SAID A LOT. NEITHER DID THE CDS ACROSS THAT PERIOD
THEY TOO ARE CULPABLE.
Lord West in 2004 instantly springs to mind, who presided over the decimation of both the Escort force and MCMV force in the cuts labelled as “new Chapter of the SDSR.”
Half the RAFs fighter force went at that time, including the entire Jaguar force and the further salami slicing of the Tornado F3 and Tornado GR4 force.
👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
I seem to remember a speech by lord Robertson as head of NATO in 1999 chastising the UK and European nations for having too much emphasis on anti submarine warfare, Cold War relics as the term used
Don’t recall that one, Jim.
I ve never been happy with the emphasis on expeditionary stance. The royal navy is primarily a fighting organisation and should be equipped for it. Id like to see the retired Trafalgar’s surveyed and where possible returned to the fleet people say you cannot reactivate a nuclear power plant after a long time shutdown. I say that is totally wrong or our vanguards after years in refit are able to be reactivated. Some of the Trafalgar’s have not been in a dead state for all that long. Even just a couple could make a big difference to the ability and available numbers.
Not this one again !!!
Hi Daniele. It’s the modern way of defence procurement. Defer, delay, deny.
Tory or Labour- makes no difference. Absolute shambles.
On a positive note, I’m impressed with the expansion of the RAN – both surface and sub assets. The fruits of robust planning planning and fiscal discipline.
I’ve spoken to my MP and ask if an act limiting the minimum numbers for major equipment to be limited to \.much as the royal navy not being able to be reduced to a front line fleet of 25 warships of which eich over a third, m being available for immediate tasking when needed. She agreed in the light of recent events such legislation would be a prudent, course nod maintaining Britain ability to react to global events,
Successive defence reviews have failed to deliver any kind of improvement in my lifetime \.specifically the ones with nott and Cameron on them
Which stupid person spent so much refurbishing Iron Duke to now scrap it.
If this vessel is then sold to another Navy to operate serious questions need to be asked of the RN leadership.
I FEEL SURE THERE IS LIFE LEFT IN THE HULL.
WILL OTHERS MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE THAN ME PLEASE COMMENT?
Obviously not, or it wouldn’t be getting withdrawn from service.
No, the hulls are long behind their design lives. The hull of Richmond was found to be literally paper thin leaving her unsafe to sail back to the UK.
I think you mean HMS Lancaster, which was the one stationed in the Gulf on its last commission.
Shhhh, stop SHOUTING !
I’ve spoken to my MP and ask if an act limiting the minimum numbers for major equipment to be limited to \.much as the royal navy not being able to be reduced to a front line fleet of 25 warships of which eich over a third, m being available for immediate tasking when needed. She agreed in the light of recent events such legislation would be a prudent, course nod maintaining Britain ability to react to global events,
An outrage beyond belief! In earlier days we would talk of government as “They ” who generally,sort of knew what they were doing, but this situation is such that it warrants a class action against the people at the head of this debacle. Now the UK is in a national emergency-no less!! I do not believe that the frigate programme cannot be speeded up-it can and MUST be!
What a national disgrace. The once mighty Royal Navy is now reduced to this by successive incompetent governments and a total lack of planning. Yet, the grey suits in the Treasury still keep wielding the axe as and when they can, even as the US shield is slowly drawing away from Europe’s shores. The sad truth is the UK can’t afford to rebuild its forces to defend the realm…sleep tight.
It’s not the treasury axing anything, it’s salt water corrosion. Happens to the best of us.
Jim, an aside issue. I’ve been reading just how impressive the CH2 and AS90’s are on the Ukrainian battlefields. It just demonstrates just how good British-designed and built armour is, even if they are long in the tooth. The UK must attempt to rebuild its own armour manufacturing in an effort to re-establish strong and reliable equipment and learn from the Ajax debacle.
We all knew in the artillery that As90 was a good bit of kit it was unbelievable that the government gave the entire fleet to the Ukraine and not keep two regiments equipped but at least it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do
..the Mailonline and even the Telegraph will have a field day!! I’m staying clear!
Don’t look, my friend, I know you like to.
Save yourself the bother.
🙂 HI Daniele-Scouts Honour. I am sticking to the local FArmers Weekly! 🙂
If most were like Mail an Telegraph, RN would not have been in this state. The issue is that it is the BBC, Guardian, etc that influence the establishment. If RN was something that was part of establishment worries nothing like this would ever happened.
Voices within the RN warned back in 2012 that the headlong pursuit of two huge carriers would gut the RN.
When asked about not enough money to keep buying new support vessels and escorts, 1Sl of the time opined
‘once we’ve got the carriers, the minister will just have to find the extra money’.
The Minster didn’t, and didn’t – and now we don’t have a navy.
The ministers did find the money, the ships are being built. It was just five years too late. Nothing to do with the carriers and everything to do with George Osbourne looking for a headline and fighting a war in defence of America in the deserts of Asia for twenty years.
I could equally well argue JIm that Osborne was faced with a £106 billion black hole by Gordon Brown but in the end as I keep saying we have had thirty years of cuts by all parties. Blair got us involved in the two wars; he cut out most of the T22’s and cut the T45 from 12 to 6; Cameron and Co. did carry on with the carriers but then delayed almost everything else across all three services. Now Starmer, Reeves and his disappearing Defsec have only managed cuts so far with both the DIP and the SME action plan delayed. It shouldn’t be Labour or Tory. We should be trying to make the points that hopefully (?) the electorate will take on board.
Well said. The party politics ( it’s ALL the Tories fault ) continues unabated. The list of cuts 97 to 2010 I could produce would still seem to surprise people with short or selective memories.
BOTH parties are to blame, one or other more depending on which area of the military was hit.
This lot are now near 2 years in and we’ve had more cuts and lot’s of words, with the spin and rhetoric taken to levels that’d even embarrass the useless Tories before them.
We can only try, my friend. The tragedy for all of us that care is that in the electorates mind defence is somewhere below potholes in their daily lives, and truth be told who can blame them. They are under siege at the moment. But we can be saved 🫣. Come an election we can choose between Conservative and Labour, maybe Liberal, or of course the new leading contenders, Reform and the Greens. Having now entered the twilight zone you and I have a decision to make sometime! 🙃 Good luck.
Money is found down the back of the sofa for welfare and the NHS time after time but never defence. Starmer is going to be making some big announcement soon apparently, just watch his nose start growing. Then within weeks the crazies will be in number 10 and a defence review will be called for by the new PM you just watch! For now maybe a few old cross channel ferries fitted with lasers and assorted death rays might be a laugh? Said it before and will say it again, get Russian on the National Curriculum….we’re doomed….do you hear what I say? We’re doomed I tell you!
Banks create money. They don’t need to find it. The choose how much to create or (in the case of the Bank of England) how much to destroy. Resources in the real world may be limited by factual existence, but money is an artificial “promise to pay”. We, who are not sovereign governments, have a limited supply and may have to find money. Governments make choices about the money supply, or for the last 30 years have chosen to leave that up to the Bank of England and the commercial banks. That’s the decsion that leads to austerity. The Bank of England wrote a paper on money creation in 2014 (available online) to scotch the lies, yet subsequent goverments have still come out out with BS like ” there isn’t a magic money tree”. Governments are not grocer’s shops. They don’t need to find money. They need to choose to spend it.
For the next election in a few years time . The Labour govt will be able ro say they jave increased the Royal Navy be a whopping 100 percent
“Join the Navy”
Erm, that’s it really.
unless new Typhoons are ordered this will be the RAF in 5 years. The current airframes are getting fragged!
I suppose at least new jets can be ordered sharpish without a very lengthy lead and construction time (or, at least, as compares to a class of frigates)
A quick rummage on the internet suggests that HMS Glasgow will start her sea trials this year and enter service with the RN in 2027 or 2028. Surely after 4 years fitting out there isn’t much room for more slippage in timescales..!?
Whatever the situation the new frigates cannot come soon enough now.
What is more we need to order more T31, with hull mounted sonar, ASAP and order another 4 T26 in a few years time, once the Norwegian ships are well under way, possibly with some upgrades included.
Fat chance.
Cheers CR
Saw a comment recently that HMS Glasgow was currently awaiting her main radar and VLS installations.
Another T31 order of 3-5 (with sonar please) and back fill the Norway T26 slots to keep the production going.
HMS Glasgow was supposed to go to sea trials about now (Spring 2026), I hear now its going to be more like Autumn 2026.
I wonder; has labour resource been reallocated to Cardiff?
An order for 3-5 more capable ( hull sonar ) T31 would be good for RN options, for Babcock and for the ship’s export prospects. The first 2 or 3 T31 could stay with their ‘patrol frigate’ spec for a while; they could replace the B1 Rivers as fleet ready escorts and / or replace the global role of some of the B2 Rivers.
Well… at least it can’t get much worse and Defense secretary will have less trouble counting them if asked
So the similarity between Defence planning of today’s Conservative and Labour governments was the exact opposite when I was a nipper reading Jane’s Fighting ships! At the time of Macmillan/Douglas-Home desperately trying to dodge the Profumo big bullet, TSR2 was flying initial trials, the Supersonic Harriers were under construction with 4 or 5 airframes on the factory floor in an advanced stage of construction, the new RAF Transport aircraft was well into planning, the two new CVA 1 carriers were about to kick off, the Aussies were likely to order TSR2 and then suddenly, Harold Wilson was PM and within a couple of months EVERYTHING was trashed including much of Britains aircraft industry. If it hadn’t been for the Through Deck Cruisers slight of hand(surprising that the Labour bods fell for it) that would have been the end of Naval fixed wing ops!!
There was no way the UK could have afforded both the Polaris program and the new carriers
TSR2 was a technical disaster and could never have worked.
CVA01/2 was neither affordable or manable
Supersonic Harrier was a clown show with technical issues that couldn’t be solved with 1960’s technology
The RAF transport was a flight of fantasy
Polaris was the bargain of the century.
TSR2 kept up with and accelerated away from a Lightning. It had its issues but these would have been sorted.The celebrated test pilot Brian Trubshaw described it as steady as a rock in flight or words to that effect. The supersonic Harrier also had challenges but again, these were not beyond the capacity of the British Aircraft Industry to correct. The Brits were world leaders in almost every aspect of military aircraft design and innovation in those days-they lacked marketing skills and the ruthlessness of our American cousins. we can continue this argument without end but the real point I was trying to make was how different were the Defence policies of Labour and the Tories in those days-extreme ends of the spectrum!
RAF Transport – you must be referring to the Armstrong Whitworth proposed the AW.681
Given that this is becoming an emergency situation, I wonder if it’s possible to approach Damem shipyard with a view to getting a few of their Sigma combatant hulls. I know that warships are supposed to be sovereign builds, but needs must, and The Netherlands are a close ally. . The ships would be effective home waters patrol vessels.
Damen are doing a pretty terrible job of warship building at the moment, better to use the UK commercial yards for USVs instead and accept there’s no way of increasing escort numbers before 2030.
I’m completely unconvinced by USV’s. I think they act as an excuse for not building proper hulls and warships. I’d prefer a lean manned corvette and lots of them than some unmanned drone craft that cannot carry out the same tasks as a manned warship. Never mind the opportunity for command experience for junior personnel. USV’s do have their place, but only in conjunction with manned, armed warships.
Good Day,
How is the government reacting to this? For example, Prime Minister Starmer and his defence minister? They certainly can no longer turn a blind eye to reality.
Nick
Disgraceful. Decade or two until we have what was even then inadequate numbers of escorts for benign peacetime, while we pass through very high risk times while eventhe USA might attack NATO allies. Shame on Labour & Tories allowing this while providing empty smokescreen reassurances.
Dreadnought will cost close to £7.5b a hull , more if the contingency money is used, the cost of maintaining Vanguards also substantial.
On the current budget , it is impossible to maintain an effective conventional military and the deterrent.
One Dreadnought would put 6 T26 in the water. Or order 75 F35A, or 15 P-8 or 750 tanks, IFV , SPG.
I am not sure if any party including Reform is promising to revert to the deterrent being a separate budget? Until that happens these harsh realities will come knocking
The same service chiefs that clapped cuts as strategic reorganisation are telling us drone ships can replace manned warships.
Who on earth is making all these poor decisions ,they should be sacked before they bankrupt the uk and leave it defenceless .
We have 4 new Frigates in the fitting-out process.
The question is: What can be done to speed up this process?
HMS Glasgow is still fitting out after nearly 4 years….that is ridiculous
I’m sure y’all will figure out one day that your entire Navy is nothing but a scam to spend your tax money building things nobody needs and nobody wants and so it is rife with corruption and skullduggery. It’s really no different than any time between wars. Your problem is you haven’t invented a really scary enemy to match the terror you hold of Climate Change or Fossil Fuels. By Golly if you could just convince yourselves that the Germans or the Pakistanis were a naval menace your shipbuilding futures would be secure for another 20 years!
Our politicians realy messed ip. Ecerone knew the Type 23 had a limited hull lofe but they did not order replacements in time. This is incompetence on an epic scale. The fist duty of government is to defend tge country… now we practicaly have no navy.
Do they turn around and sell it to Chile or Brazile where it serves another 20 years?
The Aussies last year ordered improved ‘Mogami’ class frigates from Japan. On 5 August 2025, the New FFM was selected, with the first ship to be delivered in 2029 and operational by 2030 !
It seems likely that Iron Duke could have soldiered on for a while. Letting her go out of service now suggests ( to me at least) that her crew are needed for training on the new frigates, which could arrive earlier than ministers have been saying in public.