The Defence Investment Plan confirms £1.6bn to bring the Type 31 frigates into service and arm them with Mk 41 launchers and Norway’s Naval Strike Missile, plus new gun ammunition to defeat drones and surface threats.
The Royal Navy’s new Type 31 frigates are to be armed with a powerful anti-ship missile and a flexible vertical launch system, as part of continued investment of £1.6 billion to bring the class into service, the Defence Investment Plan said.
The plan said the five general-purpose frigates would have their “lethality enhanced with Mk 41 launchers and Norwegian Naval Strike Missiles,” pairing the Kongsberg-made Naval Strike Missile, a sea-skimming anti-ship weapon with a range of more than a hundred nautical miles, with the American-designed Mk 41 vertical launching system that can fire a wide range of current and future missiles. It also committed to new gun ammunition so that the frigates can make full use of their weapons and defend themselves against drones and other surface threats.
The decision is a big step up in firepower for ships that were conceived as affordable, general-purpose vessels carrying mostly defensive weapons, and it answers years of criticism, including a 2021 parliamentary report that branded the surface fleet well-defended but lightly armed, by giving the Type 31 the means to strike ships and, in time, land targets at long range.
The plan to fit the Mk 41 was first set out in 2023, when the then First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Ben Key, said the Navy needed to deliver “lethal long-range offensive fires against our adversaries,” and the Type 31 had been designed from the outset with the structural space for up to thirty-two strike-length cells, leaving the launchers to be added as the ships are built and upgraded.
The two systems do different jobs and are fitted in different ways, since the Naval Strike Missile is carried in deck-mounted canisters and is the same weapon already going to sea on the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers as a replacement for the retired Harpoon, while the Mk 41 is a below-deck silo that can in due course launch weapons such as the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Weapon being developed with France, opening a path to a deep land-attack and anti-ship punch the class was never originally meant to carry.
The new gun ammunition, for the Bofors 57mm and 40mm guns the frigates carry, is aimed squarely at the cheaper end of the threat, giving the ships programmable rounds able to bring down drones and small fast craft without spending a missile on them.
I guess the NSM isn’t an “interim” solution any more then.
It’s a very good missile and cleared for carry on the F-35
JSM is a different missile from NSM, there are significant design changes.
But they have common components and it’s the only way of getting a relatively heavyweight AShM on F35B any time soon. Also will be integrated on MQ-9B, just saying!
It’s too long to fit in the weapons bay of the F-35B. It was designed for carriage in the F-35A and C which have longer weapons bays.
Thanks to the vertical lift fan behind the cockpit taking up space, the B has a bay ~14″ (~36cm shorter) than the others.
It doesn’t just prevent the F-35B from carrying JSM internally, but also 2,000lb JDAMs, AGM-88G anti-radiation missiles.
Usually people cite range as the critical flaw of the F-35B (despite comparing quite favourably with the Super Hornet), but imo it suffers far more from the restricted payload. Currently, British F-35s only carry a pair of 1,000lb JDAMs in their weapons bay. Eventually, they will have Asraam, Meteor and Spear 3, but that’s it… So much for Carrier STRIKE group.
F35B can however carry JSM externally, which given the 350km range isn’t a big problem.
Depends how contested the airspace is. They might be 300+km from the target, but not from their fighters.
External carriage also imposes severe drag penalties, so while the F-35Bs range is good while clean, for a similar strike mission, the extra drag, combined with the smaller fuel quantity means the range difference will be considerable.
There are also questions around the bring-back capability of F-35B, especially now the RN seems to have abandoned the rolling landing system in an exercise of penny-pinching, not so much of an issue with a JDAM, but would be a very expensive procedure to have to dump a bunch of JSMs in order to land.
F-35C is all around a better plane, but the people making the decision doesn’t seem to have taken that into account. From everything I’ve read they seem to have cared only about the number of sorties, not any other metric about the sortie.
Page 53 under Key Munitions: “equipping both T-26 and T-31 Frigates with the Naval Strike Missile.”
Seems interesting, Norway models only difference from the UK spec was the inclusion of NSM on the T-26, maybe to sweeten the deal a little we agreed we’d also put it on ours as well.
NSM on T26 would free up more Mk41s for a rocket launched anti-sub munition or perhaps CAMM-MR.
Same for T26s would be good too as only 3 mk41s.
Wonder if CAMM farms can be upgraded to take the CAMM-ER or have 8 CAMM for same foot print?
From what I’ve heard France wants a cannister version of Stratus due to their limited VLS count, so surely just ordering some of those would be better than permanent NSM.
That said, a cannister ASM would be even better, MILAS for instance is said by MBDA to already be Stingray compatible and costs 500,000 a missile plus torpedo putting total cost a bit over £1m. Compare to the Japanese or South Korean ones that sit at £2m, not sure if it include torpedo or not.
Lots of unknowns. I suspect its a case of a bird in the hand…and standardizing T26 with Norway.
The gov just making a big announcement from what was already planned. The dip been very underwhelming as expected.
Actually, this is the first time I can recall seeing anything official about Type 31 getting NSM. We all thought they were. It makes so much sense to put them on the T31s that we’ve been discussing is as a fait accompli for years. But I can’t think of an official announcement confirming it before now.
Indeed, it was never previously confirmed that the NSM would continue in service beyond being an interim on the T23 and T45 until Stratus is introduced. So this announcement seems to bring it into permanent inventory for the first time.
I guess, with all the early T23 retirements, they have a bunch of committed launchers that wouldn’t be going anywhere and could go straight onto the T31s now.
I’m struggling to see how this is an additional purchase though, given the numbers, so assume that the extra money is through-life costs adjustment? Unless we’re putting them on T26 as well, which I don’t think was the plan, and we would then need more launchers to cover all hulls.
As per my other comment, if you go to page 53 and look under “Key Munitions, ” it mentions NSM being fitted to both T-26 and T-31. Maybe the Norwegians convinced as they wanted it for their frigates or, maybe we are not now putting them on the T-45s as they’ll be leaving service in a decade.
With all the money being spent upgrading the T45s would it be that difficult to add on the NSM? Bit of anti ship/land attack punch beyond main gun. They can always be taken off later for other ships and even down to upgraded OPVs or just inventory.
T31s anti submarine capabilities should have received Priorities….!
Wasn’t the NSM going to be cross-decked from the retiring Type 23s to the Type 31 anyway? They were also planned to get MK41 VLS so I fail to see how this is new news???
It concerns me how slow the procurement of NSM has been. It was announced 4yrs ago and only three of the planned 11 ships has actually received it. Is HMS Defender going to have it fitted for when she comes out of her refit here soon?
“. . . . and the Type 31 had been designed from the outset with the structural space for up to thirty-two strike-length cells, leaving the launchers to be added as the ships are built and upgraded.”
The Mk 41 cells shouldn’t be an upgrade, but as standard equipment already installled. Until the RN acquires Tomahawks and the Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Weapon, the cells could be used to carry additional CAMMs, possibly the ASTERs, for additional air defense.
Will they be putting CAMM, CAMM-ER and or CAMM-MR in these srike length mk41s? Silly suggestion but could they even design a “double-stack” cannister for CAMM (not the ER/MR) to fully utilise the 7m+ silo length?
If the T31s are this good value why.not get another 1-3 to beef up the RN? More ships more “real” presence.
And why not add NSM to the T45s, wouldn’t hurt, might be useful as well as maybe adding more CAMM and upgraded 30mm or 40mm? Will they then need the Phalanx’s if Dragonfire is added, if not they can go on other needy vessels?
The UK also needs shore-based ASMs – especially for the south coast and Faslane.
So few of them it’s pointless. No other ships to serve with them either. The navy isn’t a funny joke anymore it’s a total international disgrace
Waking up at last.
Now, let’s make sure the first two T31 get those Mk 41s fitted within a reasonable timframe.
And give these ships hull sonar so they can at least detect subsurface threats.
Is £1.6bn the total program cost including CIP with the systems upgrades noted ? If so £320m per ship is pretty good value for the capability, a shame there won’t be more of them.
I think there will be more….we’re just calling them ‘common combat vessels’. I suspect that when Arrowhead 140 was selected for T31 it was always envisioned that it would become the mainstay of the RN frigate fleet: affordable, configurable mass.
Whilst slightly more expensive, at this point additional T31 in current spec should be ordered to replace the River B1, those were worked hard and sent all over, T31 would give more flexibility in roles and where they could be reasonably sent, Babcock will have the capacity anyway and saves time trying to design a new OPV in the short term until RB2 need replacing.
Nice thinking. One man’s OPV is another man’s patrol frigate :-).
Sadly, the T26 deal we did with Norway probably means the B1 Rivers will get replaced by Kongsberg MCM motherships.
Currently the MCM are being funded separately from the OPV replacement which is under review, although if T31 is to much, having additional MCM vessels ordered to do the OPV RB1 replacement role wouldn’t be a bad thing either, having additional vessels that could do the MCM role if needed would be valuable. With how tight funding is, the Rivers replacements need to do more than one, the luxury of task specific vessels are long gone now.
Didn’t know about the different funding pots. Thx. Agree your points. The Kongsberg web site shows different flavours of their Vanguard – I think they would build whatever we wanted.
It’s a bit more flexible but triple the price.
A Holland class would be more flexible than a River for the same price
They’re currently £317m each. Each module of mk.41 costs £5-10m using recent US and danish purchases as example, includes some spares and support. That means we’ll be looking at around £7m for each module so £28 to give the ships the proper 32 VLS cells. So around £345m, bit above £320 but still great value. Only a sonar needed and they’ll be incredibly good value.
DIP is even worse than expected. Straightaway mention of 30 Wildcat and Chinook being scrapped and two more frigates being withdrawn.
Keir Starmer absolutely hates the British Armed forces and indeed anything British. He is the most despicable and mealy mouthed PM we have ever had. I can only hope that whichever political party replaces Labour will recognise the danger we are in and take urgent action.
It may be all too late!
You seem.to be suffering with a terminal dose cognitive dissonance. The Tories spent a decade and a half gutting the British armed forces and at the sane time deliberately allowing the very richest to syphon money out of our country but I guess thats ok and you can blame it all on Labour. Pathetic
Gez
I totally agree that those that came before are equally culpable. However we are in the here and now.
What the government has done is not good enough regardless of the spin put on it.
You can’t polish a terd and the DIP is a whopper!
They’ve taken action with the funds available. They have 2 options available to get the full funding borrow and push up interest rates or cut the welfare bill. The second seems the most sensible (well to anyone who doesn’t get welfare support) but I don’t think it’s much of a vote winner. People like the idea in principle but when they learn more children will be living in poverty they soon go off the idea.
There has been a lot of discussion on here about how the pie can be split differently without putting children into poverty- and I do think that some of that needs to be done.
The fiscal rules committed to by the Labour government has also hamstrung them and there should have been no problem with some additional borrowing in order to boost core areas- especially if that can feed back into the economy (many defence programmes are/ could be domestic). And borrowing could support infrastructure projects (for example), leaving more tax money free for defence spending. An accounting trick maybe, but assigning the borrowed cash to the most direct drivers of economy growth so that there’s a strong link between the two prevents the picture of irresponsible spending.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see Burnham cut business rates for pubs / hospitality / small business and make good the reduction in local authority revenue by creating a ‘care levy’ based on property value. I’m sure the Duke of Westminster and the Arab and Russians in London wouldn’t mind chipping in a bit more. 🙂
I’ll bet Burnham will grant those North Sea drilling licences – and use the increase in tax revenue to close the defence plan gap. Protect Scottish jobs and get on the right side of Trump…give Milliband a new cabinet position. Job done.
Before you try to turn this into a political debate, it would be worth remembering that much of the gutting came BEFORE 2010 when the Tories took over. Blair gutted the destroyers, the frigates, the submarines, part of the carrier force and much of the air force. (And he did that while the country was as economically strong as it has been since before WW1, yet you only criticize the Tories operating in a much weaker, post-financial crash context).
BOTH parties have been terrible for cuts. But I sympathise with cuts far more when they’re during a recession, rather than during an economic boom.
I agree about Starmer. He certainly hates the UK to the point of Treason and I’m so glad he’s leaving as PM.
Ah! Now we know why the Sale of those same missiles to Malaysia was denied. Robbing Ahmad to pay George…
“plus new gun ammunition to defeat drones and surface threats.”
So what the hell they have now? ammo with no proper fuze?
Presumably purchasing 3P instead of regular ammunition.
The navy was already advertising the ships using airburst ammo… Did they roll back on that only to be able to announce this?
Or else who the heck was incharge of purchasing if they ordered regular HE shells instead? Sometimes I wonder if the MoD procurement process encourages anyone to actually do any thinking or beats that out of their employees.
Only 100 nmi range? That doesn’t seem like very much for a brand new missile.
Also, sad to see there is no indication of including any form of sonar to T31, leaving them dangerously vulnerable.
Submarines will miraculously not live in the r31 world….!
Not just submarines; presumably no underwater drones either…
It will have a S2170.
25kt to escape a 50kt torpedo…
So the first time they will know there is a submarine is when a torpedo is shot at them… Great.