Prince William today started construction on the UK’s third of eight Type 26 Frigate for the Royal Navy.
In a steel cut ceremony at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Glasgow, His Royal Highness, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, set the plasma cutting machine to work on the first plate of steel for the third Type 26 frigate, HMS BELFAST. Minister of State for Defence Baroness Goldie, together with employees and representatives from the Scottish Government, Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence, joined the celebrations.
Sisters HMS Glasgow and HMS Cardiff are already in built, with HMS Glasgow sitting on the hard standing otuside the ship build hall. I was lucky enough to tour HMS Glasgow recently. (Photo below belogn to BAE, not me)
It was an honour to be shown around HMS Glasgow, the first Type 26 Frigate, today at Govan. The ship is still in build but is taking shape internally at quite a pace. She's huge in size, complexity and capability and has some interesting milestones coming up! pic.twitter.com/BzSQ2ytaKh
— George Allison (@geoallison) June 25, 2021
According to a news release from BAE Systems:
“The event marks an important step in the programme to deliver the UK’s latest anti-submarine warfare capability to the Royal Navy, with all three of the first batch of City Class frigates now under construction. The UK-sourced steel plate will form part of a unit which will contain the machinery space for the gearbox and stabilisers of HMS BELFAST.
In recent weeks the first of class, HMS GLASGOW, was rolled out of the build hall into the open for the first time, while progress on HMS CARDIFF continues at pace, with more than 40% of the ship’s units in build at the Company’s Govan shipyard. Led by electrical apprentice, Cara Shannon, and Type 26 Programme Director, David Shepherd, the Duke of Cambridge enjoyed a tour of HMS GLASGOW during his visit, meeting employees in the ship’s operations room and flight deck.”
Minister of State for Defence Baroness Goldie, said:
“Today is a significant milestone for the exciting new Type 26 frigate programme and for Defence. We celebrate and receive great support from our UK shipyards. As a Scot, I am very proud of the skills and expertise of our Scottish shipbuilders here on the Clyde. These new frigates will be equipped with the most advanced capabilities and technologies, enabling the Royal Navy to counter emerging global threats for decades to come.”
Rear Admiral Paul Marshall, Director Navy Acquisition, said:
“It’s been a privilege to witness this important moment in the life of our third Type 26 frigate and I’m delighted that His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge was able to come here today to cut the first steel for the future HMS BELFAST. Despite the obstacles of the past year, BAE Systems’ workforce has continued to deliver what will be a world-leading maritime capability that will join an innovative and forward-looking Royal Navy. We are very proud to work closely with industry to realise the immense opportunity that these ships offer to our growing maritime ambition, our international partners and to the whole of the United Kingdom.”
The Type 26 frigate is an advanced anti-submarine warship which will “deliver critical protection of the Royal Navy’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent and Carrier Strike Group”.
Each Type 26 will be equipped with a range of capabilities including the Sea Ceptor missile defence system, a 5-inch medium calibre gun, flexible mission bay, Artisan 997 Medium Range Radar and towed array sonar.
BAE add that the flight deck will be able to accommodate helicopters up to the size of a Chinook, while the mission bay can quickly adapt to house containers and deploy manned or unmanned vessels and vehicles.
That’s really good news.
How have they got round the naming issue of the other HMS Belfast, currently mored up on the Thames?
Naming issue?
The current one will be known as HMS Belfast (1938) to make the distinction.
Cheers, that makes sense.
Had a mates leaving do on Belfast. We were only allowed to drink rum. It got very messy and I can’t remember getting back to the Union Jack club.
I have a vague recollection that UJ Club offer a recovery wheelbarrow service for those “special occasions.” Sadly the hangover is all on you Davey.
Not sure why that’s necessary, HMS Belfast was already C35, and between Hull and Pennant numbers you can make it clear which ship is which without resorting to appending the year of construction.
plus the ship on the Thames is officially decommissioned
Interesting piece George, it’s good to see the programme is in full swing. Could you enlighten us as to what the milestones for Glasgow are, bearing in mind that she is supposed to be delivered and in service 12 months early. In particular when is she due to go into the water and down the river to Scotstoun for fitting out.
It would also be interesting to know if you have any insight into when the contract for the second batch is due to be signed. If Bae are now cutting metal on ship 3 they are already going to be planning for the start of ship 4.
You’d think the contract will be awarded for the next 5 pretty soon if they intend to keep to a regular drumbeat.
Good points. As an ex shipbuilder I would be wanting to see the B2 contract certainly within the next 12 months, plus ordering of long lead items starting asap.
I take it the B2s will incorporate lessons learned etc from the B1s?
They’ll be about 10m longer, 5knots faster, have a helicotper deck and upgrade to a 30mm…. oh wait… wrong B2.
IIRC the order of long lead items like the engines has already begun.
Nick, it looks like that the build rate is the same, it is the in service date that seems to be 12 months early. This makes sense as there is not much new on the T26, the main engine is the MT30 we know how that works, the radar and sonar is the same as the T23 just updated, we know how Sea Ceptor works, the 5in gun from BAE is on ships from other nations so that is not a major issue so the only real testing is of the hull and the Mk41s VLS to see what we could use from them. To be honest I am trying to work out why the T26 is so expensive as all the main systems are tried, tested, have been in production for some time and fully matured. As for the long test period, why? An example of a long test period would be the T42s of about 4 years, but that was understandable, new engines, new missiles, new radar and a new main gun. What is so new on the T26 that needs several years of testing, the big empty space in the middle of the ship called a multi mission bay?
So all in all yes its good news that the RN will get modern ships sooner to the fleet, hopefully the Batch II order will get the green light soon as HMS Cardiff should be in the water by 2023. So I would expect the Batch II order the end of this year or at the latest summer 2022.
Ron, good morning. I agree with you on the price, if the ships are using mostly tried and tested kit where does the price come from. Likewise the projected build rate is very leisurely but I suspect that is down to the rate the MOD is paying. I think I saw somewhere that the intention was to fit at least some of the ships with refurbished electronics from the existing ships, although it might conceivably cost more to refurb than to build new.
In an ideal world it would be good to see the contract for batch 2 come pretty soon, although I am sure that it is already being discussed in Whitehall. What would be doubly good would be to wring some savings out of the programme and have two more batches, each of three ships. I have no doubt that the RN could use another ship if it was offered.
Marvellous….can pace be upped on delivery? Or is it being constrained to meet budget ?
We did get the news that the first T26 was ahead of the previously announced schedule so maybe some grounds for optimism re the other 2 from the first batch.
I wonder if we might see some benefits from the pandemic here. I am sure that the UK government would like to see a strong rebound in growth over the next few years and it already talks a lot about economic stimulus and “shovel ready” infrastructure projects. Local shipbuilding is a very potent way to deliver a stimulus because all the labour costs for the actual build goes to UK worker’s pay packets so boosts employment and a decent amount flows back to the treasury through income tax, NI and VAT. And any components sourced from domestic suppliers also delivers strong in-country revenue flows.
Also, if the defence industry works anything like the IT industry (and I assume it does) speeding up the builds helps BAE report bigger profits and hence pay more taxes. At least in the IT industry winning a billion dollar order for a huge IT project and invoicing 50% in advance doesn’t mean you can then book $0.5 billion as revenue even after the invoice has been paid. There are very strict rules so that what is actually booked as revenue reflects work actually done on the project delivery so that revenue and costs are kept at least approximately in sync and you don’t get misleading reporting periods when a lot of revenue is reported but the costs of filling the contract haven’t actually been incurred yet so it looks as if you’ve just had a hugely profitable quarter when actually you haven’t. I assume that BAE is subject to the same accounting regulations such that taking payments onto the revenue line has to be matched against progress so they have a lot of “pent up” revenue that they can’t actually book yet due to artificially slowed down build schedules.
True….but the 12mth speed up seemed to be on paper rather than service date. A few more would be nice as would a speed up….lets see if the T31s and T32s come in at pace
It’s not in Paper, it’s in steel. The in serivce date is entirely down to the RN’s decision making, and whether they want to use the extra 12 months for more testing, or whether they want to use them to bring the in service date further forwards.
A result then if possibly a chance to speed things up….chance not to miss as some of these T23s on last legs and upgrades money wasted.
Can’t see them trying to claim any credit, the SG has it’s own highly successful ship building strategy which involved nationalising a bankrupt ship yard and to this day still failing to produce any ferries from it (which were already partially built, probably rusting aaway by now, Scottish Islands struggling for transport links etc..). The latest setback being a lack of skilled workers (maybe all gone over to BAE). The SNP will be busy trying to lay some sort of blame against Westminster for Ferguson and distract any news about new Frigates being rolled out elsewhere, in fact I think they originally annouced the take over at the same time the Def Sec announced massive investment in Faslane. Anyway I’ll stop being political now!
People in Scotland aren’t idiots. They understand how ships are built. Just because the Scottish people see the snp and the best option for a Scottish government doesn’t mean they are all full on independence lovers. It comes down to options of labour, Tory or snp. In the Scottish governments scope of things the snp have done an ok job and had some successful policies that sees them getting elected again.
Who wouldn’t like free prescriptions, extra money for parents etc etc. It’s the little things that win votes. Not the independence thing.
Most people dont see 1000 jobs on the Clyde as being the number 1 issue facing the uk
It’s great to know let’s hope Russia and China take note we are strong nation and we will not be push around.
China is currently building & commissioning a dozen ships a year, We are no threat to China.
Now if we had an extra half dozen Astute SSNs then we’re talking.
Big boots to fill.
With type 32 most likely still able to be decided where to build etc bae will be looking to show they can do a great job. I don’t mind where it’s built and to what design. I imagine nothing is set in stone yet. Rosyth could have export orders to keep them busy
Please sir! Please!
Can I have some more?
Fitted for and able to go up against… anything.
They will be great looking ships and, yes, yes, children at the back, silence, I still think the USN could be interested; these are well ahead of what the septics are building at the moment.
Now I’m no expert but these ships seem to be very lightly armed for such large vessels. Where exactly is the A/S weapons and what about anti ship? How many Sea Ceptor launchers etc. When you look at the swarming tactic of Russian jets, how long would one of these ships last in a real punch up?
George, excellent article, thank you. Can you confirm the number of vertical launch system cells there will be on the RN Type 26 and how that will compare to the number on the Hunter Class destined for RAN service?
Accounts differ as the Australian vessels are the “export” version.
Just how versatile are the Mk 41 cells with respect to types of missiles they can accommodate?
That could be a subject for a new article in UKDJ.
given the size and design features of the t26, i’d sooner see them configured as destroyers, the t45’s are already overused
its all well and government and the treasury, but as often as not the blame really lies at the ministry of defence in particularly the admiralty whose dithering and muddled thinking causes such long delays to building actually being done by which time the cost of inflation has risen meaning the cost drives order numbers down the whole MOD is a shambles, the deadwood should be mercilessly chopped out the concrete desk bound admirals should be given an archer and attached to the border agency. if they don’t like it sack them.
Canada’s 15 Type 26 will be an added bonus to Western collective defense. Canada should actually be building 20.