Drone footage shows the imposing figure of HMS Glasgow, the first of eight Type 26 Frigates, as the vessel is fitted out at a BAE Systems facility in Scotstoun, Glasgow.
The video is shown below.
Here's HMS Glasgow as the vessel continues to be fitted out at the @BAES_Maritime in Scotstoun, in Glasgow. The yard the Type 26 Frigate is currently in is, due to being near an airport, inside of a flight restriction zone, so this is the closest I can get with a drone. pic.twitter.com/dhryKYUp9n
— George Allison (@geoallison) February 24, 2023
Images captured from the ground recently also show HMS Glasgow.
Here are the photos.
HMS Glasgow entered the water for the first time at the start of last month, the frigate was moved onto a barge at the Govan shipyard before being moved downriver to Glenmallan on Loch Long. There, the barge was submerged, allowing HMS Glasgow to float off and be towed back to the city towards the BAE Scotstoun facility, where she is being fitted out. You can read more about this here.
In other Type 26 news, the composite mast for second Type 26 Frigate HMS Cardiff has arrived in Glasgow from specialist supplier Umoe Mandal in Norway.
In 2020, Umoe Mandal was awarded a contract for three shipsets of composite mast and SCOT Sponsons structures for the Royal Navy’s first batch of Type 26 Frigates, designed and manufactured by BAE Systems.
The Type 26 represents the future backbone of the Royal Navy, and eight of the class are planned, starting with HMS Glasgow. The eight ships will replace the eight dedicated anti-submarine Type 23 frigates which will reach the end of their active lives by the mid 2030s.
In addition to the Clyde-built Type 26, five Rosyth-built Type 31 general-purpose frigates are intended to replace the general-purpose Type 23s currently in service and also coming towards the end of their long careers.
How come they just don’t build them in this drydock?
Not covered, I guess.
Why build outdoors when you can build in a controlled environment?
Humans work better out of the rain and wind.
lol
Have you sent that Memo to the Army?
I did 24 hours without food, stood down, dived into my compo pack, threw away the f.ing rice added water to some… meat(chicken?), stockcube, got it cooked up and…
… gas, gas, gas.
And had to toss the lot away. DS were cAnts.
Just wondering how long until we see the two halves of HMS Cardiff being rolled out
That was exactly what I was going to post after I had read the article. Any ideas/ guesses anyone?
Should be soon. First steel was cut about two years after Glasgow and the two halves of Glasgow were rolled out in April 2021. Given the whole temperature welding issues on Glasgow thing, they might be waiting until Spring.
The funnel block looks like a bit of a patchwork of steel plates. Hope that looks less messy when finished.
With the remaining 13( minus one early retirement) type 23, being 8 with tails and 5 GP frigates- what were the other 3 that were sold to the Chilean Navy? Did we drop numbers of tails when they were sold? The Royal Navy has many priorities and not all can be funded. In any future maritime confrontation/ battle/ war, submarines and their detection are surely the lead priorities. With no easy answer to upscaling submarine numbers, increase in anti submarine frigate numbers presents a slightly easier, slightly less expensive, slightly less crew pressured means to meet these priorities. I just hope the new frigate factory keeps that door open for more orders if there will and money can be found. Great job George
The Chilean T23s were GP versions.
I dont understand why all the type 23’s weren’t upgraded to the anti- submarine version.
I’ll bet that photo makes Putin quake in his boots. What’s worrying him will be the in service date. 2027? Wasn’t it due to be ordered 2-3 years earlier but the Treasury kept delaying?
Money. Principally the cost overruns on Nimrod MRA4 and ASTUTE meant that a some money had to be saved by not fitting 2087 to all of the Type 23’s.
T23 was always split ASW / GP from launch. It was a budget frigate from launch and every expense was spared.
However, they have been massively upgraded through life.
The Kryton was added as the importance of NGS was shown in Corporate.
Sea Wolf was added also due to the lessons learned from Corporate. The original plan was for T23 to be naked and the Forts to have Sea Wolf as an umbrella.
Then there have been massive and some subtle through life upgrades.
The ASW ones got the ASW upgrades.
A number of reasons, firstly, Sand box wars and the War on Terror in particular, gutted and emaciated our entire armed forces, as those ‘that knew better’ decided that warfare with other advanced countries was a thing of the past.
The focus was entirely to concentrate all energies on maintaining 10,000 personnel in Afghanistan on a never ending ground hog day of utter pointlessness.
So absolutely vital things like ASW to an island nation, became an almost pointless exercise in the eyes of some Whitehall Capet walkers…
The only reason we kept the capability at all was the need to support our nuclear deterrent….
It’s absolutely time to to order an additional 8 T26’s and return the force to 16 units….
😀😀
Do you really think Mr P will be around in 2027 Jonno he may accidently fall out of a Hotel/Hospital window whilst drinking a Cup of Tea ?
We couldn’t afford more at the time, though I’d say we can’t afford to have escorts without full ASW capabilities seeing as we’re an Island nation, critically dependant on maritime trade & a permanent member of the UN security council. So we did them on the cheap. It is very expensive to make ASW hulls as all the machinery has to be sound insulated where it rests on the decks or hull, something like rubber/spring buffers I think.
But you can bet Putin & the CCP watched with interest as we dwindled our fleet to its current tiny size & chose to gap basic capabilities, along with running the Army & RAF down too. That calculation clearly lead to them being bold in their disregard for other nations freedoms & integrity. Failing to react more firmly when Russia first invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea, PRC creating islands on top of beautiful coral reefs in the SCS, Giving up in Afghanistan, failing to stop Assad from annihilating his opposition etc all were terrible mistakes that persuaded them to pursue their illegal ambitions.
There are two versions of the story. The scuttlebutt one is money. The official one, which might even be true, is complexity of design.
There’s only a certain amount of preliminary work a company will be willing to do without a contract. The detail design work done after the contract was signed took significantly longer than expected.
Delays in early work when the MOD/military sit on their arses have a knock on effect on the contract date, which in turn has a knock on effect on build date. It’s disappointing to see the “there’s no hurry, let’s sit on our arses” attitude to the Type 32. Lessons not learned.
Marlborough was a 2031z fitted 23. Grafton was non tail fitted. Served on them both 😀⚓
All except the last 4 had a Sonar 2031 towed array when new (i.e first 12 hulls). When this was removed 3 ships were sold to Chile and 8 of the remainder got sonar 2087 but it had been intended to fit all 13 remaining ships.
I wonder how much it would of cost to keep the 2031 in service on the gp boats instead of dumping.
The best future solution will be sensors that can basically run themselves. Towed array out searching for targets on its own.
WE will need some automated sub hunters soon, the US Navy is already testing theirs, see the USN SEA HUNTER. They are already on the 2nd prototype.
There seems to be so much spare space around the yard. Definitely room for future developments. Pity the order didn’t get placed when BAE was saying it would build a frigate factory at scotsoun and sell govan.
O/T news snippet
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2023/february/23/230127-diving-support-boat
🙄 Yet another name change for FDS…..
FDS, to EDS, now DTXG, with the same roles from what I can see in the component “Squadrons” ( another change ) but according the the RN biggest shake up since 1996 and of course world leading.
Which is the most important bit! 👍
LGWTAP….🙂
No sea captor, show again NGS, and where do we land the Chinook.
No further use, return to sender.
Lets Get With The Acronym Program 😂
Thanks, I had no idea!!