New drone imagery offers a closer look at the progress made on the Royal Navy’s new Type 26 frigates, HMS Glasgow and HMS Cardiff, as they undergo fitting out in dry docks at BAE Systems’ Scotstoun shipyard on the River Clyde.
More from the photographer Dave Cullen here.
According to the photographer, “permission was given Glasgow Air Traffic Control to fly in this area and the operation was conducted with full approval from local authorities.
Additional context provided explains that “the operation, conducted with full approval from Glasgow Air Traffic Control and in compliance with all Civil Aviation Authority regulations, was meticulously planned to ensure the highest standards of safety.”
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© Dave Cullen Photography 2025
Pre-flight notifications were also made to both local police and air traffic services, and the flight path was carefully managed to avoid disruption to sensitive sites, including a nearby hospital and helipad.
In the photos, HMS Glasgow appears well advanced in its fitting-out stage, with visible sections of topside equipment installed. HMS Cardiff, another Type 26 frigate under construction, is also seen progressing through its own stages of outfitting. Once fully operational, both vessels will join the future Royal Navy fleet, providing advanced anti-submarine warfare capabilities, enhanced mission flexibility, and improved crew living conditions.
HMS Glasgow is scheduled to begin Contractors’ Sea Trials before the end of this year. These trials will test the ship’s systems, propulsion, and overall performance at sea before the Royal Navy officially accepts the vessel into service. HMS Cardiff will follow a similar schedule once its construction and outfitting phases are further along.
www.davecullenphotography.co.uk
© Dave Cullen Photography 2025
The Type 26 frigates—commonly referred to as the City-class—represent a significant upgrade from earlier Royal Navy surface combatants. Designed for multi-mission roles, they will be equipped with cutting-edge sensors, a mission bay for deploying drones and other equipment, and a flight deck capable of handling a variety of helicopters.
Their design also prioritises acoustic quietness for anti-submarine operations, and the adaptability to serve global missions, including humanitarian relief or maritime security patrols. 
With these newly released images, maritime enthusiasts and industry observers can see how work is progressing on some of the Royal Navy’s most advanced warships.
Tabbing along nicely, just before anyone screams “it’s not good enough”, “we need them now” or blames BAe, the workforce or the the tooth fairy. It is what it is because that’s 100% down to the Political dwarves who did order these ships to follow on from the T45’s and actually cancelled the last 2 so they “could speed up the delivery of the T26’s”.
The workforce, yard, facilities have had to be practically re invented to get here and by the looks of it progress is speeding up and will gather up more speed as each build happens and they go up the learning curve. For evidence of that try to compare photos of Glasgow and Cardiff at roughly the same time frame from being launched. As for how these things work just go and look at the delivery schedules for the T45’s, after HMS Daring each ship took less time to build from start to commissioning. FYI if you get a chance to compare the Manhours taken and cost per ship they came down in proportion.
If anyone in HMG reads UKDJ (if they can read), understand this, if you actually want to demonstrate true resolve and intent then just add 4 more to the build cycle, tell BAe to crack on and offer exports to European Allies.
Did I mention Political Dwarves ?
HMS Duncan (last Type 45) commissioned in 2013.
HMS Glasgow (first Type 24) commissioned 2026/7
13/14 years is clearly way too long to maintain naval shipbuilding
They built the five batch two River class in the middle to keep the ship building skills but I agree still not enough.
Jim it’s like getting JCB to survive on 5 sit on lawn mowers for 10 years. Biggest impact was at Scotstoun in the fitting out trades.
Exactly.
Almost a different series of skill sets fitting out a massive ship like a QEC where you have commercial levels of space in each block.
Then the OPVs which have much less equipment in them.
Then back to full fat T26 packing a very sophisticated everything into a frigate hull.
Whilst manufacturing hulls is a skillet the MILSOEC fitout of hulls is the really hard part. There is a lot of kit to pack, keep segregated and accessible and it can’t be done like it is on most projects ‘that’ll do’ it has to be precise and that takes a certain mindset and training.
Constabulary vessels, not warships.
OPV’s are still classed as Warships.
HMS Duncan was launched in 2010
Then Govan build hull blocks for Queen Elizabeth, finishing in 2011
Then they build hull blocks for Prince of Wales, finishing in 2014
Then:
HMS Forth, launched 2016
HMS Medway, launched 2017
HMS Trent, launched 2018
HMS Tamar, launched 2018
HMS Spey, launched 2019
And then HMS Glasgow was launched in 2022.
So not really 13/14 years.
I don’t deny they had some work but not nearly enough to maintain staff levels, apprenticeships, training and there are massive differences in complexity and tech between those. Simple truth is we gapped building the replacements for the T23 for a decade, hence wasted millions on refits and lifex rather than new builds, result is that despite that the numbers have dropped.
The numbers have dropped because the Type 23s are beyond economic repair, not much to do with the staffing levels on the clyde.
13/14 years between building warships.
The OPVs are constabulary vessels, not warships, hence their armaments.
Commissioning is what matters, not the launch.
Launch is when the hull can float. Commissioned is when the vessel could be used operationally.
With modern warships, the most complex and expensive part is not the building of the hull (steel and air is cheep) but the fitting out of the weapons, sensors, communications, CMS, etc, etc. Which is predominantly done AFTER the launch.
Offshore Patrol Vessels are warships
OPV’s are counted as Warships, and btw. But it doesn’t really matter, if I’m making people build a ship it makes little difference if I’m asking them to weld a frigate hull, or a OPV hull. Oh and if I go by commissioning dates it looks even better since the ships are being worked on longer (HMS Spey was commissioned in 2021, at which point Glasgow was well on her way). But Commissioning is an even worse standard, since that can happen after trials. Taking Spey as an example again: She was launched in June 2019, finished fitting out in September 2020, was delivered to the RN in Portsmouth in October 2020, and yet didn’t commission until June 2021.
Also OPV’s still have sensors coms weapons and CMS, and from a fitting out perspective, there’s little difference between one radar system and another (the truly expensive bit is building the radar etc, which all happens off site anyway).
When was HMS Mersey finished?
Then HMS Clyde was transferred to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force, with the ship renamed as Al-Zubara.
HMS Mersey was built in Southampton and commissioned in 2003. Vospers have long since split been up and sold off.
Any extra T26s would be nice to have. I wonder what the RN actually wants or need operationally? 8, 9, 10, 12? 1-2 more and maybe same for extra T31s or are they numbers right? Don’t they need to get the so called “T32” requirement sorted and bring this forward if sub sea drones and sloops are the next thing, they’ll need their motherships and maybe quite sizeable ones? Hope there’s still maximum UK effort going into getting the T26s for Norway’s requirement.
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Interesting that General Petraeus said that Ukraine is probably the most advanced drone design, development and operator in the World and when this war finally ends that their export capability will be enormous both physical and in terms of expertise. He even admitted that they are far more advanced than even the US and advised Europe to take advantage of this. He was referring to air, land and sea drones so I would hope that the uk and the MoD are in very close liaison with Ukraine (I’m sure they are) about such potential and in this case what sort of mothership is best for exploiting such drones which after all have destroyed a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet and made safe their vital corridor for food exports. He also said that he expected Ukraine to become the powerhouse of European weapon innovation and production and that companies would be foolish not to invest with them. So whatever Trumps self serving desires in this matter there is every chance perhaps something good for Europe can come out of it, if weaponry can ever be considered ‘good’.
Oh not strictly relevant and as usual nothing gets reported here but the Mexican President is currently truly owning Trump presently. Shows that taking a tough stand can in the right circumstances be very effective against a childish overstretched bully who has put all his money on threats that have already shown will backfire horrendously on the very constituency that got him elected. Not surprising that he is trying to cover his ass and embarrassment so suddenly with distracting moves on Gaza and Ukraine.
I don’t know why anyone finds that surprising, the Ukrainian SSR was the power house of the Defence industry for the USSR and WP. The bit that surprises me is that they are turning out 2 million 155mm shells pa, which is nearly twice what all of Europe is managing, not bad for a country that didn’t really start to re equip from Russian calibres till 2018 !
Well thats what happens when you get a load of war time cash injections. Their defence industry was otherwise struggling, especially in the construction of the Oplot tanks which were a difficulty, and will be in the future further, meaning they’ll have to rely on imports for any heavy armour.
Yes. The T31 follow-on at Rosyth has become an urgent question. It’s already far too late to get a clean-sheet design sorted as a follow on and any such requirement will need an interim to keep Rosyth busy. We could just about leave a T31B2 order with no design changes until next year, but we should want some changes. We don’t need five more under-equipped GP frigates. Those design requirements need to be decided and published now. If there needs to be a competition, we should get it going very soon.
I think we are going to end up gapping it anyway due to government/MOD inertia [Let’s wait and see what the new National Armaments Director thinks… a futher year’s delay], instead we’ll need to decide what will keep Rosyth occupied in the interim few years. To me it can only be cheap B1 River replacements, maybe half a dozen at say 400-600 tons. Whatever, we need to make decisions this year. The Navy will hate whatever solution is arrived at and I hope it will eventually learn that half a loaf is better than no loaf — and no loaf is still a very real possibility.
Five? No you are probably right but three more unchanged GP frigates would probably be sensible and could give the time required to produce a tailored design for what ever specialties we want to go into. I suspect that people will wonder why eight T-31s but if you consider where you would likely to be forward basing them…
So that’s one for Kipion, one in the Pacific, one in the med and one in the Caribbean and then the Falklands Guard ship, two in refit and one for crew training and fleet ready escort you can employ them all very easily and it releases the River 2s to be patrol ships rather than carrying on front line warship duties.
Give me the choice between ordering 3 extra T31 to keep Rosyth tabbing along or building blocks for extra T26’s I know which one I’d pick. If there is one single question that non of the MPs are asking (because the answer may be embarrassing), it’s simply this.
“Now that both the T26 and T31 Frigate projects are approaching maturity can the minster tell the house the “full” in service cost of each type including all Government supplied equipment ?”.
I suspect someone would get a shock !
The big question to my mind is who’s building the 6 MRSS and where..
Quite frankly with all that is going on the Uk needs to be commissioning hulls quickly and there is one hell of a backlog of tonnage of warships that need building over the next couple of decades.
I suspect that the Batch 1 replacements are the Batch 2’s. That was the original plan, and I don’t see the RN changing it.
Most of this discussion is above my pay grade. The SDR have to earn their fee. The mood music is that the defence budget will increase to somewhere around 2.5 – 2.65%. The challenge will be to spend it in the UK for jobs and growth. Hard to see how that works if the RN want Kongsberg Vanguards or Damen OPVs. That said we do have hot production lines for frigates and Arrowhead is a very flexible hull. It’s feasible to configure and / or outfit the design into anything from a constabulary vessel to an MCM mothership or a lite AAW cruiser. More T31 variants looks like a no-brainer. We should ask Navantia to explore what can be built in Appledore. Do they have any 80-90m designs we could use?
In reality they should have started cracking out the frigates some time around 2010, the order should have been for 20 with a 50/50 ASW and GP fit, the T45 should have been a batch of 10.
As is they should/ must crack out an extra couple of T26, before moving to T83 and another 5 T31, before moving onto a patrol/MCMV hull batch of around 10 ( around 2000-3000 tons, with work deck, crane, landing pad and autonomous vehicle hangers/ boat bays )
To be perfectly honest and yes I am slightly biased if I had the choice I’d up the ante on the T26 and export to Norway quite happily if it helped pay for and crew a decent number of SSN(A)’s say 12 !
We keep the yard busy, get some funding and still have the same number of T26 operating in the same waters.
I would agree with you, but in reality the T23s should have all been replaced by now and it’s very likely the whole fleet will have been scrapped by 2031…that mean the RN needs lots of frigate hulls..what is really frustrating is if those idiots Brown and Cameron had not delayed the order of the Type 23 replacement until 2015..we would have 3-4 Type 26s commissioned, 3 fitting out and 2 building at which point flogging them strait to Norway would have not been an issue or risk.
I would say that it appears the hull fabrication processes have sped up, but there still appears to be a slowness in the fitting-out processes.
By comparison, the types T42/T22/T23 averaged 5 years (lead ship) to 3.5 years from steel cut to commission.
In those days there were multiple shipyards all doing various things and workforce could be brought across on a short contract with MoD pressure.
Having left everything to wither due to the Blair era belief that anyone can do anything with two weeks of training and then very expensively discovered that this is not and never has been true.
I agree, given the perilous state we find ourselves in and the need to just get more warships in the water it makes sense to start adding some extra T26 and T31 onto the existing hot production lines even if they ultimately go to allies.
Agreed. We really don’t have the luxury any longer in trying to find the money or increase GDP to cover it first. We need to get serious.
👍🏻
In retrospect we were all asleep.
NATO should have begun a huge rearmament programme (including the T26 build) after the 2014 seizure of parts of Ukraine. It was inevitable Putin would be back for more, the only surprise should have been that it took him 8 years.
I agree.
But the power of self delusion and hiding behind USA’s defensive skirts was the order of the day.
IRL I think the Tangerine Tinted One is throwing a much needed bucket of cold water of E-NATO and saying match us on spending.
As IRL US hasn’t spent 5% on defence that isn’t a real argument. As it is spending ~3.5% that might be real. TBH if the needle moves to 2.75% that is massive anyway.
Good to see the T26s moving along, I do agree a few more T26s possibly with more AAW ability eg replace the forward Sea Ceptor tubes for Mk41s and replace the 5 in gun for a 57mm would be useful additions to the T83s.
However looking at the photos of Glasgow and Cardiff in the dry docks I noticed how they fill out the dock. This leaves me a bit concerned for the future T83, will there be enough space in the dry dock to fit out the T83 or will we need to design a ship to fit the dock. If as most expect the T83 will be in the 10-12,000 ton range we are looking at a ship of about 180m long and 24-25m in the beam. That is 30m more than a T26, the dry docks do not look like they can take that increase in length.
Possibly a stupid question but any way here goes. With the engines of the T26 being fitted but not used for three-four years how do they keep the seals/gaskets etc in good order. As we all know if you leave your car or truck in the garage for three years without turning over the engine you need to replace your seals and gaskets as they dry out, become hard etc. So how do they prevent this in a modern warship build/fit out.
We’re not getting more 26s
Navantia OPVs and LHDs are the way-2-go 😁
I hope that isn’t what we have told the Norwegians?
Where there is a will there is a way.
The Tangerine Tinted one shocked everyone into 2% and will now shock everyone into more in return for USA hanging around in Europe with its military toy box.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually agree with him the Europe have taken the piss of using US military spend to cut their defensive programs to fund terribly inefficient welfare programs.
The only thing I will say is I don’t believe for a second the US will be hanging around and even if it did it would be so unreliable a partner as to not be worth any planning assumptions around.
Also the big issue around UK defence is the 60-70 billion dollars we spaffed up the wall supporting the US war on terror.
SB,
Concur w/ your assessment. Believe The Donald (and minions) have interjected an element of cold reality into ENATO geopolitics. Belatedly, the threat
dimensions of the CRINK alliance are becoming dimly visible to some w/in the ENATO political class. Further, all have received notice that the US must prepare for a probable apocalyptic conflict in the I-P. There will be a few ENATO countries which are willing and able to commence serious rearmament. An increased long-term NATO defence funding goal, ratified at the NATO Summit in June, will be marginally beneficial, but the current glacial pace of ENATO rearmament could easily become OBE in the near term. Wonder whether the 2025 SDR report and ensuing HMG budgets will reflect an acknowledgement of the revised geopolitical assessment/environment?
Trump had nothing to do with 2%, that was his best friend Putin.
I agree on the dry dock front.
That would mean fitout should have to be at Rosyth in the dry docks where the QEC’s were built. Perfectly possible to build at the BAE shed and tow there. I don’t think Belfast is a runner as they have no complex warship experience.
The engines will have the factory preservative on them until they are first fired up.
Modern seals don’t harden or dry out the way the one of yesteryear did anyway.
QEC were assembled at Rosyth, not built there, there were built over The UK
Has there been any updates on the painter that fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back at the end of last year? Can’t remember if it was on Glasgow or Cardiff?
All wonderful, propaganda coming from certain quarters within the M.O.D however there appears to be a difference in ‘The Mood Music ‘ eminating from Keir Stamer and his cronies saying they are keen to commit ‘Our Brave Armed Forces ‘to face down ‘Mad Ivan ‘ despite warnings from Dannet saying not a good idea at all P.M in other words give us the ‘Guns ect but give us the Bullets while you’re at it , otherwise history will be repeated as happened to the British Expeditionary Force being pushed back by Hitler (people forget or choose to ignore the similarities are stacking up ) History will remember.
People don’t want war of any sorts.
Dani old mush – the oldest and saddest lesson is being re-learned in front of us: “you might not want wars, but one will still find you anyway”.
In the new post-US world I personally the new ENATO (never saw that term before!) needs to get contributing nations to focus on strengths. Cap the Army at 100k + 3x reserves (I know…) but expand the RN and RAF.