It has been suggested that the Royal Navy may station an additional Offshore Patrol Vessel in the Falklands.
The current patrol vessel, HMS Clyde, was constructed to replace the Castle class patrol vessels for duties around the South Atlantic and the Falkland Islands.
Clyde incorporates an extended length hull, a 30 mm cannon, two miniguns and mountings for five general purpose machine guns. The elongated hull permits a flight deck able to accommodate a Merlin sized helicopter.
The Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2015 announced a further purchase of two new Batch 2 River class ships, in addition to the three already ordered.
The three Batch 1 ships without flight decks will be withdrawn in favour of the newer ships.
During a Defence Select Committee in July 2016, the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Andrew Jones indicated that the option for a fleet of ‘up to six’ offshore patrol vessels had been reduced to five, with Clyde being replaced by one of the new Batch 2 ships.
The First Sea Lord also elaborated on the potential uses for the Batch 2 ships overseas, including the possibility of forward basing an extra ship at the Falklands Islands, or forward basing it elsewhere. Admiral Sir Philip Jones said:
“Well, you are absolutely right that they have proved enormously useful, flexible and reliable ships. There are four vessels that we have in service at the moment. Three are Tyne, Mersey and Severn, which operate largely in UK waters on fishery protection and offshore tapestry protection, and of course they are increasingly working with the Border Force and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in support of protection of UK waters. Then we have a fourth one, which is permanently based in the South Atlantic.
We have had those ships in service for quite some time now. We are looking at replacing them with slightly larger and more capable ships in due course anyway, so that was already in the course of production to bring three of those in. The additional two will enable us to take a longer term view of how we replace HMS Clyde, which is a slightly larger helicopter-capable version of the OPV. We are looking at a number of ways in which we might use the fifth one.
So, the fourth one is clearly a Clyde replacement.
The fifth one can either be added into the mix for the three that operate in UK waters or it could be forward-deployed somewhere else in the world, or it could become a second vessel operating in the South Atlantic. All those options are available.”
The new ships are different in appearance and capabilities to the Batch 1. Notable differences include their longer hull, higher top speed, Merlin capable flight deck and greatly expanded capacity for accommodating troops.
About bloody time!
Good news
The chopper looks a bit big on the arse end. 🙂
LAS Malvina’s
Incorrect
There always one ?
Hehege….. OK…. FALK LANDS…. its suppose to make you smile… DONT be serious.
Sorry what ??
Ohh dear the idiot is out of his box , it’s the Falklands buttercup get over it
Nothing new it’s going to replace Clyde! It’s not going to be an extra!
I would imagine that there will be buyers for the original 4 OPV’s as they aren’t all that old.
At least the RN is getting an increase in the number of OPV’s available to it, even if it is just by one vessel.
Only the first three can be sold can’t they? RN bought out the VT lease on the first three but Clyde is still leased by RN rather than owned isn’t it?
I think we should try to do a swap with Australia and get the 4th Bay-Class back. Yes, I’m sort of joking about doing a swap but if we’re talking about second hand ships I would love to see an attempt made to get the 4th Bay back. RAN have their 2 shiny new Canberra class now and the Bay is a fleet of one for them whereas logistically it would slot nicely back in with our 3 and we’ve learned a lot about how to get an awful lot of utility out of those Bays in all sorts of situations. It would be a meaningful uplift in RN/RFA capabilities for modest cost and almost zero extra logistical complexity (ever-present RFA crew shortage issues not withstanding).
Is there really any need to send them all that way argentine navy is basically no more.
Okay, they need more teeth!
Ah yes that well known Argentine threat of ships stuck in harbour, no funds to get to sea and an airforcr that has no fast jets. Personally i think we need to use ot to pick up penguin migrants…
Need one for Gibraltar
What about Gibraltar?
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/operations/mediterranean-and-black-sea/gibraltar-squadron
Don’t sell or scrap the batch 1 vessels I hope that they can be used for other purposes
The three original River class should be handed over to HM Coastguard or Border Force to patrol the English channel.
There’s no oil in gibraltar…!!!