The Defence Secretary has announced the name of another Type 26 Frigate, HMS Edinburgh.

The Type 26 Frigates will be named Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle, Edinburgh and London.

Eight Type 26 Frigates are to be built in total with three in the first batch, the contract for the second batch will be negotiated in the early 2020s.

Ordering in batches is common for projects of this size around the world and was last seen with the Royal Navy for the Type 45 Destroyers and recent Offshore Patrol Vessels. The Type 45s first batch order was for three vessels for example.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said:

“The Type 26 Frigate is a cutting-edge warship, combining the expertise of the British shipbuilding industry with the excellence of the Royal Navy. These ships will be a force to be reckoned with, there to protect our powerful new carriers and helping keep British interests safe across the world.

The contract is structured to ensure value for taxpayers’ money and, importantly, now designed to protect them from extra bills from project overrun. The investment will secure hundreds of skilled jobs at BAE Systems on the Clyde for the next twenty years, and thousands of jobs in the supply chain across Britain.”

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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121 COMMENTS

  1. I said it would be, it’s the only uk capital city not named! And it’s the city I was born in… Even though I live in Inverness, maybe one day we will get a new frigate named after the highlanders… It’s brilliant I’m so pleased…. My Dad just died yesterday and I’ve been down to Edinburgh watching him die so this has made me feel a bit better…

    • Politics and they are built there?

      As it is part of the UK of which I’m immensely proud no problem with that from me.

    • Disproportionate? No. Out of 8 ships, all 4 capitals have been covered. 4 English, 2 Scots, 1 Welsh, and 1 Irish is about as perfectly proportioned as you could get

    • Easily fixed – build a load more to honour a more English cities. Sadly the not-so-small issues of lack of funding, crew shortages and lack of political will all conspire to thwart my cunning plan.

      Cam – I’m also sorry to hear about your dad.

      • crew shortages/ it was said on the warship(monday channel 5) 9p.m that she was over crewed and there was a shortage of beds. if we really are short on manpower, which, i’m not convinced of, then not a lot is being done about. when people leave the services they should be asked why, then if a matter is constantly voiced the M.O.D knows where to start sorting things, but ‘born in carlisle made in the royal navy’ adverts are a pathetic effort at recruitment.

  5. Maybe actually placing the order for all the ships might have been a more sensible decision than to announce names for ships that will no doubt not be ordered, especially as they have just given more ammo to the SNP once it does get cancelled

    • Still boggles the mind, isn’t the last T23 due to go out of service in 2035?
      WTF is the treasury playing at?
      When the ships have an expected service life of 30 years, we know when they need replaced so should schedule them to ensure an efficient build rate, rather than waste £100m refitting knackered ships for an additional 10 years.
      If the RN is supposed to have at least 30 warships, 6 Destroyers, 13 Frigates, 5 OPV’s, 5 carriers/assault ships then there really needs to be a conveyor belt approach to ensure at least one ship is launched each year.
      This does not include RFA ships which should realistically be built and launched every 2 years based on 6 tankers, 3 MARS, 3 logisitcs/hospital ships, additional ro/ro ships.
      I think they are trying to sort this out with the subs which are replaced every 25 years, we should be launching one every 2 years which would give us 8 attack subs and 4 ballistic subs.

      • The very point I’ve been making on this forum in relation to the F35. The same thing applies to the RN’s cutting-edge warships. Hence the reason the USA and UK are developing new fighters for the start of 2030.

        “A design that is cutting edge in the early 2020s will have to be considerably evolved to avoid ships entering service in the mid-2030s being obsolete.”

        https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/counting-chickens-before-they-hatch-8th-type-26-frigate-to-be-named-hms-london/

      • Dreadnought program is an example of the MoD wanting a platinum standard for submarine technology.
        I very much think the Dreadnought program will be the main source of drain of the Royal Navy’s budget, over the next crucial decade for RN fleet procurement. Priced at around £8 billion per sub. is of poor value of money for CASD, and needs to be cancelled. The UK does not need the range of Trident D5 missile. A Trident C4 or like type missile should fit in a Astute class sub. and will be sufficient to cover the range of the North east Atlantic to Eurasia. Only the USA needs Trident D5 for the range, of the vast Pacific ocean as well as all of the North Atlantic.
        If the UK needed to threaten China now, without war with Russia as well, a Vanguard sub. would need to be sent to the Pacific anyway, just think about it please!
        So why not develop the Astute class for CASD with 6 new build ‘stretched Astute’s, including to use for SSGN, with a added missile compartment equipped with a new missile. Cost should be around £2 billion per sub.
        Maybe UK could buy USA’s old C4 missiles and upgrade them.
        Some of the money saved should be spent on a more capable mid range fleet escorts and BMD for UK base’s.

        • Not quite, by placing a C4 equipped Vanguard in the Artic Ocean will cover most of China and North Korea. However, it will then be put at more risk as it will be facing more Russian units especially if it has to operate closer to the Russian shore side of the icecap.
          Also the high cost of the sub is put in the research and design of “quietening” it, especially the reactor pumps to make sure it stays ahead of developing technology. Granted the massive cost of the Dreadnaught class should not be put on the Navy but through the Treasury as it is a strategic asset.

          • Meirion x I agree with you on Dreadnought but Nuclear weapons come out of the armed forces budget not just the Navies. The pain is spread but still far too much of it.

    • HMS Glasgow is due to be delivered in 2023, she just won’t be operational until around 2027 as she’ll have FOC trials to conduct. Based on the current schedule, HMS London should be delivered around 2036

      • Hi Callum,
        Please tell me I’ve misread your blog. Tell me it’s not going to take four tears to run her up to full ops?

        • Seeing as how its taken that long for the carriers to be put into active service, where we have had to completely revitalise a capability we lost and where we are learning new skills, it shouldn’t that the same amount of time to get a pretty simple(ish) ASW frigate into service! It’s all about money unfortunately!

      • 2023? my a*** on the clyde not this decade at the pathetic rate they build ships the battleship dreadnought was built in portsmouth in a year, back in the age of the rivet if that could be done then, the clyde, using modern methods should turn out a 26 AND 31 every year

    • how about the commonwealth for the type 31’s? or, better still the admiral class, blake cochrane, fisher, jerico. hardy or even a new nelson? naming ships appears to be more about pleasing the minorities than giving the ROYAL NAVY REAL NAMES, BRING BACK SOME OF THE OLD favourites, fearless, repulse,furiousl temeraire,spartan,warspite e.t.c

      • I like weapons names. I am a bit fed up with place names. But I don’t want big ship names for small ships either.

        Battleaxe
        Broadsword
        Cutlass
        Dagger
        Crossbow
        Culverin
        Howitzer
        Longbow
        Scorpion
        Sword
        Musket
        Lance
        Carronade
        Claymore
        Dirk
        Grenade
        Halberd
        Poniard
        Rifle
        Spear

      • Rodney would be great. However personally I would love to see a new Thunderer and Warrior but that’s my own family connections to TIW coming to the surface.

  10. No Manchester or Liverpool? Quite shocked at that. Bit odd to leave out the north-west. Same with Bristoland Southampton. Yet we get two Scots – an element of ‘sucking up to Scotland’, perhaps? Oh well, let’s hope that they’ll build another couple to complete the regional picture for England.

      • The Riddler – yes that is my concern too,hopefully as they are being built in batches there should be scope for incremental upgrades and enhancements during the build cycles.I would expect the 8th ship to be noticeably different from the 1st.

      • It’s a valid concern but will hull and power generation technology change dramatically between now and the in-service date? For the later ships out into the 2030s I find it inconceivable that the processing systems actually fitted would be the same 2017/2018-ish technology that has presumably been specified for the first vessels. If the latest technologies are substituted in during build then the danger of obsolescence would seem to come from things like laser CIWS and rail guns becoming mainstream and even there maybe those could be substituted into the build specification for later hulls. If those weapons did become the primary focus and the power requirements were such that the whole concept of a frigate/destroyer-type hull became sub-optimal in favour of something more like a FSS or tanker with the volume for massive power generation and energy storage then that would indeed make T26 average or even obsolete at launch but, at least for laser CIWS, I don’t see those being close to replacing convention CIWS and AAW missiles for many decades yet and who knows whether their power and energy demands can be met within a T26 form factor.

        I don’t know how the RN/MoD does it but last year I had exactly this discussion regarding electronics with someone in a position to know(*) and he told me that for the service that he used to work for the actual electronics was finalised very late in the build. In the earlier stages for both submarines and surface combatants they worked simply by building into the designs fixed volume spaces with well defined power input and heat extraction characteristics and it was only quite late in the build when they then made the final selection on the electronics based on the state of the art technology and requirements at the time which of course still had to fit within the volume, power and cooling constraints of the designated space(s) into which they would be fitted.

        (*) This guy is/was the real deal. He used to be head of IT for a major navy and despite having resigned from his role over a year ago and no longer living in the country for which he had served his security clearance was so high that he still needed to email a report back to his previous employer every morning detailing his planned movements for that day. He obviously closed conversations down immediately if I asked anything remotely bordering on classified but was happy to discuss the concept of working with unpopulated volumes until the last possible minute when it came to specifying onboard electronics.

        • T26 are going to be big ships. They will have huge generation capacity, Come on, I mean, who builds a warship in these days of fancy things like integrated electrical propulsion and super long range radars without enough organic power?

        • I would presume that as crucial use electronics tend to be 5 to 10 years behind actual state of the art that designers would have a pretty good idea of what they will be dealing with 10 years down the line including power requirements for the most part. Lasers and new developments of that fundamental nature I guess with its ever developing and changing nature will probably represent a tougher predictive assessment mind. I suppose in that circumstance everything has to wait until ship and dyed terms design and weapon system can mutually align whatever the delay involved. Only the Americans can really afford to force that sort of issue to get the earliest in service date

          • You would think they would put a pair of Mk 45 on to them and just design a stealth gun house for it. Surely not beyond their capabilities?

    • like maybe the commonwealth(or whats left of it) the old colony class with names like pakistan,ceylon,zanzibar, its getting a bit silly now how about h.m.s warwickshire?!!!

    • Blame the English Government, they cut the numbers, and I could almost gaurintee there would have been a Hms Manchester or a Hms Liverpool or both.

    • Having 2 named after Scottish cities is not “sucking up”, they are a vital part of Britain, enough of the divisiveness.

  11. HMS Glasgow will be built to Glasgow standards, the accommodation will be cramped and sub standard, there will be 5 mess bars, sick bay and pharmacy will be packed and a number of sailors will be sleeping on deck, minus a large number of teeth.

    • I very much agree with you! Which I said in an earlier posting.
      Liverpool is a historic trading port!
      So let’s rename HMS Glasgow to Liverpool!
      And order anther type26.

    • I would hope that if independence were ever to happen then defence claims would be linked to GDP or some more complicated formula representing relative economic balance rather than naming conventions! On that basis Scotland would have claim to less than a single T26 and I would hope would have the sense to realise that a fleet of one would be expensive and unnecessary.

      And yes mac, I do realise your comment was probably partly tongue-in-cheek but with a serious underlying point that does worry me because however it played out it would still be a significant and costly disruption for the RN, for instance if we did end up needing to “buy” some percentage of a T26 off some newly independent Scotland as part of a divorce settlement. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that and that the union remains intact. That’s my hope at least.

    • If the 1,617,989 people in Scotland who voted for Independance want those two they can have them. I think it works out at about £1,600 each.

      I live in England. I’d happily pay my £51 along with my fellow 55 million English to replace the two ships with a HMS Exeter and a HMS Liverpool.

  13. Just great to see more ships in the pipeline for build, a lot of the names are the old batch 1 42s, so good to see two of my old ships names coming back, and pleased as my daughter is close to completing her recruitment for RN so makes me happy she will be part of an RN with carriers and ships at least

    • And bloody good carriers and ships at that. And don’t forget the world-class RN stuff lurking beneath the surface as well. I’d obviously love more of all this stuff but what we have built recently, and are in the process of still building, includes some first rate stuff.

      Best of luck to your daughter in her RN career.

  14. Just been looking at wiki:

    There are 13 urban areas that exceed 500,000 inhabitants: they are centred on London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds and Bradford, Southampton and Portsmouth, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leicester, Manchester, Belfast, Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne and Nottingham.

    13!!!

    All in all I think the Welsh have done well with the T26 naming. Perhaps it is land-area biased 🙂

    • what i think is, that the R.N should be looking forward in design , to designs that can be turned out quickly, for example a ship that could be put together in 6 months! crazy? well the first battleship h.m.s dreadnought was built at portsmouth in a calendar year, now, with modern methods ships like the rivers should be produced at TWO PER YEAR.

  15. We still need to replace the T45’s at some point in the not too distant future and the T26 hull form is ideal for that. So another 5 or 6 T26 are entirely possible and we can go crazy with names.

    • I don’t think the T45s will be replaced until well into the 2030s. By then the T26 hull will be considered old hat and a new take on ship design will be required.

      • We will still be building T26’s well into the 2030’s and as it is cutting edge now, not sure why an Air Defence Destroyer needs a cutting edge hull tbh.

        This is what fitters away money in the first place, perfectly good (ie: the best) hull that when it does get old we should reuse the intellectual property from it to build other types.

        So shorten it by 20m and you have the hull for T31 – do you lose something from a point of view of efficiency etc, maybe… but we should be working on this now, so that future T31’s are based on this hull form and not a bought in design.

        T31 really should be a new set of T23’s with better internal layout, engines etc.

  16. i had a reply from the minister of defence(yes really)!! in reply to my questions over why we dont’build conventional submarines any more. his reply left me speechless, i was told the u.k no longer has the skills or designs, or yards to build them!!https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-germanys-new-super-stealth-submarines-could-take-any-21021 this is a damning example of how the shipbuilding industry has been allowed to rot away. the u.k prefers ta nuclear propulsion policy as agreed in the 1970 and’so we spend£1.4 billion for 1 astute rather than produce 14 of the gotland type subs for the same cost! the one that evaded an entire u.s carrier screen google small swedish sub sinks u.s navy and launched a 4 torpedo ‘mock attack’ on the ronald reagan. the u.s was so impressed that they leased 1 for 12 months to find out how to find one!! currently produced for just£100 million 1 astute for the same price of 14 gotlands? yes! the upholder class of which the u.k built still only 4 , all still in service with canada,as the victoria class. was reputed to have better specs and capabilities than current conventionals like the corpene, collins class, german types 212 and 214.rant over! but its just another example of why the R.N is so short of ssk capabilities.i’ve a signee of the official secrets act so i’m probably getting arrested soon i’ll post again when i get out of jail!

      • am i being called a liar here, perhaps if i am the same people would write to the local m.p asking them to forward you letter to gavin williamson,eventually when you get a reply, and you should, you’ll see as i have written above, that its not just the beancounters, it’s the whole government that has betrayed us all these years

      • one thing i’ve noticed with BMT, IS, THAT THEY NEVER give a real cost, build time or where they’d actually build them i think everything needs more transparency

        • In fairness Andy I have written to my MP on several occasions re Defence and have received nothing back.

          I have also written to the MOD who sent me a letter back stating I had some valid points (and probably straight to trash).

          I agree that we all need to put pressure on our MP’s and Ministers if we feel passionate about it.

          In fairness to TH this was one of his main (and constant) points.

          As for the subs – we can build non nuclear submarines in this country – there is no doubt about it in my mind.

          I believe the main reason we have an all nuclear fleet is to protect our nuclear industry, otherwise we would be reliant upon the US for our reactors for the 4 successor subs and that is deemed to be too expensive and a strategic necessity.

          • granted i’ve waited months for replies, and when i did get one, it was a regurgitated copy of the tory manifesto.my m.p now calls me ‘admiral(i wish)

    • The Gotland class exercise again?
      That was a weeks long exercise in which multiple scenarios were run. When someone brings up a story like that always question the circumstances and get the full story.
      The only scenario where it was able to sink the carrier was when was able to act as a mine in a narrow where land mass shielded it. Against a task group directed to act as if it were in a peacetime posture affecting both the attentiveness of the screen, the course that was taken, and the speed at which they were moving.
      In every other scenario the Sub was destroyed well short of engagement range. As for the US leasing it for training? The US has tons of equipment for dissimilar force training rifles, machine guns, tanks, AFVs, and fighter jets, this would be no different.
      On the Gotland class being cheap? So what? I can buy 20 zastava Yugos or 1 Land Rover Defender which one do you think is better off road? Buy cheap get less. The bitterness of poor quality long exceeds the sweet taste of a good price.
      A SSN facing a group of SSKs is merely a expenditure of torpedoes for the SSN.

      • the old chestnut after all these years the question of quality or quantity needs a final decision, we can’t have both but the u.k could be far more savv, than it is regarding procurement

    • gun up the rivers they’re the same size as the sigma 10514 look at the armament fitted to a ship the same size as a river designate them light frigate,/corvette and the navy is 9 ships bigger, AND they’re already built!

    • The short version is that the government doesn’t want to cough up the cash.

      The on paper theory isn’t bad, as each frigate goes out of service the new one enters, but the reality is delays will happen and so we will end up with a massive capability gap yet again and that is before the numbers get slashed more.

  19. FYI, the only HMS Highlander to serve was was an H class destroyer in WWII. So we have a precedence – if not actually a ship to name it so………

  20. Sad loss for CamHunter & family. Thoughts & prayers.

    Warship names are very peripheral to the need to have a fleet sufficient for our needs. If we can get the Aster up to anti ballistic missile standards, then another 4 updated T45s might be wise both to protect the UK & allow more wriggle room to ensure the QEs can always have a T45 escort.

      • Logical choice. Expect over the life of the program to see 14 T26 is various guises. I’d imagine the RN will look to replace T45 with as you say, AAW variants based on the T26 hull form etc.

      • In an ideal situation I’d say yeah, just get a 2nd batch of T45s to bring the total to 10, and increase T26s to 12.

        The latter would be possible but sadly the former prohibitably expensive as production has stopped. So I’d say yeah, build 3-4 more Type 26s with AAW spec, which shouldn’t be too expensive to do.

        Then also have the T31s. I’d say 10 of them.

        • Now the Batch 1 Rivers are being retained the RN won’t see anything over the initial order of 5 x T31…. As the RN will be ‘growing’.

          I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial order of T31 isn’t only 3 hulls with 2 to follow…

          There is money for defence however Politicians don’t put much stock in Defence. £13 Billion in foreign aid is a vanity project for rich do gooders and not the noble cause they’d have us believe. 1 years worth of foreign aid budget split between the MOD & NHS would sort the 20 year ‘black hole’ shortfall and straighten up the NHS for 3-5 years. Makes sense to me. Will never happen though.

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