Irish Naval Vessel LÉ George Bernard Shaw arrived in Glasgow this week, the visit by the Offshore Patrol Vessel is the first Irish Naval visit to Scotland for over 10 years.

The Royal Navy tweeted a video of the arrival.

LÉ George Bernard Shaw is a Samuel Beckett-class offshore patrol vessel of the Irish Naval Service. It is the fourth ship in a series of vessels designed by Vard Marine and built by Babcock Marine Appledore, and is named for the writer George Bernard Shaw.

According to the Irish Naval Service:

“LÉ George Bernard Shaw (pennant number P64) is the fourth and final ship of the P60 class vessels built for the Naval Service in Babcock Marine Appledore, Devon. In keeping with the ethos of a continuous learning organisation, she contains a number of minor improvements over her sister ships, aimed primarily at improving energy efficiency whilst still maintaining effectiveness. She is designed as on Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV), with the endurance and capability to defend Ireland’s interests at, and from, any sea in the world.”

The ship was accepted into service in October 2018, and, following a military fit-out, has commenced Maritime Defence and Security Operations at sea. Additionally, the ship recently conducted night operations & fishery protection duties.

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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54 COMMENTS

    • Is appledore still owned by babcock? I would think even 3 shipyards may be a struggle to keep in business with just Royal Navy orders. Slow build type 26 asw frigate at BAE govan, sub building at BAE barrow, type 31 frigate at rosyth and probably carrier refit.
      Are appledore or any other yards in the rest of the U.K. bidding for future ships? Solid stores, then the amphibious (can’t remember the name, 6 of them)

      • Appledore is owned by H&W now, but they built HMS Scott so have ability to build ships upto roughly 130m /13k Tons which is between Rivers and T31/32 size so unless we build another class of large OPV/patrol corvette don’t think can do more than build modules like they did for carriers. Of course the sensible thing would have been to order t-26 earlier to be built in Glasgow and have Rivers built in Devon

        • Their fit out quay is tidal though which caused significant delays to several of the P60s and at least one major repair to a misaligned shaft. Not sure how viable that is for other major builds.

      • To be honest Monkey If you look at the national ship building strategy the three main yards have decades of work even with just the frigates and nuclear subs. We actual need more yards to satisfy the full requirements if our government actually orders from British yards.

        on the large ship side we have many hundreds of thousand tons of dry stores ship, amphibians and red ships and strategic sea lift ships that will need building over the next 20 years, that actual probably 2 ship yards worth.

        Then smaller ships we have the mine warfare vessels coming up and after that replacement patrol ships, survey vessels as well as boarder force cutter, this could keep appledor in clover for ever.

        beyond that we have Hundreds of small boats from force protection, ships boats and lading craft that could keep no end of small boat builder in business.

        But this is if the Government is not all trousers and no action. It a massive opportunity to rebuild British ship building unless they squander the opportunity and go for short term cheapism and buy all the vessels from the Far East and bugger the geopolitical strengthening of our own nation.

        • Of course the opportunity will be missed with the current PM.

          You think BJ plans further ahead than 6cosine(45) in front of his pelvis?

          • Yes I dont like the guy but after years of cut cut cut he is first to recognise we dont live in the fluffy nice world they thought, bad guys dont follow the rules!
            Good on him, rebuilding the navy is a good start but lets see if they can help the army in is incredible lack of lethality and capabilities, its ok deploying 4000 more infantry to East Europe what are they to fight with??

  2. Is that a Melara 75mm cannon I see?

    Cripes, our Type 31s will only have a 57mm Mk110 gun. Lets hope we don’t get into an argument with the Irish over fishing rights 🙂

    • If the T31 did, it would probably take out the OPV using its helicopter long before it could use its gun. Failing that, using its Sea Ceptors in anti-ship mode would do the job.
      (Assuming it wasn’t carrying any Block V TLAMs in its proposed Type 41 VLS tubes…)

      • Ramming and rubbing don’t do wonders for a hull’s long life. It is the worse thing that can happen to a ship. Some never recover and are crippled for the remaining time they have.

        • There are some lovey examples and pictures from the cod wars, the Icelanders loves a bit of ramming and rubbing. I think the RN found it all a bit off putting, getting rubbed up the wrong way by a load of Icelandic patrol boats with Napoleon complexes.

    • Know it’s only light hearted, but the 57 & 76 have pros and cons. So, you takes your choice. Personally, perfectly happy with our 57mm (combined with same make 40 on Type 31, must lead to efficient operation overall).

  7. George Bernard Shaw – nasty piece of work and held some appalling views, out right sympathiser and apologist for Soviet oppression and marxist ideologies.

    • A former Minister of Defence pretty much forced the change in naming conventions, but the navy needed the hulls so went with the change.

    • Indeed, not only that he also held at same time some sort of weird supremacist views within his socialism, just like if you don’t contribute enough to socialism you are some sort of lesser-human.

  8. Nice to see the warm relations between the UK and Ireland as illustrated here despite our troubled past. Contrast this with the actions of Putin whose brutalising of ethnic kin, close neighbours and former partners in the Soviet Union really illustrates how evil this individual is. Also let us not forget that both Kruschev and Brezhnev had Ukranian roots.
    The Irish OPV’s are good looking ships

    • The Navy’s have always been the most connected given the RN basically helped create it, pity Dev didn’t take up the suggestion of getting some of the Free Polish Navy integrated.

  9. OT: Interesting to see La Truss suggesting warplane supply to Ukraine by NATO allies.

    I’m wondering what we have in the UK inventory, and the only thing I can think of potentially in any quantity are upgraded Hawk T1s for ground attack.

    How many of these have we kept, how many are a parts-mine, and what spec / condition are they? As a mainly trainer, they are presumably easy to learn.

    To me that has a feel of making sense. AIUI they are still in production, and operated by many intermediate-tech level airforces. So a potential role after all this is done with.

    • The Hawk’s we have spare won’t offer much if anything ( being Trainers ) in the way of Ground Attack – while something is always better than nothing they just wouldn’t be worth the effort and expense.

    • Ms Truss is thinking of swopping Soviet era jets with N.A.T.O. surplus aircraft (or nearly so) for former Warsaw Pact countries who could pass these on. It was an idea suggested weeks ago.

      The striking feature of the war so far has been the non performing Russian air force. Maintenance, spares, training or all three?

    • >In keeping with the ethos of a continuous learning organisation, she contains a number of minor improvements over her sister ships, aimed primarily at improving energy efficiency whilst still maintaining effectiveness.

      Irish Tricolour is more aerodynamic 😎

    • Taz, the Jack Staff is for the Jack i.e. the National Flag. The Ensign flys from the stern so the National Flag is in the correct spot

      • PS-just checked the photo.In virtually every Commonwealth and other nation the National Flag is the Jack and flies from the bow. I see in the above photo the Tricolour is indeed on the “wrong” pole, but the Jack staff is at the bow not the stern. The only other country that i can recall doing this was Canada who swapped the Ensign and staff between the traditional spots. They have since reverted to the traditional placings and reinstated the Royal title

        • Ireland has a naval ensign, I’m asking why isn’t it being flown in place of the national flag. Did somebody get it wrong?
          Easy enough to make errors. As you spotted I called the ensign staff the jack and that’s after 40 years with the RN. I just had a senior moment.

  11. I for one would like to see the Irish republic spend 2% minimum on defence and increase cooperation with neighbouring countries. Northern Ireland’s contribution to defence is massive compared to it’s size and a credit to it’s inhabitants.

    • The Irish property crash didn’t help things. Once the drama of the cost of living crises is over I think ROI will increase their spending. They don’t need a particularly large army but should be able to police their own airspace and eez.

      • The Crash mainly resulted in procurement delays, hence why the new CASAs are only being delivered now, and why the P60 and MRV were delayed. The defence spend had been dropping in percentage terms since the GFA in the 90s (though the increasing economy offset that to a degree).

        The Commissions findings are out now, and Coveney is meant to bring proposals to Cabinet by June, rumours have floated that it might be a doubling of spending to about €2 billion.

    • NI is part of the U.K., so I’m not sure how you separate it out in terms of defence, since that’s a national policy? Ireland won’t be spending 2% on defence under any circumstances (even at the height of the Troubles it was still only in the mid 1% range), as for cooperation it depends entirely in what you mean, we already do cooperate across a range of areas.

    • They don’t need to. Not in NATO, no EU requirement to spend on defence, they’re a neutral/militarily unaligned nation. This may change as the EU move toward closer and closer integration but for now, they’re fine.

      Geographically they’re pretty safe from invasion & if anyone was ever mad enough to invade, in addition to the UK undoubtebly getting involved (if not because we’d probably feel obliged, we don’t want to end up sharing a land border with an agressor) all of the EU are required to come to their aid.

      No air force required as the RAF looks after their air-space for them. They just sleep soundly under the warm blanket of safety the UK & EU provides without having to spend a penny.

      • It is already changing, or at least potentially is, come back in June and there might be more information on what that might be, rumours suggest at least the Commissions “LoA2” with about €2 Billion budget, so effectively a doubling, though no idea on the time frame of that.

        • It is changing quite a bit. Collective security has been proven to work since the Russian invasion. Now Ireland and Austria need to sign up to NATO. Ireland does not need a big military but it does need to have a better equipped force than it has.

  12. I remember the Irish air force at RIAT in the 90s. It left Dublin around 09:00 and arrived at Fairford about 11:00.

  14. Anyone confirm that Babcock still has a contract for up to 8 P50-U fast attack craft for Ukraine since Donbas war kicked off? Aware framework agreement struck in February, but comment in Sunday Times seems to counter. Ukraine London Ambassador, Prystaiko, stated “We had to scrap this project. It was delay after delay”.

    • I thought 1 was supposed to be built in Scotland and the other 7 in Ukraine. Given the war there are other priorities even if all 8 were to be built here.

      • Did write a longer coninuation of this but it seems not to have got through. Anyway, essence was querying status of contract itself based upon reported quote from ambassador.

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