Learning to love the Common Combat Vessel

There is a common turn of phrase, used with a degree of gallows humour, that records where someone happened to be when a famous celebrity or public figure died, usually Elvis: “I remember where I was when X died…”

The more mundane the location, the funnier the punchline. You can easily add the cancellation of a naval procurement program to that concept.

In the case of the Type-83, I was sitting at my dining table eating breakfast before work, doing what I usually do in that moment: looking through my news feeds on my laptop. The article “UK to buy drone command warships instead of new destroyers” caught my eye immediately. My first reaction, over a bowl of cereal, was confusion. I checked the date to see whether it was April, and then started to mull over what I was reading. Now, don’t get me wrong; I was certainly quite excited about the Type-83. As you may have noted in my earlier article on Tempest/GCAP, it even gets a small mention as part of a future vision of integrated combat and data sharing.

So you would think I would be upset about its cancellation. Looking through the enthusiast forums and the comment sections of articles about the decision, you can see the outrage bus being revved up, with commentary about “Putin laughing” or “penny pinching,” and many saying, “This is a cut to our air defence capabilities.” Well, my view is simple: this is an excellent decision, and the government should have taken it years ago, if not for the political awkwardness of cancelling a project as prestigious as an air defence destroyer.

I know you are all itching to blame the current Labour administration, but I need to break it to you in bold type: “Type-83 was an unfunded fantasy program that was never going to be built!” As for the announcement of drone command ships, that is smoke and mirrors, but I will come back to it.

Does anyone remember the Type-43?

Along a wall of my spare room there are three tall Ikea Billy bookcases; they contain what I like to call my “reference collection,” an eclectic set of books and reference manuals I have acquired over several decades. Tucked onto one shelf between a history of the AK47 and an encyclopedia by Ian Hogg is a fairly compact book titled “Rebuilding the Royal Navy: Warship Design since 1945,” written by David K. Brown and George Moore. Moore, who died in 2005, had a long career as a naval researcher, while Brown, who died in 2008, was a naval architect who retired as Deputy Chief Naval Architect of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. Arguably the peak of his career was designing the excellent Castle class offshore patrol vessel, a design so robust that one of them, Dumbarton Castle, sold to the Bangladesh Navy and renamed BNS Bijoy, withstood a calculated 0.5 to 1.1 kiloton explosion only a few hundred meters away, shielded only by a grain silo, without sinking in the notorious Beirut port explosion of 2020. It was towed away to Turkey, repaired and put back into service, which is a testament to the design and to David Brown.

The book, with its focus on design and naval architecture, covers the period between 1945 and the main gate decision for the Type-45, taking in nearly every class of vessel the Royal Navy built or considered building during that period. For such a compact volume it is packed with useful information, and it remains my go-to guide for understanding Royal Navy construction decisions to this day. If you ever manage to pick up a copy, page 12 has a useful snakes and ladders diagram that really cuts to the reality of ship procurement for the Royal Navy, and tucked deep into the pages are forgotten paper designs that never were. One of them was the Type-43, an intended large Sea Dart equipped follow-on to the Type-42; there was also a smaller Type-44 design, the low-cost option, so to speak.

Various ideas for these vessels were pushed around, including the use of the Type-22 and other hull forms. None of them came to be. The Type-42 was stretched in service, and eventually things moved on to the Horizon NATO frigate project, which is a story for another day. My point is that none of these concepts got serious traction; they were all minimally funded. I am aware of other paper concepts over the years that are not mentioned in this book. At one point, for example, there was the idea of adapting the Type-82 hull to the AEGIS combat system, an idea so minor that even finding a mention of it is hard. The truth is that, without serious backing and funding, a supposed future warship program can meander for years with barely any funding until it is eventually cancelled.

The pivot that wasn’t to be, and the hubris of Boris

Before I wander any further down this digression, let’s get back to the Type-83. Do you know how much was spent on it? Roughly £1 million, which in terms of UK defence spending is a rounding error. That should tell you something important about this whole situation: in the world of multi-billion-pound warship procurement, £1 million over three years is the financial equivalent of keeping the lights on in an empty room. It is loose change, enough to fund basic CAD renders and PowerPoint slides. It shows an MOD and a navy that are seriously uninterested in a ship.

Put simply, the Type-83 was never a serious project; it was a political placeholder awaiting a convenient time to be cancelled so the Navy could pivot to something it actually wants. Talk of drones and drone command ships is smoke and mirrors, meant to distract the public from the reality that this was a cost and mass driven decision.

The Type-83 was officially announced in the previous Conservative government’s 2021 Defence Command Paper.

• The intention: it was inserted during an era of optimistic post-Brexit “Global Britain” rhetoric, and was meant to signal that the UK would maintain a high-end, blue-water carrier escort capability into the middle of the century.
• The reality: no major industrial contracts were ever issued to BAE Systems or any other contractor, and no serious technical specifications were locked down. As the Ministry of Defence’s equipment plan black hole ballooned to over £16.9 billion, everyone involved, from the MOD to naval planners, knew the Type-83 was financially dead on arrival.

That 2021 Defence Command Paper contained an enthusiastic pivot to the Pacific, and the Type-83 is what you would build if you were planning to engage in a peer conflict with China. A 12,000 ton plus “exquisite” cruiser packing a 128-cell vertical launch system (VLS) and hyper-expensive, long-range radars is a weapon system designed specifically for high-intensity, blue-water carrier battles in the South China Sea against the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It was a product of the brief, post-Brexit “Global Britain” era, when the UK fancied itself a Pacific naval power. Since the beginning of Putin’s three day SMO, the UK’s immediate, existential threat has been Russia. Russia does not have a massive, functional blue-water surface fleet capable of fighting a Second World War style carrier battle in the Atlantic. The Russian threat comes from quiet nuclear submarines, hypersonic cruise missiles fired from land or from bombers, and hybrid sabotage of undersea internet cables.

There is still a need for an air defence destroyer, but the Royal Navy’s technology, and tangentially Europe’s, is already a generational overmatch for the surface fleet Russia possesses. What we and Europe do have is a presence gap. If the UK had proceeded with the Type-83, the skyrocketing costs would likely have reduced the procurement to just three or four hulls. Because of maintenance cycles and the rule of threes (one deployed, one training, one in refit), that would mean only one destroyer available at any given time: the “weight, power and manpower spiral” made flesh.

How much?!

As part of the Future Air Dominance System (FADS), early concepts for the Type-83 envisioned a massive hull carrying heavyweight radars, massive power generation for directed-energy weapons such as DragonFire, and massive missile silos. The MOD faced a massive funding gap. Buying “exquisite,” multi-billion-pound platforms meant the UK could likely only afford three or four hulls. Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis explicitly noted that CCVs are a smarter investment than a “small number of large expensive ships.” By buying the CCV, the Royal Navy gets six capable air defence destroyers, allowing mass and presence to be maintained.

The Royal Navy is not the only navy coming to this conclusion in recent weeks. Just like the Type-83, Germany’s F126 has bloated into an absolute monster. At over 10,500 tons, it was the largest German surface combatant planned since the Second World War, but it was plagued by compounding delays, contractor dysfunction and projected cost overruns that threatened to push the program beyond €18 billion. Rather than sink billions more into a massive, delayed project, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius pulled the plug and pivoted to procuring up to eight smaller, proven MEKO A-200 DEU frigates from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS).

Common Combat Vessel: smoke and mirrors

When it comes to anti-air warfare (AAW), the idea of relying heavily on uncrewed drone vessels to fire or guide missiles runs into massive physical barriers, whereas the logic for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is completely sound. To intercept a modern supersonic or sea-skimming missile, a ship needs massive radar power (AESA) to burn through electronic jamming, plus immense electrical and hydraulic power to manage, heat, cool and rapidly fire VLS cells. Uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) are typically small, light and optimized for endurance. Sticking a 24-cell Mk 41 VLS onto an uncrewed “missile barge” requires a massive hull, major power generation such as a large diesel generator or a gas turbine, complex automated damage control and a heavy cooling infrastructure. If the drone barge has no crew to manually reset tripped breakers, handle misfires or put out a localised fire, a single malfunction turns a multi-million-pound asset into a floating paperweight. ASW, on the other hand, is slow and methodical and relies on acoustic sensor coverage over vast areas, which makes it perfect for uncrewed systems.

To act as a remote AAW magazine for a carrier strike group, a drone barge cannot just drift in the ocean; it has to maintain a transit speed of 18 to 20 knots and sprint at 28 knots or more to keep pace with an aircraft carrier. To break it down:

• The weight spiral: keeping up with the fleet requires large, powerful marine diesel engines or gas turbines, and high-performance engines consume massive amounts of fuel.
• Losing the “drone” benefit: to carry thousands of tons of fuel, a heavy Mk 41 VLS matrix and the machinery to run them, the drone’s hull must balloon in size. Before long you have not built a cheap, disposable drone; you have built a 5,000 ton ship that lacks a crew.

Add to that the “highly explosive sitting duck” problem. A VLS module is not a passive cargo container. It is a highly volatile magazine packed with rocket propellant and high-explosive warheads, all carrying a multi-million-pound price tag.

• The vulnerability: without its own high-end radar and active electronic warfare jammers, an uncrewed missile barge is blind. It relies entirely on the command ship for situational awareness.
• The cascade failure: if an adversary fires a cheap, sea-skimming anti-ship missile or a loitering munition at the drone barge, the drone cannot perform complex evasive manoeuvres or deploy manual countermeasures. A single hit would detonate the VLS magazine, vaporizing millions of pounds of high-value missiles in a massive secondary explosion. To prevent that, you would have to dedicate a crewed frigate just to guard the drone, which defeats the entire purpose of an unmanned asset. So put me in the sceptical camp when it comes to a family of drone barges acting as active combat platforms for AAW.

If the drone side of AAW is impractical, why is the MOD pushing it? It acts as a convenient political smokescreen to mask a severe capacity gap. By labelling the CCV a “hybrid drone command hub,” the government can visually justify shrinking the size and raw armament of the ship compared with the cancelled Type-83. In reality, the actual air defence capability of the future fleet will likely remain concentrated in traditional, robust crewed hulls. Note that the Type-26 and Type-31 are both getting Mk 41 VLS, with some form of Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC); that means any frigate in the fleet can act as a missile bin, combined with the missile load-out of the CCV itself. That is not to say that some form of drone command will not be exercised from the CCV. It will, and that is baked into the future of the Navy, but underneath everything else it is an AAW destroyer, if it goes the way I expect.

So what will we get?

Looking forward, we already have an idea of what the CCV will be. It will probably still be fairly big, similar to the current Type-45, which itself will now probably remain in service beyond 2040. There appears to be a lean towards using an established hull as a basis, with the Type-26 and Type-31 both on the cards; both types have the margin to stretch to a similar tonnage to the Type-45. Also, do not be surprised if Navantia, via its H&W operations, puts forward a design as well. For propulsion, an MT30 gas turbine, MTU diesels and IEP appear to be the norm now, and I would not be surprised by some form of battery bank and the ability to use “green fuels” either. System-wise, expect either BAE Systems TC2 or Thales TACTICOS and some form of CEC, Mk 41 VLS and some kind of gun, probably the Mk 45. I could see Phalanx dropped in favour of the Bofors Fast Forty, and DragonFire lasers certainly. As for AAW missiles, that is where things get interesting.

For nearly eight decades the Royal Navy was trapped in a cycle of “missile lock-in.” If a ship was built to fire a specific missile, its radars, fire-control computers and launching tracks were completely hardwired to that single weapon system. If that missile became obsolete or suffered supply chain issues, the ship became a floating liability. Standardizing on strike-length Mk 41 VLS cells, pairing them with an advanced combat management system (CMS) and using modern active homing missiles completely shatters this historic vulnerability. If the Royal Navy wants to integrate a new American, Australian, Ukrainian or European missile into the Mk 41, it no longer has to rip out the ship’s physical wiring. Engineers simply write a software “app” for the CMS, allowing the ship’s brain to speak the missile’s language. This gives the Royal Navy and the UK MOD massive flexibility.

As for radar, that is becoming very clear as well. There is an industrial vacuum in the UK when it comes to developing a brand-new, high-end replacement for the BAE Systems Sampson radar. There is frankly a distinct lack of investment, or even interest, which is not entirely surprising. The truth is that Sampson was expensive and got no export sales, and it took roughly 20 years to go from initial proof of principle to a fully operational mast. Developing a completely sovereign, next-generation fixed-face active electronically scanned array (AESA) to replace it would require billions of pounds in upfront research and development.

There is an alternative solution, and the interest in the Australian CEAFAR is real and deepening. The Ministry of Defence has not just dropped hints; formal cooperation is actively accelerating. At the Australia-UK Defence Industry Dialogue, UK and Australian defence ministers formally confirmed that they are deepening joint work to explore putting Australian AESA technology onto British warships. The CEA Technologies CEAFAR system is already bought, paid for and proven in service with the Royal Australian Navy. Because CEAFAR uses a scalable, modular “microwave tile” architecture, it can be scaled down to fit a medium frigate or scaled up to act as a heavy area-defence hub. It provides exactly the 100% continuous, multi-target tracking required to handle hypersonic or saturated swarm threats, without the UK having to invent the technology itself.

The perfect AUKUS “offset”

A common critique of the AUKUS alliance in Australia is that it looks like a one-way street, with Australia spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy American and British nuclear submarine technology (AUKUS Pillar I) without getting something in return. Under AUKUS Pillar II, which focuses on advanced, collaborative military technologies, buying CEAFAR allows the UK to show that it is a reciprocal partnership. It acts as a massive industrial offset: Australia buys British submarine designs, and the UK buys world-class Australian radar technology.

Defence procurement often runs into fierce political opposition when major contracts go overseas, such as buying off-the-shelf American or European equipment, which critics claim “exports British jobs.” CEAFAR, however, has a unique political shield: the British public and media view Australia as a close, trusted cousin, so buying from Australia does not carry the same political baggage as relying on other foreign nations. Frankly it is win win, and do not be surprised if the CCV ends up with a CEAFAR array. I will certainly be happy about it.

Such is realpolitik

According to the dictionary, “realpolitik is a political or diplomatic approach based on practical, worldly objectives and material power rather than ideological, moral, or ethical considerations.” Coined in 19th-century Germany, it operates on the philosophy of adapting to “things as they are” in order to relentlessly pursue a state’s national interest.

In my opinion, we need some calm pragmatism over the cancellation of Type-83; it was cool, but it was also never going to happen. The Royal Navy and MOD regarded it as an awkward child lumbered on them by the Johnson government, not the only one as well, such are the former’s prolific abilities in such areas. Type-32 appears to have been a program born out of a slip of the tongue in Parliament, and rather than send a correction via Hansard, the MOD and Royal Navy were forced to spend years making up a capability and associated ship program to save his blushes. Unsurprisingly, because it never had a genuine strategic or financial foundation, the Type-32, like the Type-83, was quietly put on life support. By the time the National Audit Office looked at the equipment plan, the Type 32 was routinely flagged as an uncosted, high-risk fantasy.

I know you want to blame Starmer and the current Labour Government and I am not totally letting them off the hook on this but they made the right decision, what came with the announcement was purely managing of political optics, a version of the so called “throwing a dead cat on the table” method.

The timing and presentation of the June 2026 Type-83 cancellation are a textbook example of a government using a high-tech news distraction to mask a deeply unpopular financial reality. Instead of generating headlines that screamed “UK Cancels Strategic Air Defence Destroyer Due to Financial Black Hole,” the Ministry of Defence has attempted to shift the narrative to “Royal Navy Pivots to Cutting-Edge Drone Warfare Learned from Ukraine.”

The timing is also highly calculated; Labour has been saddled with the unfunded and unwanted Type-83 since they gained power in 2024. Shifting this massive policy change right during a prime ministerial transition allows both the outgoing and incoming administrations to win, in theory:

• The Outgoing “Unpopular” PM: They get to quietly bury the massive funding gap of the Type 83 program, ensuring that the legacy of a multi-billion-pound procurement failure isn’t pinned entirely on their final weeks in office.
• The Incoming “Industrial Midlands” PM: A new leader hailing from the UK’s manufacturing heartland gets the perfect platform to look strong, decisive, and forward-thinking from day one. They can frame the CCV program not as a desperate cost-saving measure inherited from their predecessor, but as a brand-new, intellectually rigorous “change of strategy.” It allows the new administration to immediately champion a fully tendered procurement program that will bring high-skilled manufacturing and engineering contracts directly to British industrial regions.

Because “Drone Command Ship” is a loose, poorly defined marketing term, the MOD doesn’t have to provide concrete technical specifications right away. It buys the government years of time. They can spend the next five years running cheap feasibility studies and testing small, experimental uncrewed vessels while the public thinks a revolutionary automated fleet is actively being built. This allows time for the real Air Defence Destroyer in the form of CCV to be properly conceptually designed and costed before the main gate decision. We have also avoided the massive expenditure that Germany made on the T126 class so there is that to celebrate!

Don’t be too upset about the cancellation of Type-83; no doubt in future books about Royal Navy ship design it will also, alongside Type-32, take up a page alongside Type-43 and CVA-01 of alternate Royal Navy fleets. I for one look forward to reading it!

This article is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines.