HMS Active rolled out of the build hall at Rosyth this week, and you could feel what it meant to the people there.
The second of the Royal Navy’s Type 31 frigates moved slowly out of Babcock’s Venturer Building, the vast assembly hall where she has taken shape over the past few years. Once clear of the doors, the scale of her really hits you. Steel, angles, the lump of steel looks like a warship now.
Babcock staged the moment with the spectacle it deserved as one of the most important milestones in recent UK shipbuilding history. Lighting, music, a tightly run programme. But what stood out was the workforce as hundreds gathered to watch. People were smiling, taking photos. It felt more like a party than a routine industrial evolution. They have earned it.
HMS Active has completed her main structural build. From here she moves into final outfitting before being floated out and prepared for sea trials. Systems will be integrated, tested, refined. The long process of turning a hull into a fighting ship continues.
Defence Minister Luke Pollard said: “These milestones show Scottish shipbuilding at its best. From starting construction for HMS Bulldog to rolling out the impressive HMS Active, this programme is delivering world-class warships for the Royal Navy and real economic benefits for communities across Scotland and the wider UK.”
He added: “The frigates will serve our nation for decades to come, and the skills and infrastructure we’re building here will secure the future of Scottish shipbuilding for generations.”
First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said: “HMS Active’s roll-out and HMS Bulldog’s steel cut represent real momentum in delivering the ships the Royal Navy needs. These versatile frigates will be workhorses of the fleet, capable of operating across a wide spectrum of maritime operations.”
He continued: “The Type 31 Inspiration class represents a major step forward in modernising our fleet. These are capable and adaptable ships, designed to give the Royal Navy the flexibility it needs in a fast-changing strategic environment.”
The roll-out happened on the same day steel was cut on HMS Bulldog, the fourth ship in the class. That tells its own story about pace, stay tuned.
The Type 31 programme supports around 1,250 jobs directly, with a similar number across the UK supply chain. More than 400 apprentices have come through partnerships with local colleges.
For Rosyth, this was a visible moment as the doors opened and the ship came out. More importantly, though, a workforce that has put years into this programme got to stand back and see what they have done.
Well done all!
Bloody good news,keep it up!
Impressive how quickly Babcock are getting these hulls out.
BAE should take note.
Making the steel hull of a warship is one thing….it is quite another to fit it out and get it fully tested and working.
That will be the test of how quickly they can bring the fleet up to numbers.. the sad thing is for a sustainable fleet we only really need BAE and Babcock to produce 1 warships a year between them.. but we have created an unstable rush due to a 10 year order gap..
Yes, I worry what’s next.
In terms of new ships to build, there’s the Type 83, the MRSS, OPV replacements, and maybe Type 32. How does the government plan to sustain Babcock going forward, or will they rely entirely on foreign orders?
I was not talking about the fitting out, we all know that is a bottleneck
So what happens then?
There is a row of T31’s awaiting fitting out?
The two things have to move in sync…..I sincerely hope that Babcock do manage to get both processes moving together.
All the investment by Babcock and BAE appears to have gone into hull fabrication.
Can the fittout processes be sped up ? … who knows?
We may end up in a situation where there are not enough dry docks to handle the rate of hulls requiring fitout.
Maybe the MOD should offer some of the fit out work to Cammel Laird.
More likely that other nations will fit out UK fabricated hulls.
Very hard to justify spending on the learning curve of hulls fabrication in a number of countries….unless you are AUS and CAN….
Go Babcock!!
Great news. Hopefully we see Venturer going through Contractor trials shortly. T31s ARE GO…..
Well done Babcock, I do have a concern. At this rate the build hall will have no hulls to build in about four years, the investment into the build hall, skilled work force etc will be sitting doing not very much. Possibly it is time for either a batch II T31 or the stretched T31 concept for the T32.
Someone has to build MRSS and unlike BAE, Babcock has the large gantry crane.
Babcock has a joint bid with Saab to build the Swedish Navy’s frigates. Unlike France’s bid where almost no work will be done in Sweden and very little Swedish weapons systems onboard, the Babcock/Saab bid sees the hull built in Rosyth with superstructure and final systems
integration taking place in Sweden. I cannot see the Saab/Babcock bid not winning the work.
Looking forward:
– BAE, Norwegian T26
– BAE, Type 83
– Babcock, Swedish hulls
– Babcock, MRSS
Great picture and it looks like the work force had a well deserved moment to celebration their efforts. Well done to Babcock for putting on such a show, as this type of thing can really contribute to team spirit.
Now we need to order a few more. 13 frigates will not be enough especially if we are serious about Atlantic Bastion and want to maintain it in conditions where Low Earth Orbit is denied by ASAT weapons because in such conditions command and control or direction of the drones will be reduced to line of sight or use of airborne comms relays. In effect, the drones will enhance and push the operational horizon of the frigates’ far over the conventional horizon but it will still be the frigates’ that coordinate the battle in the event of a loss of satellite communications and observation.
I also note that the four ship is now in build, so my guess is that the supply chain are already building long lead items for ship five and some companies many already close to running down their production lines. We should remember that war with Russia and her allies will be an industrial war. Given we and the wider West have transferred our industrial capabilities to China and other developing counties we are not well placed to fight a major war. Rebuilding our industry means delivering orders and steady and predictable manner something our politicians need to take note of. Stopping at five T31 is daft, frankly. Order another three as an absolute minimum or face defeat at sea.
Sounds silly? We should remember the state that the USN is in with regards to it’s escort fleet and their production woes. I get the distinct impression that we have, for the moment at least, a head start at sorting ourselves out. It would be a real shame to throw it all away for the sake of short term fiscal expediency. I.e. stupidity.
So yeah, well done and congratulations to Babcock and their people, but take note politicians of all parties. We need a bigger navy. A MUCH bigger navy and Babcock deserve more orders.
Cheers CR
Past posts have pushed the “Rule of three” for frigates. Another 4 T31 would keep Babcock moving while a “T31+” design is always being promoted?
Crew numbers and cash is always the negative argument, but as you say, we need the fleet size.
Is the rule of three still applicable to such modern builds such as the type 26 and 31?
Take a look at the Astoots !
If they don’t get them, this will show just how out of touch with reality the Govt is. Bad enough over recent decades we have allowed out capacity to stagnate and dispute through no consistency of orders but to go back to any concept of boom and bust yet again in the present dangerous environment would be beyond crass. And yet judging by present experience I have little faith in that not happening. Talk and action are very distant cousins on resent evidence and defence does not play to their overwhelming play to restore votes by the next election so I fear they will consider talk enough for the most part leaving any real investment to the next Govt to handle.
The thing that is important is that this now gives the UK options.. we have created a naval shipbuilding capability that in the 2030s deliver 2 escorts a year.. for context that’s more than the US can produce at present.. with a large 20,000+ plus’s shipyard in Belfast and moving forward the massive recapitalisation of our nuclear submarine industry we now have the industrial capacity to build essentially whatever navy we have the will to have..
And let’s be clear industrial capacity is actually the hardest nut to crack.. a few things have fallen in line for the Uk that has allowed it to regenerate its industrial capabilities:
1)the frigate crisis of not laying down a frigate for 18 years has even with a shrinking navy created a massive backlog that secured a decade of work for 2 yard ( a situation we have not had for a generation)
2) the new yards and designs from the frigate crisis creating an opportunity to sell ships.. which has been seized.. Turing the UK back into a major exporter of warships and bits of warships
3) the UK needing to build a new SSBNs and SSNs ( again due to massive backlogs and delays ) just as Australia decided to become a SSN power
4) the delay in building large warships and the scrapping of perfectly good large warships ( a bay and 2 Albions) at the same time as the frigate crisis created the need for a 3rd large warship yard..
This is essentially a unique situation created by the Cold War warship glut and then draw down, government incompetence over decades around the navy and finally Cameron’s austerity… essentially 35 years of neglect created the opportunity for renewal..
Now all that needs to happen is for the government to take the opportunity that it has been given… now 4 years ago this would not have happened and the government would have ignored it, but we get to the second driver.. opportunity: collapse of the international order and geostrategic chaos/great power flux..1) Russia created a European war and became our enemy,2) china made it clear if it did not get its wayward island in peace it would declare war and has build the largest navy on the planet as proof its serious.. 3) then a year ago the hegemonic power of the west essentially resigned its position and told its hegemony members they were essentially on their own and that trade with its traditional enemies may even be more important than the security the members of its hegemony
These to things are huge.. because we now have opportunity/the capability and the need to rebuild the navy we should never have squandered away on the security of US hegemony and the ideas behind the “ end of history and last man”.
All we need now is the political and social will.. so the political classes need to leave their late 20c and early 21c dogma behind and the public need to understand that pax America is dead and we are leaving a PAX for a time of war and conflict that will visit our shores if we let it.
This would allow us to order the ships our industry can provide and spend the next decade creating the manpower to operate those ships..
Now some will say we cannot and never will.. it’s a fantasy.. I say who is living in the fantasy.. because the true fantasy is saying a navy of 19 escorts and 7 SSNs will keep us safe and secure and act as a deterrent in a world tearing itself up through great power wars and geostrategic competition.. world in which you will be seen as either predator or pray.
I agree with everything you say Jonathan.
I just hope that the delay in the publishing of the DIP reflects some kind of hard fought argument for increased defence spending against the will and power of His Majesty’s Treasury who we now know ‘resent’ spending anything on defence. This ‘resentment’ issue was put on record last year by at least one former senior Treasury official in a TV interview that I caught in part, so we can be absolutely sure the defence ministers will have their work cut out. The only recent good indicator is the PM’s comment regarding bringing the increase to 3% of GDP spending target forward a couple of years or so. Welcome but wishy washy as usual.
If this government is series about economic growth they could do far worse than applying the old military maxim of, ‘re-enforce strength and abandon weakness’. In other words, they can control defence spending and influence how industry invests in production capabilities far more effectively than any other sector. Our revitalised ship building industry being probably the best example going! Also, the money invested in defence tends to employ people in better paid high tech or high skilled jobs so more of the tax spent on defence is going to filter down into the wider economy. Also defence is one of the last parts of the economy nation states can still intervene with directly without breaking international trade rules.
It is a win win situation and the alternative is a very real risk the conventional deterrence will fail and we will find ourselves face hit and run ‘raids’ from Russian subs not unlike the Kaiser’s battleships attacking UK coastal towns in WW1 and we had the dominate navy back then..!
Cheers CR
I agree that the ‘we can’t’ because ‘we don’t have the cash/people’ narrative of declinism is constantly massively overplayed.
Part of making the things more can-do is simply building at economic volumes and paces rather than the artifically slowed production to preserve skills and eek out in year cash but waste overall cash. This is where having the Norwegian T26s and hopefully some export T31 hulls will make a huge difference as the T31 line can then be run on a 9 month ship out cycle.
USN has 76 escorts – UK yards have orders for 18 escorts as it stands and possible 19 escorts and that may well rise with more T31+ and T31 exports.
It really would be something to tell Trump that UK was rebuilding NATO warship strength with ~30 frigates whilst US was……building coast guard cutters and painting them grey…..
Good post Jonathan. When Boris Johnson spoke about T32 I believe he was expressing a sentiment that is universally endorsed across the political spectrum. The resurrection of shipbuilding at Rosythe, H&W ( Navantia) and BAE etc and ongoing support for their programs has taken years. We can debate the shape, but I believe there is genuine desire across politics to increase the size of the Royal Navy. By the way, I think ‘pray’ is spelled ‘prey’ That said, prayer can’t do any harm 🙂
Good stuff.
Healthy, I think, that there are two shipbuilders rather than just the one. BAES might not try to rip the taxpayer off as much as before.
But I ignore the platitudes from the minister, and to some degree from the 1SL.
Heard it all before and they don’t address the wider issues over funding and numbers, all of which were created by HMG.
When we eventually get back to 13 Frigates, they’ve only hit the new low benchmark, and will call it a success and the all the other tired platitudes that come out.
20 Frigates was the number, the 16 T23 and the 4 remaining modern T22B3 after older T22 were cut.
Where is confirmation that HMG intend to order a second batch?
This is great – I want more pictures and a video George
what is interesting is this is made for TV – yet I haven’t seen anything which is really disappointing.
We have a really good capability now in terms of shipbuilding – its time we really get behind it and place orders for the next 25 yrs – 2 manned surface ships (all types) per year and 12 unmanned vessels is hardly going to break the bank.
for Subs we should be aiming for 1 manned submarines every per yr over 25 yrs with 1 SSBN 2 SSBN & 2 SSK + 5 USVs every 5 yrs, if we can fund it – arguably this is more critical than the surface fleet for an island nation.
When the cost of all this is spread out over 25 yrs and ringfenced it is very doable. as it can be argued that HMTs habit of getting in year savings that result in long term additional costs is the single most destructive issue and one HMT have become addicted to. With military inflation is c.10% normally it is never going to be cost effective in the mid to long run which creates a need for further cuts. This is the doom loop we must break.
with a Capex budget of £9bn pa for the RN annually or c.15% of the overall MOD budget (today)
£4 bn pa for subs
£2.5 bn pa for Surface fleet / Atlantic Bastion assets
£1.5 bn pa for Air Assets
£1 bn pa munitions
A T26 costs £680m as of last tranche, T31 around £400m and an Astute c.£2bn, SSK c.£800m with dreadnought at £8bn (all est. unit prices)
Its doable but needs to be ruthlessly managed, for this I would put the Defence Select Committee in charge not the ministers as it really needs to be a cross party endeavour and make the 2SL responsible for it (1SL is accountable – both should be fired if they fail with agreed deliverables).