Navy yet to settle on guns for support ships

Consideration of the most appropriate gun solution for the Fleet Solid Support ships is ongoing, according to a written answer published on Thursday.

Luke Pollard, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, was responding to Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, who had asked what the Royal Navy’s most likely future gun solution is.

Mr Pollard said: “Consideration of the most appropriate gun solution for the Fleet Solid Support ships is ongoing.”

The question followed an answer given on 7 September, in which the minister confirmed that the automatic small calibre gun requirement had been removed from the manufacture contract with Navantia UK at a cost of £1.704 million recorded as a constructive loss, on the basis that it no longer matched the service’s likely future gun solution.

In that earlier reply he described a gun rationalisation programme introduced since the manufacture contract was placed, aimed at reducing the number of gun variants across the fleet and bringing commonality, which he said would provide longer term value for money.  He also said at the time that changing the requirement then avoided incurring greater losses later, which would have been associated with fitting and then replacing an incompatible system, and that the ships would be designed to accept a range of future gun systems.

The three Fleet Solid Support ships are being built by Navantia UK to carry ammunition, stores and provisions to the carrier strike group and the wider fleet. Construction is spread across the company’s British facilities, with Harland and Wolff in Belfast having begun work and the Methil yard in Fife having delivered the Seahorse pontoon that will move ship blocks between Appledore and Belfast.

Harland and Wolff completed the installation of eleven new cranes this week, bought for £1.5 million from Walter Watson Ltd of County Down as part of a £98.5 million modernisation of the Belfast yard.