The Ministry of Defence has declined to give a firm date for when the first Type 31 frigate, HMS Venturer, will reach initial operating capability, the UK Defence Journal understands.

Asked by the Conservative MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, Mark Francois, for the current estimated IOC date, Defence Minister Luke Pollard said only that the ship was “scheduled to be handed over to the Royal Navy by the end of the decade”.

HMS Venturer is the lead ship of the five-strong Type 31 class, also known as the Inspiration class, being built by Babcock at Rosyth in Scotland. The class is intended to be a general-purpose frigate that sustains fleet numbers while carrying out tasks such as maritime security, forward presence and escort duties, and the programme has been held up as a model for a faster, more affordable approach to warship building.

The “end of the decade” is later than the dates the programme once carried. HMS Venturer had at an earlier stage been expected in service around 2027, itself a revision of original planning that had envisaged the first ship entering service earlier in the decade. The schedule has moved over the life of the programme for a number of reasons, including the effects of the pandemic on industry, supply-chain disruption and inflation, factors that have affected major shipbuilding projects across the board rather than this one alone.

Part of the more recent timeline also reflects deliberate choices in how the ship was built. Venturer was kept inside the assembly hall at Rosyth longer than first planned so that more of the fitting-out could be completed under cover, an approach intended to improve build quality and reduce the work needed once the ship was in the water.

She was floated off into the Firth of Forth in June 2025 and is now being fitted with masts, sensors and weapons, with combat systems integration carried out in partnership with Thales UK.

The wider class remains officially planned to be in service by the early 2030s, with steel already cut on later ships and construction running in parallel at Rosyth.

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64 COMMENTS

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  4. Seem to recall “35 by 35” was the slogan used by Babcock. Lucky if we get “5 by 35” at this rate.

    • Wasn’t it “30 by 2030”? Might have misheard. Any extras will be welcome, for the RN and exports.

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  6. Wasn’t the original in-service date 2023? Let me look that up…. Yes it was. Promised in 2017, back when it was a Type 31e.

    • Selected In 2019. £250 Million limit on cost. Delivery dates pushed back from 2023 to “Who the feck knows”.

      Any Future Export Orders ? Who the feck knows.

      Batch 2/T32 ? Who the feck knows.

      Will It even work ? Who the feck knows.

      Will there be any T23’s left ? Who the feck knows.

      • Re your last point. A quick look at the out of service dates suggests that the T23 are leaving service at an approximate rate of one a year since 2021. However, some are stuck in refit because they are in such a poor condition so there are in fact only 5 currently available. So my guess would be by 2031 could see us down to a couple of T23 at the most given the rate of deterioration of these ships.

        S**t, I should have stuck with feck knows! Far less disturbing.

        Cheers CR

        • With all these decommissioning ships there’s got to be a lot of spare parts for use on other ships.
          Those CAMM silos. Why not remove and reuse them if still good. 32 tubes each and non deck piercing, maybe extras on the T45s, T31s, carriers? All them spare 30mm too.

          • And all the Artisan’s. If not bring reused or sold any possibility for a land based role? Tie in with CAMM batteries.

        • There probably won’t be a single T23 left by 2031, which is only 5 years away, due to their bad condition (the less ships you have, the more you use them, the faster they degrade), lack of sailors and increased maintenance needs that will saturate the maintenance capabilites (same issue as with the submarines).

    • I just realised 9 years ago ministers were saying it’ll be operational in 6 years, and now they seem to be saying something very similar. If it’s handed over at the end of the decade and it takes two years to get operational, that would mean Pollard is saying it’s still six years away. Despite the fact that the ship has launched and is currently being fitted out.

      It doesn’t say anything about the ship, but I think it says everything about ministers.

      • I read somewhere recently that Babcock losses on the class had risen to £170m. The reason given was that they had built the hulls in the wrong order necessitating significant redesign work. The way is read was not clear but I figured that the meant that Babcock must have built some of the blocks out the order, but I struggled to see why that would require redesign work? Unless, the design of one or more of the blocks built out of order was not as mature as it should have been, meaning they effectively set themselves up for an expensive fail..!

        If that is what happened then well done to Babcock for being open and honest, but I hope they learn the lessons and can speed up going forward. We could really do with having two warship builders if only to keep BAE Systems on their toes.

        Cheers CR

        • It’s all good now though.
          A team of Airfix Engineers figured It out and now they are just waiting for the Glue to dry.

          3 Tins of Humbrol Admiralty Grey are due for delivery soon.

          Cheers HW.

        • Yes,to give Babcock’s some slack they have never completed a Ship Build from start to finish before,but as a counter it didn’t put them off bidding on the Contract.I find the ‘Block’ issue confusing – there are many scenarios which could apply here,i fail to see how Blocks can be built in the wrong order.They either made them incorrectly and had to re-make them,or they made them and had to re-work them due to External Design changes.

          • What is a worry is it looks like the early ships are being built with only the 2 CAMM farm slots cut out which means extra work if they need to inserting another two or the four mk41s. Some waste of material plating. Why not do the full cut up front? Will there be a hybrid mix of CAMM farm and mk41s? Could they have fitted the CAMM farm to the same dimensions as the mk41 spaces?

  7. More a comment on the pace of delivery of first in class rather than quantity. Frustrating that there are two hulls in the water and no sign of progress of Venturer.

    • They’ve still not ordered the Mk 41s for the T31s. They ordered them for the T26s in 2018. To me that doesn’t sound like they are thinking about bringing forward the capability inserts.

      • Be interested to know if they’ll go for just 4x mk41s or a mk41 and CAMM farm mix aka T26s. CAMM from mk41s seems a waste unless it’ll be CAMM-ER or MR or Aster?
        Why not cut the space slots for the mk41s and adapt the CAMM farm to fit? Might get up to 40 missiles if RNZN Anzacs got 20 CAMM out of their 2x mk41 spaces. CAMM-ER could be made to fit into CAMM farm. Do they then need 4x mk41s or 2 in B position plus super CAMM farm amidships plus NSM. Might save a few quid and a heap of weight.

        • My guess is pretty bleak. They’ll want to wait a few years and not upgrade at all. They’ll talk about upgrades in the future, but it won’t happen. Everything will be pushed towards large uncrewed vessels, and T31s won’t get missile silo upgrades until the bigwigs have fallen out of love with hybrid. Maybe some NSMs. A criminal waste of potential if I’m right. Obviously it’s cheaper to put missiles on hulls you already have.

          Sorry. I’m having a glass half empty moment.

          • If the early T31s are going to have crap level of armaments they’ll be a good replacement for the B1 Rivers at least. Maybe they can order an additional three at a higher spec later.

          • If the early T31s are going to have crap level of armaments they’ll be a good replacement for the B1 Rivers at least. Maybe they can order an additional three at a higher spec later.

        • Jeeze. Forget then mk41s then and evolve the CAMM farm to take ER, MR and Anti Sub weapon. Buy Sylver for Aster and Stratos if you have too.

    • Don’t panic Capt Mainwaring; I’m sure the announcement delays are all part of the cunning plan to build Formidable, Bulldog and Campbeltown to the Danish spec to include Mk41, CaMM-MR and TSA 😉

  9. GENERAL PURPOSE (GP) Is pushing it a bit With Very Little ASW…! T31 More of a Very Large Missile OPV !
    ‘ A problem Child for The Navy’ !

    • And don’t forget NZ. Though they’re likely to go for Mogami unless a Mogami/AH140 hi/lo mix if they may want to replace their two Opvs.

  11. ‘We are burying our heads in the sand hoping that all the nasty people go away so we can get back to justifiably cutting all defence projects to the bone’.

    Seems to be between the lines of every statement HMG makes on defence nowadays. I bet they’re still blindly hoping for a miracle in Ukraine or Iran in the next few weeks so they can put the DIP back into the ‘For Review’ pigeonhole.

  12. There is no good reason why a ship this size should take more than 5 years from first steel cut to commission.

    Somewhere along the line, we have lost the ability to project manage, expedite, and mitigate for serious delays.

    • Agreed.

      However I would suggest you forgot the loss of engineering know how. There are simply not enough experienced engineers in this country and unfortunately experience comes with one really big unavoidable investment requirement – time! And if things go to wrong way we ain’t got enough time to rebuild our once proud engineering basis.

      Right now Ukraine is doing us a big favour staying in the fight and buying the west time with her blood and we are shamefully wasting that time.

      Cheers CR

      • greed, loss of know how. HS2 is another example of failed infrastructure, followed, perhaps to a lesser extent, by Hinkley Point, Heathrow next, what could possibly go wrong.

      • Indeed good project managers should be recruited from experienced engineers.
        But having said that todays ship builders are better equipped than ever,
        computer aided design, digitised project and logistics management, CNC cutting and machining,

        Wondering what our peers in France,Spain and Italy have done differentially

  14. The result of failing to respond to aggression– in 2014! Fancy. The current government that I loath cannot however be blamed for a dire state of affairs (yet). This situation is the result of a plan to run down defence spending decades ago and it worked.

    • Options For Change was a seminal moment,any Government at that time would have tried to Cash in on the ‘Peace Dividend’ , but yes the warning signs were ignored in 2008 ( Georgia ) and 2014.

  15. Very bad news and desperate times for the RN. With the demise of Iron Duke, I think I’m correct in saying no operational T23’s are left at HMNB Portsmouth? And just five of the ASW version are left at Devonport – HMS Portland, Sutherland, Somerset, Kent, Northumberland and St Albans. But the 30-year-old Somerset seems to have constant problems and breakdowns and it’s hard to see her getting another major refit, I fully expect her to decommission next year. There must be huge pressure on BAE to get the first two T26’s in to service before the last couple of T23’s cease to be seaworthy, so reports that Glasgow now won’t begin sea trials until early 2027 is pouring petrol on the fire.

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  17. As a newcomer to this site could someone please explain to me how the Royal Navy keeps over 30k personnel gainfully employed?
    And now a timeline for the most spectacularly underarmed ‘warship’ in the 5-6000 tonne class of all time: basic CAMM equpped iteration in service 2030, in dock for Mk 41 VLS fit 2031, some missiles to go in the VLS 2033, into dock for 6 year refit, 2034, a 6 week cruise in 2040 prior to being sold to Chile for £5 million.
    Can we just bin the Scottish shipyard job creation scheme and follow the Aussie lead in buying our kit from Japan!

    • Too much common sense in buying from another nation. This mess was created by politicians favouring Scotland, end of. And before the biters bite? I know a few very skilled welders and engineers who would relocate to ship building jobs if they were in England. Go think.

  18. Of course there’s no in service date, our pathetic Government doesn’t want to spend the required funds to make sure they are equipped with the correct weapons systems etc. There’s 3 more years of dingy dwellers to fund, feed and finance before they are fighting for their existence at the next election, and those funds need to be re-directed to ensure votes from certain communities are bought and paid for!

  19. Well someone has to say it… Should we really be building any warships at the moment, considering…
    The Carriers propulsion systems are still knackered.
    The Nuclear subs are all waiting for maintenance.
    Only 1 mebbe 2 type 45’s are available, as the others are having maintenance, due to fubar design & development.

    So lots of the ‘wrongs’ with our naval vessels are because of research, development and fatal design flaws! Corruption? Greed? Cutting corners? A complete and utter shit show. It truly is embarrassing. In short only 19% of our Navy is working! 19 ******* percent!

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