BAE Systems and Norwegian shipyard Hamek have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on Norway’s maritime defence requirements, a move that could bolster the UK’s bid to supply Type 26 frigates to the Royal Norwegian Navy.

The agreement was formalised at an industrial collaboration event in Harstad, where Hamek is planning significant investment in its dry-docking and ship repair facilities. The event was attended by British and Norwegian defence and government representatives, alongside Royal Navy ship RFA Lyme Bay.

According to BAE Systems’ Norway Campaign Director, Bruce Balchin, the partnership builds on long-standing UK-Norway maritime ties:

“Norway and the UK share a strong maritime relationship built over decades of cooperation as close allies. This MOU enables us to build on our two nations’ industrial relationship as Hamek develops its plans for facilities investment in support of the current and future Norwegian fleet.”

The collaboration is directly linked to Norway’s ongoing procurement process for advanced maritime capability, with the Type 26 frigate being a key contender. The MOU paves the way for enhanced ship support and maintenance solutions, potentially bringing further economic and industrial benefits to Norway.

Hamek’s Managing Director, Jan Oddvar Olsen, highlighted the agreement’s importance:

“This MOU forms the basis for future growth and development of our company. Furthermore, implementation of the agreement will give Norway as a nation increased preparedness in the north.”

Type 26 Frigate – A Strong Contender for Norway

The Type 26 is one of the world’s most advanced warships, designed primarily for anti-submarine warfare and high-intensity air defence, but also capable of humanitarian aid and medical support operations. If selected by Norway, the frigate would join a growing fleet of Type 26-class vessels across multiple allied navies, including the UK, Australia, and Canada, with a combined 29-ship programme planned across the three nations.

The UK’s offer includes opportunities for greater interoperability and joint operational capability within NATO’s northern flank, an area of increasing strategic focus.

While Norway has yet to make a final decision on its future naval platform, this partnership signals a deepening UK-Norway defence relationship, reinforcing the UK’s bid to secure a role in Norway’s future fleet development.

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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62 COMMENTS

  1. Cue one Brit T26 re-flagging which SHOULD open the door to to another order WHICH could see an additional 1+4 being ordered for the RN… and them pigs flying past my window look great.

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        • You can’t actually lose what you never had, the 32 never existed and has never had a budget allocated, not one single design has ever been proposed beyond fantasy, you can thank Mr Johnson for mixing his numbers up back in the olden days.

      • GBAD, better networking, service family accommodation, munitions, drones, more nuclear… In other words all the stuff you’d have expected. No big surprises. If it had been run now instead, things might have been very different.

  2. I know other ships are also in the running for the Norwegian frigate requirement. With the German F126 at 10,000t being the biggest on offer, whilst the French FDI at around 4500t being the lightest. I doubt the US Constellation class is in the running, as they are massively late with their build program. The T26 I feel does have an advantage over the others, in that it has been specifically designed for ASW, whilst the others are more multi-purpose, which I believe is what the Norwegians are prioritising. This announcement feels like the two Governments and Companies are looking at how a work share agreement can be agreed. perhaps leading to a purchase!

    • Just do some reading on the VARD website and remember that they are owned by Fincantieri. So it’s not out of the realms of possibilities, but I would be surprised if they did.

    • Hopefully longer term than that. If you have a hull life of 25 years and a steady drumbeat of RN + RFA through the three yards.

      Then you have a combined fleet of 75 less export opportunities. Which brings it down to 70 already!

      • Standard is 30 years. Better to stick to the standard, otherwise we end up at the T23 scenario. Most naval ships are designed for 30 years. Everyone knows this (even politicians). You design one for less (T23 at 18 years), you are guaranteed to create a problem. All everyone can remember (20 years later) is a warship should last 30 years. Replace it (one designed for 30 years) at 18 years, someone will buy it. Don’t replace it (well it can last 30 years), you have gotten your money’s worth anyway. But don’t design a warship for 18 years life & then try & make it last 30 years. It would have been cheaper to design for 30 years to start with.

    • Hi Mark, I’d hope that a Naval Shipbuilding Strategy would concentrate on the ‘strategy’ and keep that yard alive for another 30 years as a minimum.

      However, I’d happily buy Daniele a pint if we get additional T26 orders.

    • Yup, many allied navies will soon be commissioning shiny, new, state-of-the-art ASW frigates, while the USN is slated to receive-wait for it-virtual frigates, as a consequence of Consternation Class program delay. Bah, humbug. 🤔☹️

      • Constellation has been a real disappointment. The USN just doesn’t seem able to keep it hands away from the gold plate.

        Big hopes for the Ghost Fleet and drone program. Hopefully some new defence contractors that can shake things up.

      • I’d like to know where all these new but about to be retired ASW frigates are located (obviously not in USA). But that aside, I can’t quite get my head around the Constellation class. Hunter class I get. RAN intends to build a AAW destroyer using the same basic Hunter hull (BAE are already showcasing options). FREMM in its Italian ASW configuration is world class. T26 may have the edge, but it’s up there. Constellation may outdo an AB at ASW, but let’s be honest, that’s not hard. I start to wonder if a whole new design might have been cheaper. Then again, I doubt US designers & ASW go together. So we are back to UK & Italy (or Japan), if you want the best in ASW.

        • I think that just about sums it up. We have to accept that richer militaries, including the USN and the RN, are too picky. If they cooperated with the engineers and recognised that their specialty is fighting the platforms not specifying them, they’d get a lot further.

    • The you get the Hunter-class frigate and all its issues.

      Apart from low numbers, the Navy cooked with the Type 26 procurement. It does exactly what it needs to do.

      • There are more capable radars that aren’t full CEAFAR, which weighs significantly more than the T45 radar setup.
        You could even have SAMPSON on a slightly shorter mast and it wouldn’t need as much hull modification.
        Even the Canadian design has a much more powerful system without the top weight issues that Hunter has.

        • Artisan was almost certainly chosen because they could be reused from the outgoing T23s and would be easy to integrate with other BAE software (I believe Phalanx was chosen because we already had them as well). Going off of published stats, the Thales NS110 radars on the T31 are more capable than Artisan, while the newer Thales NS200 series are more capable still without a meaningful increase in dimensions. It just seems odd that our higher end warships have the inferior radar.

        • Hunter is basically a destroyer without the missile count you would expect. BAE have already displayed options to go to 96 mk41 by ditching the mission bay. Notice how BAE did not even whimper about Hunter going from 9 to 6. Why, because they see Hobart destroyer replacement going from 3 to 6 with them in the front seat.

  5. Selling a T26 off the production line, really does mean the Navy must keep its T23 fleet running beyond the post lifex six year refit…at present it’s not managed to get one of these refits done as the MOD won’t pay the excessive cost..they probably need to keep argyle and refit her and make sure none of the others go down the beyond economic repair route..until directly replaced by a T26 or T31..because some of the T23s are just going to be to rotten to even attempt the post 6-7 year refit.

    It will be brilliant if they can..having another European operator of the standard T26 will be very good indeed…

    • There maybe a solution to this problem, if BAE sell one of the batch 1 type 26 hulls to Norway, let the Norwegians fit it out, when that’s done Norway can the loan it back to the Royal Navy??

    • M8 I don’t think this is anything to do with the T26, their facilities and background just don’t matchup. But Norway is looking for a MCMV UAV Mother ship as part of a standardised fleet of vessels with a lot of modularity, so an offset agreement would be my guess.

    • Hopefully a Norwegian order added to their books would allow the ships to be built quicker, as they’re not extending the build time due to either MoD penny pinching (as they’re export orders) nor to retain staff and skills due to the low numbers being built.

      It might mean that the build rate is accelerated, and that if Norway’s first ship was the 3rd being built, that potentially the 4th one (our 3rd) could be built faster than it would otherwise have been as our 4th.

      I hope.

  6. Checkout this Janes entry. I think this relationship with Hamek might have more to do with MCMV vessels.
    Janes Hamek august 23

  7. Goodish news – but Hamek are a relatively small ship repair yard. USA/Italy Fincantieri have an edge here as they partially own the much larger Vard shipbuilding group. The defence media’s favourite for the order, France’s Naval Group, held meetings with potential Norwegian suppliers last month, but hasn’t yet announced it’s local partner. The German bid is a bit mysterious, no sign of any tie-ups or partnering agreements. But the F-126 is the longshot – simply too big and with too large a crew for Norway’s needs, it’s quite possible that they given up on what seems to be a two ship race between FDI and T26, with the former perceived as having the advantage due to its much lower price, excellent fit to the ITT requirements, and probably a much faster build rate.

    • BAE carry maintenance out on various non-BAE built ships in the US, so believe too much is being read into this … though possible.

    • Hmm. Naval Technology says “Hamek is one of northern Norway’s largest maritime maintenance shipyards and has the country’s third largest dry dock recently expanded to 145x27x9.5m in April 2015.” Isn’t that still shorter than the Type 26?

    • The FDI vs T16 two horse race does look likely. The Norwegian company Umoe Mandal make the masts for T26 so have an interest in further orders. Hamel specialise in repair and upgrade work for vessels like KV Harstad and similar: 3-4000 ton, 80-90m OPVs, EEZ and fisheries, coastguard, submarine rescue. Might make sense to replace the B1 Rivers with something that could launch and recover big UUVs. Whatever happened to Enterprise and Echo?

    • In reality Norway are spending billions to replace 12-13 year old frigates with well over a decades life in them because they don’t think they are powerful enough for the new threat, they want a more powerful frigate than the Fridtjof class..the Fridtjofs are 5300 tons, 32:ESSMs, 8 NSM 76mm gun..good sonar set..costs 500million dollars each in 2010 money..why would they then replace these Amost new frigates for a frigate that is 4500 tons and essentially has exactly the same type of weapon fit..they want to increase their lethality significantly.

      • The remaining Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates will be very easy to sell at the end of the decade. Reasonably modern frigates with a decade of hull life left, it must be close to $100 million each in current money.

        • Infact it would be a quick win to expand the RN and the correct timeframe.. as the RN could build some replacements over the late 2030😂 … a great way to cheaply and quickly bring the RN up to 20 frigates….when you think about it. RIP out ESSM and put in CAMM as it’s pretty radar agnostic.

          • Because of the delays to the RN T26 programme to supply the Norwegians, the final RN T26 might enter service by 2038 rather than by 2035. So I suppose we could buy second tier ASW frigates to fill the gap. But wouldn’t we build ASW T31s instead? They would come sooner, be easier to maintain, would provide continuity at Rosyth and wouldn’t get the usual “we only buy UK warships built in the UK” protests.

            If Norway gets its first T26 in 2030, takes 18 months to work it up to operational then releases the oldest Nansen, the ship would be 28 years after launch and 26 years after initial commission. I don’t think these are relatively new/modern ships at all.

          • Hi Jon..they are a lot newer than the T23 and would only be an interim measure essentially..the reality is no T23 has ever successfully had a post lifex refit..if this keeps up the RN will not have a single T23 by 2031..that means the RN is faced with it will only having 2 ASW frigates in 2031 if it sells a T26 to Norway. Basically the RN is risking being on track to run out of ASW frigates unless it does something drastic.

          • @Jonathan Age isn’t everything. Building 5 ASW A140s for T31B2 , coming annually between 2031 and 2035, is a lot less drastic than buying 4 dodgy Nansens. Not being British, the Norwegians wouldn’t release the Nansens until they had operating replacements. Think about when that would be, 2032 to 2038. I’m less pessimistic about the youngest five T23s than you, but either way the Nansens are not the answer.

            You want a real desparation move: maybe we should send the T23s to Chile for refit. Except Norfolk was restored by the British company SEA and mordernised several years later by Lockheed Martin in Canada. If Babcock costs too much – maybe we should shop around before giving up.

        • In 2023, when the Chief of Military Defence produced the advice that new ships be bought, he impled that the Nansen’s would be working at reduced capability and reduced availability.

          “Six frigates would almost double the operational availability [of the remaining four Nansens], enabling the Armed Forces to carry out several missions simultaneously.”

          Also “only implement measures so that frigates of the Fridtjof Nansen class satisfy the alternative “safe sailing” according to supplementary alternative analysis P6096 until they can be replaced by new frigates. The measures largely comprise those that are strictly necessary to maintain class certificates and HSE requirements, as well as maintain ship technical availability through to 2035.”

          Does that sound like ships anyone should be eager to buy?

  8. The Telegraph have reported that Leonardo have teamed up with BAES to offer Merlin helicopters as part of a package for a Team UK bid. Makes sense given T26 is setup to work with them and Norway already has some. We’d be able to support each other’s helicopters etc

  12. Anyone reckon this signals a shift in the Norwegian military for greater European partnership? Paired with the whole Trump debacle, it seems America is losing hard on international sales. On the flip-side, America seemingly can’t stop getting enough of European designed kit and equipment.

  13. Excellent. Hopefully Norway will order 6 type 26s and the planned for 14 additional Merlin’s.
    Should help bring unit price down. Now we just need HMG to order an additional 4 ships and the RN is looking decent again.

  14. Hi mr Bell no they are replacements they are not doubling their frigate fleet the plan is to buy a bigger better armed ASW frigate replacement .. the Fridtjof are not AGIS armed frigates they have a AM/SPG-62 fire control radars for ESSM and a bog standard odd multi function air and surface search radar.

  15. Now here’s an interesting thought, the Fridtjof class have a good 10-15 years of life only being about 12 years old, I would imagine you could easily change out the ESSM in their short MK41s silos with CAMM, they come with NSM…maybe as the Norwegian navy takes them out of service the RN could take them on..they would serve easily into the late 2030s and take the strain off of desperately trying to keep the T23 fleet running until the mid 2030s ( which is not happening in reality)..

    Offer to buy them and let the Norwegian yards do any conversion work as part of an industrial offset, makes it an even more attractive offer to buy T26s from UK yards

    What is even better is the Fridtjof only has a crew of 120 vs the 185ish of a type 23..more modern good weapon fit cheaper to run , very cheap to buy and could be run well into the 2040s if needed. It would balance out the smaller number of ASW hulls we will have until all the T26s are operational in 2036/7.

    • ESSM, especially in block 2 format is way better than CAMM (twice the range). CAMM-ER is the better ESSM comparison. CAMM is a better RAM B2 comparison. On very small ships, CAMM soft launch has some distinct advantages. On lager ships, not so much.

  16. Norway don’t want to simply award an ASW frigate contract, instead they want it to be PART of a larger agreement on defence capabilities, sharing, development, etc. Signing an agreement like this with a local shipyard, even if they don’t actually participate in the Norwegian frigate build, strengths BAEs bid nonetheless.

  17. I think Norway should consider joining in the T 32 project if based on T 31. Could also bring in Denmark, the originators of the design, for another 3- 5 Frigates to defend Greenland.

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