The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the planned Contingent Docking Facility at Rosyth Dockyard will be delivered in line with HMS Dreadnought’s departure from Barrow.
Responding to a question from Graeme Downie MP, Minister of State Luke Pollard said that “the preliminary plans for infrastructure upgrades at Rosyth Dockyard have been approved” and that industry has already been engaged to begin processing the scheme design.
Pollard added that once the design phase is complete, “final costs for the project will be negotiated,” indicating that the programme has moved beyond early concept work but has not yet reached a fully costed approval stage.
The minister confirmed that the upgrade package “will include the requirement to deliver a Contingent Docking Facility at Rosyth Dockyard for HMS Dreadnought during its sea trials.” He stated that the “planned timescale for the provision of the Contingent Docking Facility will coincide with Dreadnought’s exit from Barrow.”
No further detail on dates, construction milestones or facility capability was provided. Pollard said that “for operational security reasons further details cannot be released as to do so could be used to undermine the security and capability of our Armed Forces.”
“Undermine the security and capability of the armed forces.”
On the contrary, HMG, you do that on an ongoing basis, don’t you.
Given that the construction work will be visible via commercial satellite or from the nearest tower block the obfuscation only serves to keep the UK’s population in the dark.
Yep, Google Earth is great, one can look anywhere, providing you know where to look and the data set is up to date.
That’s not true. Russian sites provide far more detail – such as rabbit runs under fences than can be seen than from a restricted google earth, furthermore, the Russian sites are more up-to-date; Russia is your friend 😉
Whilst I suspect you are just being silly what is being built will be obvious from the civils being carried out onsite.
Equally the completion dates will be pretty easy to figure out by looking at the trades attending site.
So the only thing being kept semi-secret here is HMG’s inability to spend cash on defence now rather than push it off into the next parliament.
New construction, nuclear certified drydock? If correct, MoD cheque book will endure a significant blow. 🤔
It depends what they are doing.
Rosyth was historically nuclear certified. At least one of the dry docks is nuclear certified for dismantling purposes.
Bases were dug out for new dry docks which have been partially back filled.
So there are a lot of options there now.
All the Rosyth dry docks are on the larger side and I think any of them could take an Invincible carrier or an Albion. So size isn’t likely a limit.
If we only had an option such as an Invincible Class option…
What are you on about.
Read the thread.
Still doesn’t explain your random comment
SV
Hmmm…not everyone is aware that there is an expeditionary element of the USN’s SIOP, utilizing floating drydocks and submarine tenders in theater. Perhaps not an impossible leap of intuition to believe the USN will covet any available RN submarine maintenance facilities, once the infrastructure improvement programme is completed. MOU will probably be implemented under the auspices of AUKUS Pillar I. Would imagine RAN will be approached in a similar manner. USN submarine maintenance backlog must be addressed/resolved relatively quickly, for multiple exigent reasons. 🤔😉
SB,
Apology for the fat-fingered salutation. Duh…🙄
RN doesn’t have that many boats to maintain.
Even if getting everything put back together is a bit of a project.
So once the normal maintenance rhythm is achieved there should be plenty of slack in the system to assist allies.
We need a bigger boat.
Three more would be nice, fitted for the SSGN role.
The common missile compartment would allow all boats to be configured for either role during maintenance and used accordingly. Would free up the few SSN’s for traditional ASW/recon duties.
Based upon publicly released information to date, SSN-A, in addition to the latest Virginia Class Blocks, is somewhere on the continuum between SSN and SSGN, as defined by functional.capabilirty. It may prove intriguing when both classes are SLCM-N capable, may become a variant of SSGN.
capability…🙄