The Royal Navy’s next-generation warship HMS Venturer has entered the water for the first time, marking a major milestone in the UK’s sovereign shipbuilding programme and signalling progress on a £1.25 billion contract to deliver five Type 31 frigates.
The vessel was launched from Babcock’s Rosyth facility, where the company is undertaking simultaneous construction of multiple warships for the Royal Navy.
This moment, according to the company, represents not just a step forward for one ship but a demonstration of national industrial strength.
“In a complex and uncertain world, our ability to design, build and support advanced warships in the UK is more important than ever,” said Sir Nick Hine, Chief Executive of Babcock’s Marine Sector.
“HMS Venturer’s first entry into the water is a clear demonstration of UK sovereign capability in action and the depth, resilience and expertise within Babcock’s Marine business. This latest milestone exhibits the excellent progress being made across our multi-build programme, which will see us deliver five complex warships for the Royal Navy within a decade.”
The Type 31 frigates are intended to serve as general-purpose warships capable of forward deployment and global presence, providing versatility across maritime security, humanitarian assistance and deterrence roles. HMS Venturer is the first of the Inspiration-class frigates and is named in honour of the WWII Royal Navy submarine responsible for the first successful submerged attack on another submarine.
“This is engineering at its best, delivered, together with our partners, with pride, purpose and precision,” added Hine. “HMS Venturer is just the beginning.”
The launch comes amid a broader drive by the Ministry of Defence to restore resilience in domestic naval shipbuilding, a sector that had previously faced decline but is now buoyed by major investment and export ambitions. The Type 31 design has also been selected by Poland and Indonesia, further reinforcing its value as a globally competitive product.
With outfitting and systems integration now underway, HMS Venturer will undergo a series of harbour and sea trials before joining the fleet. The full Type 31 programme is expected to deliver all five ships by 2030.
This is a credit to the Scottish people and their skills; it’s a pity their government does not applaud their efforts.
All they seem to do is whinge and moan – It’s shameful really.
They don’t know what they’ve got.
The SNP just stepped on a land mine by blaming Westminster for them not being able to order busses from Alexander Dennis in falkirk while Andy Burnham in Manchester managed to order 160 using the same rules.
Now in Ian Murray has written to every metro mayor in England asking if they can do the same.
This might just be the end of the current SNP administration.
Dennis has identified some drawbacks from manufacturing in Scotland, and they are real and serious and potentially injurious for the Scottish economy. Obviously, there are many manufacturers there who benefit from their location but some are hampered, and the SNP needs to work hard to encourage industry to base itself there. Sadly, I fear Dennis won’t be the only company to move south as the cost of transportation escalates.
Scottish tariffs are the way for the SNP to go 😂
Dennis used to have a factory in Guildford!
At the end of the day it’s only 400 jobs and Scunthorpe needs them way more than central Scotland, however just as with Grangemouth the SNP have used their old staple excuse of blame it all on Westminster, that’s backfired massively especially when labour can point to other devolved administrations run by labour making orders.
The SNP remain the tartan Tories they are just masquerading as a party that cares about workers to try and score some more votes for independence.
Which devolved labour run administrations are making orders? And of what?
Yes, Dennis is moving to Scarborough
The Plaxton factory?
All I know is they are moving to Scarborough. This is from the website: “Located in close proximity to the manufacturer’s existing Scarborough site, the new warehouse will allow the rationalisation of all logistics for the factory, freeing up space to restructure production arrangements and increase capacity to meet growing demand for Alexander Dennis buses and Plaxton coaches.”
All I know is they are moving to Scarborough. The says they are moving to Scarborough, but Dennis’s website says additional warehouse space. This could be prelude to moving. This is from the website: “Located in close proximity to the manufacturer’s existing Scarborough site, the new warehouse will allow the rationalisation of all logistics for the factory, freeing up space to restructure production arrangements and increase capacity to meet growing demand for Alexander Dennis buses and Plaxton coaches.” The SNP first minister said he will fight, but it was pointed out the SNP purchased buses from China.
How did Andy Burnham from Birmingham manage to qualify for a Scottish zero emission grant? Same rules my arse. And for the other hard of thinking on here, scotgov does not buy buses. Bus operators do. You people need to stop reading the labour party propaganda pish!
I don’t know where Andy Burnham came from but he purchased the busses as major of Greater Manchester, one of several regional mayors in England designed to allow local authorities to be larger and more efficient in some areas they work in.
He could buy busses because he bought control of busses within the remit of his mayoral management.
The SNP have done the same with Scottish rail operations, most ferry services and have powers to do the same for bus services if they wished.
However they made some major mistakes with purchasing ferries.
Im not disputing that he bought the buses. I’m disputing the claim that it was made under the Scottish zero emission grant. Which they weren’t. Labour cherry picking and mixing facts with fiction. Again. And now the same people that criticised scotgov for not supporting dennis in Falkirk are complaining that £90 million of scotgov public money which, in fact, went to support Dennis, has been wasted! Those people are just two faced hypocrites! Scotgov can’t do good for doing bad.
OMG Triple3 common sense and logic in a sea of political misinformation and SNP hatred just to get a point across. Like any government SNP make many mistakes but at least lets try and switch our brains on and try to find out the truth before posting the usual myopic drivel just to suit our own particular political leaning. One of the major issues with this site.
Hopefully! They are a bunch of incompetent, corrupt and useless politicians with the ability of a mollusc to run a country.
I agree it’s a credit to the British people and Danish of course. Babcock has turned out to be a good British company. It’s design teams in Bristol and London worked hard on this project as they did in Scotland.
Im assuming that we will now look to properly equip these ships ? Now we are “ahem” on a war footing
How about another 5 air defence variants with ABN version of Aster(developed by FR/It?) so we can post several offshore to help intercept misiles & drones coming our way? We should be seriously planning GBAD & widespread shelter systems.
Were not going to build more Aster ships when T83 may retire Aster
Agree- the UK war plan hasnt been updated since the end of the cold war, we also have no civilian contingency plan for war- also deleted and not updated since the end of the cold war.
There are precisely zero publicly available shelters- although metros/ london underground and numerous other sites could be prepared without huge sums of money needing to spent.
There is also the issue of hardening the UK’s military infrastructure with such simple measures as multi layered netting to stop drone strikes, HAS and bunkers, ECM/ ECCM and of course GBAD- currently precious little of that available.
We as a nation need to wake up to the perilous state of affairs and get to grips with these issues.
Our enemies know our weaknesses- unfortunately most of the ignorant masses don’t- i nearly ended up in a fight in the pub the other night when a bloke down there seriously thought a single type 45 destroyer could defeat the entirety of the Russian Navy…..no clue.
Interesting use of the words “churn out ships” is that churning in a geological timescale? As UK ship building and general re-armament seems quite glacial to me.
The headline would be more accurate if it said “continue to churn out ships (at the speed the Treasury will pay for)”.
Which is nothing but the simple truth for virtually every programme going. Ask anyone in any section of industry why once main gate is agreed everything is built at a glacial pace. It’s staged payments over the longest timescale possible and do it so the next programme is ready to go 🤞🏻.
What makes it far worse is when they then delay a project for a short term saving the result is out of date equipment soldiering on till it’s clapped out and higher overall costs so cut numbers.
Exactly
Whilst that is 100% the drivers are an even drumbeat of manufacturing for an undersized fleet.
Yes, everything was ordered late which has cost £Bns to save millions in the short term and simply running out of frigates and not dealing with T45 PiP early enough.
NATO spending targets and the govts industrial strategy give me reason to hope. I believe T32 as a stretched GP frigate will happen and that it will be more capable than T31.I also believe we will see more than 3 MRSS and that they will be substantial LPD/ LSD designs. I think T83 will be a 9–10k ton destroyer.
ABCR,
SOP may be significantly amended, once MoD has 3.5% of GDP flowing into its coffers. Schedules, quantities, etc., subject to revision by the 2030s. Rather like free reign in the candy store. 🤔😁🤞
Its more like on a galactic cycle of work- meaning one ship every 25,000 years…or at least it seems to be. Really need an urgent order for a batch 2 type 31 and additional few more type 26s- if we are genuinely going back to 25 frigates and destroyers soon- as per SDSR- then 6 type 45, 8 type 26 (2 more=10) and 10 total type 31s- gives us 26 frigates and destroyers which just so happens matches the RNs quoted minimum force level required to cover current peace time tasks- if we are as the politicians state in a pre war fighting phase then you’d think putting the orders in now would be a very prudent idea. Hey ho what do I know?
It is a shame that Scotland does not have such success in the commercial sector. From an outside perspective it looks like RN orders alone are supporting Scottish shipbuilding…. the Scottish government appear to be trying to sabotage that to with the welding debacle….
The cough cough Ferry order doesn’t reflect well on Scottish commercial ship building does it? I think diversification to Navantia in Northern Ireland, Appeldore in Devon and restarting block construction for warships in Portsmouth and Plymouth would be prudent ideas.
One thing is for certain we need to make our enemies lives difficult and by having geographically spread out and multiple sites makes their wish to do harm to our nation just that little bit more difficult.
Pres Xi of China must be aware of the Western World’s shipbuilding capacity and will want to be able to match or surpass that in any sustained attritional conflict, as he will soon make his move for conquest and empire. Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea and possible Indonesia/ Malaysia and maybe even Australia are in his sights. Australia especially would provide China the natural resources they are lacking- iron ore, some rare earths not found in china and a huge land mass from which the greater Chinese empire can exert influence over the whole Indo-Pacific region.
The West has to be prepared to massively ramp up shipbuilding to match and surpass China and to replace any warships lost in conflict rapidly with proven designs- like the type 31 and type 26s.
Well, America’s hoping to build one Frigate by 2029.
Since 2022.
I think we’re doing acceptably well compared to our peers.
That makes me a whole lot better (eyes roll)
PS Last British frigate was delivered in 2002, 23 years ago.
The last American Frigate delivered was USS Ingraham, which was commissioned in 1989, 36 years ago, if you want to make that apples to apples comparison.
Eight top flight ASW Frigates is nothing to be sniffed at.
In a hypothetical war with China they would be protecting American carriers.
Although saying that, we do have to start asking, “Why would we even consider helping America?”
How much are they going to pay us for our services?
There’s no North Pacific Treaty Org.
So we’re not beholden to them.
Why should we fund a another American war?
Everybody knows they can’t win a war without us so what’s in it for us, eh?
☕🖕😂😉👍🇬🇧
Compare to PLAN/ China- 54 frigates in that timeframe-+ 40 destroyers- so we arent doing that well vs our potential adversaries.
America’s shipbuilding crises (it is genuinely a crises they are not fully awake too) is going to cost the US navy dearly- they simply wont be able to replace warships lost in any hot conflict with China quickly enough whilst China’s warships have an air of disposability about them- quickly constructed, unknown build quality, packed with armaments and sensors of unknown quality- they might be potent and deadly- you’d be stupid to presume otherwise.
I don’t think we’ll ever fight China.
And if we did then that’s a lot of the highest tech ASW frigates we can contribute.
Because it’ll NEVER be just us fighting them, we’d send our AAW and ASW capability.
They might not be the most numerous but they certainly will be the best in class, protecting American carriers.
It would be nice if they finalised the blueprints before they try and build it… whoops too late. We appear to be better at building frigates than the US. It is ironic that they did not put T26 in their frigate competition because they wanted a proven design that could be built quickly….! Now we have two T26 in the water fitting out and a T31 and they have got another disaster. Only 15% commonality with the original Italian ship and running late and over budget.
They really do seem to be impossibly bad at this.
I think it’s another dead project, they’ll cancel it.
They should have had us build the first 2.
But they just can’t have forr’nrs took our jerbs!!
‘British shipbuilders continue to churn out ships’.
That’s a crazy situation, not sure the Constitution class is what the USN needs- they need a modern day Oliver Hazard Perry class- a polyvalent unit of around 5000-6000 tons without the Aegis combat management system and ever changing specification and design of the Constitution class- a frigate optimised for ASW and surface strike- the USN needs these ships now as their order of battle is looking a bit thread bare vs PLAN in terms of hull numbers- bit more positive in terms of missile tubes but I’m not sure the USA can replace their munitions quickly enough to match war consumption vs PLAN/China.
They might be a one shot deal. The whole of the free world hopes that’s not the case but we definitely are living in worrying times.
One thing is for sure the UK needs to have more warships and asap- so Id suggest ordering another batch of 5 type 31s but fit them with bow sonars, torpedo defence systems- as per Italian FREMM and get them in the water asap. Also whilst type 26 frigate programme is still in build tag on a further 2-3 frigates onto the order and get the RN back upto a decent number of warships aiming for 26-27 total which is where we should be. this could all be done by 2030 if we pull our finger out.
Then slow down construction to a continuous build as per national ship buidling strategy of 1 type 31 a year and one type 26 every 24 months and sell off the older warships to our allies- usually Chile, New Zealand heck even Australia have a history of purchasing ex RN warships that still have a reasonable service life.
Then we need the type 83 destroyer programme and the sloops- type 91,92,93 ordering- ideally using a common hullform and optional minimum manned crewing- the RN probably needs a total of around 20 hulls of these sloops to cover EEZ/offshore infrastructure and the ASW and mine counter measure mothership role.
It is getting to the point where we should prioritise our strengths – we should build subs – knock out tge final Astute and build Dreadnought and SSN-A asap.
Another overpriced…over-rated …under armed …patrol vessel …china & russia may not be politically palatable these days ..but they understand what weapons a warship needs to survive in a ship v ship scenario
Our adversaries weapons effectiveness may be unknown to us .. yet I wouldn’t for a second presume they are inferior to the west…in fact even if they lack digital warfare cohesion & battle management experience…they have wasted no space in weapons placement in their big hulls & utilise every spare cubic metre of deck space ..with intent ..not for show!! …we put fast RIB boats & shipping containers space for humanitarian missions on our new boats …what for ..? It’s a WARSHIP to fight wars at sea …our carrier group is a just a delicate daisy chain ..where we expect a troubled T45 to provide a 100% area defence & Astutes to protect the T45 & some new frigates to cover the Subsea threats ? Still no long range AEW on the carriers …still not learning from the Falklands!? That’s right the French Hawkeyes from the CDG will cover us …the Americans will provide. workable & effective Aegis cover ..we ALWAYS rely on someone else .?In the ..cold war we did punch above our weight out of necessity..Now it’s a just get by with what we are given & fingers crossed? I don’t think modern day surface sailors are the same breed we once had .It’s a shame we send these green .sailors to conflicts beyond their pay level & hope to survive a saturated mass attack from the complete sea based anti ship domain .All I see in the future is the UK making cuts to weapons aboard our Navy …based on a shaky assumption that Russia or China or France would NEVER attack us .. because we have SLBM’S ..France still maintains a nuclear triad …yet us as an island have 1 dimensional defence strategy…if there even IS a strategy at all ? Play Great Britain in the console version of the board game RISK & you soon see how vulnerable our nation & secluded coastline is . I remember the Oberon class of diesel electric subs …why on earth are we not building at least 8 small ( 200 ft ) coastal defence Submarines with crews of 50 ..that could patrol our island ..DAILY for undersea threats .not just military soft spots ..but our communications & data highways ? It all harks back to the “We have nukes so don’t mess with us “playbook ?