Recent parliamentary scrutiny has brought to light the operational readiness of the Royal Navy’s fleet of Type 23 frigates.
The response to the Parliamentary Written Question, specifically concerning the status of each frigate, reveals a mixed state of availability within the fleet.
On April 12, 2024, Luke Pollard, Labour (Co-op) MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, posed a question regarding the operational status of each of the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates. The answer, provided by James Cartlidge MP, Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence, was delivered on April 22, 2024. It detailed the availability of the frigates, specifying that five were operational while the others were undergoing refits.
The answer came to light via the following response to a Parliamentary Written Question.
Luke Pollard MP (Labour (Co-op) – Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) asked:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the operational status is of each of the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates as of 12 April 2024.”
James Cartlidge MP (Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)) responded:
“As of 12 April 2024, five Type 23 Frigates were available. The remaining six were in various stages of refit and therefore were not available for operations.”
While more than half of the vessels are currently non-operational due to refits, this period of maintenance is vital for ensuring their long-term functionality and readiness for future deployments.
Good summary on Navy Lookout. It is dire.
Good photo of HMS Venturer in the article “The factors shaping the future Royal Navy surface fleet”
It’s crazy that we have LIFEX programmes that run up to 58 months at the high end and still a year+ on the low end and cost as much as 100 million. With the latest upgrades to Govan the Type 26 will end up taking 60 months to build.
The cost is not the same but we should seriously take a look at LIFEX in the future and question if it isn’t smarter to scrap LIFEX and build new ships.
Especially for ships like the Rivers and Type 31 which are cheap to begin with.
Oh yeh lifex this extensive only came about because the new frigates weren’t ordered when they were supposed to be.
This was after the Leander upgrades that the MOD said it was not cost effective upgrading the ship for only a few years service, it was just as cheap to build a new ship for not much more
Well exactly but there’s nothing they can do to bridge the gap currently other than extend the T23s
As I understand it, what you suggest is part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy. At the risk of ridicule now that Ferguson Marine have finished the Scottish ferries perhaps they could be set to work building a pair of batch 3 Rivers? I’ll get my coat 🙂
Can you imagine being built by Ferguson marine !!! A rough guess would be 15 years to build a RIB.
Don’t flatter them a RUB has a engine 15 years for rowboat with one oar
Paul ,Ferguson marine fiasco was caused by the design and squabbling by the so called management and then private owners, good workers let down by shit management which is now why this whole shit show has happened,
It’s far from a stupid idea, put in some management that knows what they are doing, motivate the work force to finish the ships by knowing they will have more orders and more work by adding more orders before the ships are finished. Ask yourself, if you were working at a shop yard on what appears to be the last ship knowing you will be unemployed after it’s done would you rush?
Reminds me of my 6th form school holiday job ; working for the council…painting fences. ‘Whoa’ said my supervisor…’slow down, we need to leave that stretch for Saturday morning overtime’ 😉
Addendum: Radakin is reported in today’s press (24/4) as saying the RN should invest in Fast Attack Craft. Not sure a batch 3 River would be considered ‘fast’ but the direction is similar.
We need to invest in the military, lots of it given that Russia is about to win in Ukraine and will then start on the next. Worse of course is Iran and China are also starting. The USA has shown itself to be unreliable yet again so relying on their ‘nato commitment’ is just plain stupid and irresponsible l. Mind you it would have helped Ukraine if our pro russian civil servants and prime minister (don’t forget where his wife’s money is invested) hadnt promised aid which they have failed to deliver (near 2 million promised, 400k delivered)
On Wed, 24 Apr 2024, 09:36 UK Defence Journal, wrote:
Hi Dave,
new reply has been posted by the Paul.P on the discussion section you’ve been interested in
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/status-of-royal-navys-type-23-frigate-fleet/#comment-813287
Addendum: Radakin is reported in today’s press (24/4) as saying the RN should invest in Fast Attack Craft. Not sure a batch 3 River would be considered ‘fast’ but the direction is similar.
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We need to invest in the military, lots of it given that Russia is about to win in Ukraine and will then start on the next. Worse of course is Iran and China are also starting. The USA has shown itself to be unreliable yet again so relying on their ‘nato commitment’ is just plain stupid and irresponsible l. Mind you it would have helped Ukraine if our pro russian civil servants and prime minister (don’t forget where his wife’s money is invested) hadnt promised aid which they have failed to deliver (near 2 million promised, 400k delivered)
Maybe more useful to invest in our defences than in the diversity managers in schools (paid more than the teachers), the NHS and the rest
Wrong forum to get on my soap box but basically I agree.
i think there is a strong case for building 5 more OPVs, replacing the 3 batch 1 Rivers and adding 2 hulls to the total number of OPVs. Bit of a stretch to call them FAC though. These normally conjure images of 60-70m and under 1000 ton coastal ships which carry AShM. Maybe Radakin is talking about a replacement for the Archers?
Ferguson has just delivered the hull sections of HMS Belfast to BAE Govan 26.Apr
Makes sense. Our exposure is T23 ASW availability. Lifex has turned out to be more life extinguish then life extension for some ships. Aren’t Poland making some bits of T31? It does look like folks are trying hard to accelerate the frigate builds.
There was a very good report around the benfits of not running ships after about the age of 15 years..
if you run them old you get
1) increased maintenance costs..
2) parts and spares issues
3) massive lifex costs and as we have seen that’s 100million +
4) reduced readiness ( and when you are running fleets that’s below required numbers it’s an even bigger problem
5) when you are finished with it it’s worthless
6) worthless old warships can be hard to get rid of as they are full of bad things and it’s your responsibility to scrap them responsibly.
7) you starve your ship building industry, it’s runs on a boom bust cycle and each new ship ends up costing more than from a healthy industry with steady orders.
if you flog your ship pre lifex at say 14-15 years old,
1) you make money from the sale. If you think we sold 3 type 23s in 2005 for £135 million…in todays money that’s around 215 million…so your getting a fair chunk of money back..your building 50% more ships but getting about 30% of the money back from second hand sales.
2) if you are building lots more ships with steady orders your cost of each unit will drop…it’s hard to quantify but we know RN ships are more expensive due to gaps in production and in year delays.
3) industrial creates tax take if your buying in the UK and most of the bits of the ship are made in the Uk…your tax take will be a very large proportion of what you payed out..
4) your ships will have increased readiness as they are all young
5) your ships will be less costly to maintain as they will all be young and spares will probably still be being made.
basically buying then flogging second hand warships in the middle of there lives works economically and would be good for the RN, good for industry and good for the nation…it’s probably a better business model from a ship building point of view as few nations buy new complex large warships ( if they can afford them they want to build them) but there are still plenty of nations that want good second hand frigates.
Issue is they don’t have the funding to replace their frigates every 15 years, or to fund constant shipbuilding. It would require a government who has brains and wants to invest in industry
I think the issue is that nothing is free, building new ships every 15 years was the plan for the type 23.. that worked well didn’t it, the treasury says build for 15 years to save build costs and conveniently forget that money will be required from the first launch to design the next class.
Pay one way or pay the other, your choice but you will pay
The designed service life of the T23 frigate was a hard worked 18 years. As no major mid-life refit was planned, further money was saved by including no weight and space margins for this, and a bit more by smaller measures such as providing no physical access to some spaces on the basis this wouldn’t be essential until after 18 years. No wonder it has become an expensive nightmare to extend their life to 30+ years because the FSC replacements weren’t ordered as expected in the 2000’s. As usual, the MOD made (had to?) short-term savings which are now being greatly out weighted by the resulting additional long-term costs.
A government not run by civil servants actively and deliberately destroying the country on orders from the Kremlin. Boris ousted by the Kremlin because he galvanised the west against their invasion of Ukraine, something that didn’t happen when they took crimea and Donbas
Hardly, perhaps we should just build them properly and maintain them, he’ll the yanks showed up to the gulf war with ww2 ships, we went to the Falklands with a ww2 aircraft carrier. Maintenance and proper building and it’s no issue
Maybe the government who allowed this situation to occur could apologise for allowing it to happen, acknowledge that the cause was their chronic, historical underfunding of the Royal Navy and promise to immediately rectify that problem so that it never happens again.
Why would they do that though?
Well perhaps it might spur them to improve, and the side effect might be the rest of us might begin to the process of not seeing the current government as a bunch of incompetent sociopaths.
Another Labour MP representing a navy constituency harrying a weak government: all part of the election game. Would be nice to hear sometime what, if anything Labour would do differently.
To be honest I’m not really much interested in talk….as it’s essentially irrelevant..what I want to see is what they do when they are in power as action is all that really matters…
in reality we don’t change governments because one is telling a better story ( most people are aware that manifestos are nothing more than window dressing) we change governments because we have become feed up of the mistakes made by the sitting government…
the second part is that we mistrust the specific leader and will not vote for them ( as happened with Corbin ).
I understand what you say. Voters do indeed consider the performance of inplace goverment when casting their votes. But it’s a matter of respect and principle and intrinsic to democracy that the party you choose should communicate what it proposes to do. And that’s what you should vote for.
Indeed, but we all know that infact it’s all about the “pissed off factor”…almost no one votes on a manifesto..infact the average voter has almost no notion of what the manifestos look like…there view will be sculpted by their own experience ( costs vs wealth, contact with services, what is happening in their specific community and headlines in whichever media they consume)….the only bit of that manifestos affect are the headlines in the specific media consumption..and we all know those headlines are mainly influenced by what the owner of that media wants to say…not manifestos.
I do a lot of campaigning and door knocking come elections and I would say it’s maybe one out of 30-50 households where a person could tell you the actual manifestos of the major parties…I wish it was otherwise and if it was we may see a bit more integrity and long term thinking ( if parties are held to manifestos they would have to think strategically).
generally speaking no matter what a person on the door says to me about their political party I alway tell every read all the manifesto’s and ensure you use your vote no matter what…the big difference is those that vote for the party I work for I ensure they are going to vote ( you will never change a mind on the door…but you can re enforce in your supporters the importance of voting on the day).
Understand what you say. I guess it’s a question of a party getting its traditional voters out while influencing the floating voters. Our long term sickness problem indicates something deeply wrong with the country. Normal life experiences should not need to be medicalised. Seems to me a lot of people have given up. They don’t believe the conventional argument that if you work hard you prosper and there is some joy in life.
I do appreciate the work you do for the Monster Raving Loony Party, Jonathan, about the only trustworthy lot we have left.
😉
At lest they are an honest lot😂🤣😂. I do think we need to have honesty moving forward…
Parliamentary answer is as above according to: https://members.parliament.uk/member/4682/writtenquestions#expand-1700379
Personally, this could be concluded by drawing a line under Taskings and at least putting the money into new builds.
IMHO.
I’m sure comrade Corbyn would have halted all warship building to be replaced by wind powered leaflet blowers with the heading “let’s talk” we really won’t fight you under any circumstance”
And thank goodness he was not voted in.
Although the RN seems to have stalled in its ship building, fleet renewal activities in much the same way as the Russians without any input from comrade Corbyn magically and all by itself successively under, cowardly Cameron, maybe May, blustering Boris, triff Truss and wishy washy wickle Wishy Sunak, does it not?
Gi folks hope all is well.
Blimey to have more in life extension programs than in active service is very dire. Do we know when the next ship is back in service? Hopefully very very soon at this rate. How on earth can the MOD plan to have so many ships in refit and less for active service?
What would happen in an emergency? Would there be a sudden 24/7 working around the clock to have them ships ready for action. I despair.
Cheers
George
Well they don’t nessecarily plan, more like the T23s are living in borrowed time and extensive refits because we’re still waiting for their replacements.
The political answer as given by the Head shed of the MoD to Mark Francois is they have not been tasked… I shoite you not.
The Govt give the taskings so no tasks, no need for ships.
This bunch of lying, skiving, self-deserving, self-entitled, bunch of sycophantic barstewards need chopping, with a sharpened knife held up for Labour to cast their gaze upon.
In an Emergency any Warship that could realistically be put to Sea would be sent out in short order im sure,look at what happened in 1982.
This is what happens when successive Govts of every ilk kick the can down the road and avoid making a medium to long term decision /commitment so that they gain a short-term cost saving.
The T26 or as it was the Gobal Combat Ship has been around waiting for a build go ahead since the mid 1990s and they are only now coming to fruition.
The result is now for all to see with T23’s in refit getting LIFEX.
Steel should have been cut in 2008-2010.
I’m I going bonkers or did this article change from a ship by ship update to a really short summary…??😵💫😵💫😵💫
National Security, old boy, national security.
Load of cobblers by this Govt.
55% of the Type 23 fleet is unavailable, our enemies must be laughing their heads off.
Well well. Why does this not surprise anyone.
Our military defence forces are stretched and under funded by every government that has been since the 1980’s.
With 5 T23 and 3 T45 I can only assume that some bean counter will say that if you can get by with 8 then why do you need more??
Half the fleet in refit. UK purchased F35s which are apparently grounded 50% of the time due to servicing or technical faults. Thank Cameron for stopping our 65K ton carriers from carrying the cheaper and far more effective and reliable F18s
The life span of a type 23 was 18 to 20 years ,obviously I know the years they were launched in their batch stages ,hindsight is truly a very fine thing but these ships replacements should have been in service a few years ago,tory government lip service has come back to bite them on the bum,to little to late ,the next chimps tea party had better up the numbers for replacements 8 type 26 and 5 type 31 are not sufficient and the weapons on the 31s missiles fair enough,2 40mm bofors and a 57 mm ,this is very woeful but this my opinion but any help from others would be appreciated on this one ,
Most commentators on here will tell you ( me included ) that the Gun Armament for the Type 31 is appropriate for the roles they will be undertaking,with current events in the Red Sea it could even be descibed as inspired.
I know the 57mm has a lethal punch but I suppose ammunition is getting more powerful size wise ,well give it a number of years and a 57mm could have the power of a 17inch shell lol,(just a fantasy one)but you never know a new next generation ammo round with such power, thanks Paul for keeping me right really appreciate it ,have a great day
Do you think two 57mm guns; one deck penetrating on the bow and one just a cupola above the hangar would be better than one 57 and two 40s? Only one supply chain and 360 coverage of MADFIRES. Keep the 30s and 12.7’s on each beam of course and without the B turret 40 there’s space for more CAMMs.
For the foreseable future the 1 x 57mm and 2 x 40mm wil be good enough,if the threat level changes substantially it could always be revised.
Agreed as it turns out the gun fit on T31 would appear well suited to the current threat slow moving Houthi drones of the Shahad type and possibly unmanned one way surface attack drones such as Ukraine’s ‘Sea baby’ UCAS which are causing such problems for the Russians in the Black Sea. Shame the same cannot be said about the missiles ie CAAM. George seems convinced that Venturer will role out of the shed with 24 ‘mushrooms’ for CAAM and I really hope he’s right ( he usually is !) but none of the official images put out by the MOD or Babcock would seem to support this showing only 12. IMHO 12 CAMM is barely enough to see off one wave of Houthi drones before you have to run for port to pick up more. To be honest I really don’t understand the problem , talking to the then Babcock project director at DSEI ( ex NZ navy) he went at great lengths to emphasise that Arrowhead 140 was designed from the start around the MK41 and this was well before it was later announced hat this would eventually be the fit on T31 – it is certainly the case on the Danish and now Polish ships. Surely if Venturer is designed to accommodate a full 32 cell MK41 it should be simple and cheap to port across 24 or even the full 32 CAAM ‘ mushroom’ silos from the prematurely withdrawn T23 that we now no longer seem to be able to provide with crew?