Much of the public narrative around Rosyth still centres on visible outputs: frigate blocks, rollout ceremonies and export announcements. That framing understates the scale of what is changing inside the yard, and it obscures where Babcock now believes its real industrial advantage lies.
The more consequential shift underway at Babcock’s Rosyth site concerns how ships are engineered, integrated and sustained across their service lives. Hull construction remains necessary, but it no longer captures the full measure of capability the company is trying to build.
Recent discussion around UK shipbuilding has increasingly touched on digital engineering, automation and whole-life asset support, though often without much emphasis. Public debate continues to focus on hull numbers and export campaigns, while Rosyth is being reorganised around software-managed processes that shape how ships are designed, modified and supported long after they enter service.
Babcock has made clear that future competitiveness will not be decided solely by the Arrowhead 140 design or the cadence of the Type 31 line. Greater weight is now being placed on systems integration, digital workflows and the retention of engineering authority across multiple platforms throughout their operational lives. This aligns with a wider shift in UK shipbuilding, where performance increasingly depends on data, modelling and modularity rather than sequential craft production.
At Rosyth, lifetime engineering now sits close to the centre of the operating model. The aim is to retain control beyond construction, allowing ships to evolve through digital twins, embedded sensors and condition-based maintenance, rather than relying on disruptive mid-life refits. For navies already struggling with availability and upgrade backlogs, that promise carries obvious appeal.
The rationale becomes clearer when set against broader naval thinking. Senior leaders have argued repeatedly that surface combatants must operate as adaptable nodes within distributed networks of sensors, weapons and uncrewed systems. Platforms that cannot absorb new technology at pace risk losing relevance well before the end of their design lives. Rosyth’s production philosophy reflects this assumption. Systems integration is being pulled earlier into the build cycle, and modelling tools are increasingly used to test production sequences, material flows and engineering decisions before steel is cut.
Some of these changes are now visible. The yard has been reconfigured to support digital workflows, automation and parallel construction. The Type 31 build strategy seeks to insert more systems at block stage, reducing downstream disruption and improving schedule predictability. Speaking this week at the keel-laying of HMS Formidable, Babcock chief executive David Lockwood framed the moment as more than ceremonial. “It’s really a signal of that drum beat of a frigate factory,” he said. “One in the water, one to a side here nearly finished in the hall, and the third one underway, and it’s a sign that we’re now building frigates in a professional, modern way.”
Rosyth’s evolution is not confined to surface combatants. Recent agreements with US industry point to a broader role. Lockwood confirmed that new work announced with Huntington Ingalls Industries includes “building components of the Virginia-class submarine, which is part of the overall desire to expand the capacity of the West to build submarines.” He added that “it’s the first off, and we expect it to lead to much more,” signalling Rosyth’s growing integration into allied supply chains rather than acting purely as a national asset.
The same logic underpins collaboration on future naval concepts. Babcock’s work with HII on what it calls ARMOR Force reflects interest in hybrid fleets combining crewed platforms with uncrewed systems. Lockwood described the partnership as one that allows both sides to “invent once, use many times,” emphasising a two-way flow of technology rather than a one-directional transfer.
Pace has emerged as a recurring theme. Responding this week to questions about urgency following recent naval conferences, Lockwood framed the challenge in two dimensions. “He’s looking for two things,” he said of the First Sea Lord. “One is pace of build, and the other is pace of innovation.” He argued that Babcock’s value lies in its ability to introduce change during construction and after delivery, integrating new capabilities as threats and technologies evolve.
Sir Nick Hine echoed that assessment when I spoke to him this week about progress since the Type 31 contract was signed. “We took a contract in December 2019 and we said we’d deliver five complex warships in ten years,” he said. “Here they are. Two and three are here, and four bits of four outside the dock hall. So we’re doing what we said we would do.” He accepted that pressure to accelerate remains. “Are we going fast enough? No, we never go fast enough,” he added, while arguing that current delivery rates compare favourably across the sector.
For Hine, Type 31’s significance lies in its adaptability. He described it as a potential backbone for a hybrid navy, capable of acting as a command platform for uncrewed systems with limited modification. “My offer to the Royal Navy was to deliver HMS Venturer and an unmanned surface vessel from HII as an initial operating concept for ARMOR Force in 2027,” he said. “It wouldn’t be everything, but it would be a really good start.”
Behind these programmes sits a broader corporate repositioning. Speaking earlier this year at DSEI, John Howie, Babcock International’s Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, described a role designed to align strategy, government engagement and international growth. “What we do is help join bits of the company together so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” he said. “We’re also trying to increase the volume of international business we have. We’d like to get to a better balance of UK and international.”
Export markets remain central to that ambition. Howie pointed to established positions in Canada, France, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as platforms for further growth. The Type 31 programme illustrates the approach. “Before we’d even built the ship, we’d sold it to Poland and Indonesia,” he said at DSEI, adding that discussions now extend to Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Chile and “about 17 countries in total.”
Design choices underpin that appeal. Howie argued that scale and adaptability were deliberate decisions. “We’ve gone much bigger, more space, more adaptive, and that means export markets find it easier to reconfigure,” he said, adding that modularity also supports greater use of automation and robotics in UK production.
Rosyth’s role varies by customer. Some expect UK build, others prefer block construction or flat-pack delivery, while countries such as Poland have opted for domestic assembly. “I’m actually quite pleased how many people still look at UK build,” Howie observed. The same logic informs thinking on future support ships. “My view on MRSS has always been that it lends itself to the same model,” he said. “You need an assembly yard who can manage the customer, but you also need a network of yards that can contribute volume to get time down and cost base down.” Rosyth has space and planning consent for further expansion, though workforce availability remains the limiting factor.
Skills therefore sit at the heart of the transformation. A digitally mature shipyard requires workers able to operate robotics, interpret data and move between disciplines that were once tightly separated. Babcock has expanded apprenticeships, graduate schemes and reskilling initiatives in response. Howie highlighted the production support operative programme. “It’s a great way of getting people back into the workforce,” he said.
Looking further ahead, Howie framed Rosyth’s evolution as part of a deeper redefinition of the company. “Babcock today is a UK business with international operations,” he said. “The vision for Babcock is to be an international defence business headquartered in the UK, which isn’t the same. Philosophically, it’s quite different.” For Rosyth, that implies a role as an internationally relevant integration hub rather than a purely national build site.
That vision extends to how Babcock works with smaller suppliers. Howie acknowledged that SMEs often approach large primes cautiously. “We think if we can help SMEs scale up, productionise and get their products into bigger systems, that can help government directly and create growth,” he said. In practice, that positions Rosyth as a focal point for absorbing innovation across the supply base and turning it into deployable capability.
Reflecting on the company’s trajectory under David Lockwood, Howie described a cultural as well as structural shift. “Working with David has been fantastic because he’s full of ideas and lets us get on with stuff,” he said. “He’s got a strong moral and ethical background, he won’t tell government lies, and he listens. That helped us rebuild relationships.”
Over the past five years, Babcock has changed markedly, moving away from a more reactive industrial posture toward a defence business with clearer international intent. That shift has been as much about credibility and relationships as about programmes or platforms.
Those rebuilt relationships with government, allies and industry partners underpin the changes now visible at Rosyth. The move toward a continuous build rhythm, digital engineering and deeper international integration depends on trust as much as infrastructure. What is taking shape goes beyond a single frigate programme. Rosyth is being positioned as a long-term industrial asset within a more outward-facing, system-oriented defence business.
Whether that positioning holds will depend on execution under pressure. The test ahead is not confined to shipbuilding output, but to sustaining organisational clarity, engineering depth and credibility. If Babcock manages that balance, Rosyth may matter less as an individual yard and more as a reference point for how a UK defence company adapts to a harsher industrial and strategic environment.
Essentially Babcock are saying that they can build other designs than T31 if called upon to do so, and can develop and adapt those designs quickly.
“The aim is to retain control beyond construction”, however, just sounds like a cash cow.
I know there is an element of comparing apples with oranges – but an examination of the difference in performance over the last 10 years between Babcock Rosyth and Ferguson would be great material for a PhD thesis.