In a recent written question to the Secretary of State for Defence, Kevan Jones, Labour MP for North Durham, sought clarity on the budget allocated for the Life Extension programme of the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates.
James Cartlidge, the Minister of State for the Ministry of Defence, responded with: “The Type 23 frigates are not the subject of a formal life extension programme. The ships undergo a planned series of Upkeep periods in order to maintain their condition and introduce capability updates.”
He further clarified the financial details, stating: “The current allocated funding to deliver all Type 23 frigate class Upkeeps to their out of service date is £676.7 million over 10 years, this includes the costs allocated in financial year 2023-24.”
The Type 23 frigates, also known as the Duke class, comprise ships named after British Dukes. The first Type 23, HMS Norfolk, was commissioned in 1989, with the sixteenth, HMS St Albans, commissioned in June 2002. These frigates, or those that are left from the original 16 at least, form the heart of the Royal Navy’s destroyer and frigate fleet, serving alongside the Type 45 destroyers.
Initially designed for anti-submarine warfare, the Duke class has been utilised for a variety of purposes. Currently, eleven Type 23 frigates remain in active service with the Royal Navy. Three vessels have been sold to the Chilean Navy, while one was retired in 2021 and another in 2023.
It is worth noting that the Royal Navy plans to replace the Type 23 frigates with the Type 26 Frigate and the Type 31 frigate. As of 2023, projections indicate that HMS St Albans will be the last Type 23 to retire from the Royal Navy, with its retirement set for 2035.
They’ve given great service and are capable warships (as attested by the T23GP’s being far more capable in ASW and NGS than the T31’s which are replacing them). But it’s criminal that politicians have allowed things to get to the state where 3 of them (from what we hear of HMS Westminster) are being retired years before their replacements will come into service).
We could have used these hull forms with an updated internal layout like the stellar systems spartan.
from what Gunbusters has said, these are still very good vessels and we could probably refurbished the propellers.
T31 is a great ship – I really like them, but we need to start cycling through our hulls – so that in 10 yrs time T26 hull is the base for the T32 and the ASW gets the shiny new super quiet hull form..
We should probably make it clear that Westminster isn’t a GP variant of the Type-23, she is a towed array full ASW variant. As such her loss will be even more keenly felt as she would have been replaced by one of the Type-26 on their snail paced build timetable
Not just Westminster, Somerset seems to have significant issues coming back from her refit as well.
Yes, and she’s gone back into the shed, to get that rudder bearing fix.
👍
Interesting timing with this article from Navylookout:
https://www.navylookout.com/the-struggle-to-get-hms-somerset-back-to-sea/
Well worth a read, and very thought provoking. Mixing metaphors, the years of kicking the replacement can down the road means we have now not enough ships for the tasking, and they are too old to economically bring back up to scratch. Chickens coming home to roost.
It’s a common theme, be that capital spend on RN ships, service personal housing, NHS hospitals, schools, prisons, water treatment or potholed roads…we as a nation have for the last 15 years let our infrastructure go to shit and at some point someone is going to have to pay for it ( the NHS maintenance backlog is now close to 11 billion pounds…and that’s before we get onto new building to cover increased demand over the last decade..it was 4 billion in 2010).
Makes you wonder where all that tax goes? Mind you, have you ever seen a poor politician?
KPMG, serco, G4S, Atos and capita have all made serous cream for their share holders and well as senior leaders of the back of the taxpayer as well…it’s seems it’s better to spend taxpayer money on private companies..irrespective if they are better or worse than the public sector options. Politicians don’t seem to let civil servants and public sector workers do anything unless the serco and KPMG set have had their cake and eaten it first.
There you go in a nutshell, well put and you’ll know who will be on the boards of these companies when they retire from politics!
It’s just the nature of the treasury, I have to say the trend started with the Blair government and taken to the extreme lately, trying to get something for free. Blair with his public/ private partnership – reduce the on book government borrowing but really cost more than just government borrowing. Next came the Tories, don’t spend now, spend more later – aircraft carriers anyone, type 26 anyone?
Fact remains nothing is free! The choice is when to spend and spending early tends to be the most efficient.
Panic not! Grant Shapps is in charge now with his wealth of military experience all things will be fixed in double quick time.
It will be interesting to keep half an eye on the build and cost of these and the timescale to build them compared to ours. It appears to be quite a formidable platform. “Hanwha Ocean unveiled the concept model of the new “Joint Strike Ship” at MADEX 2023, an exhibition held in Busan last month. The Joint Strike Ship is the future Arsenal Ship of the ROK Navy which Naval News has been covering over the past couple of years.” Since the project is still in the early stages of conceptual design and undergoing negotiations with the ROK Navy, specific… Read more »
“South Korean shipyard Hanwha Ocean has developed its own anti-vibration paint designed to improve operational performance by reducing vibration and noise. The material is designed for surface warships. For the past 30 years, damping materials have been dependent on imports from the US and Germany says Hanwha, which has meant that the yard has sometimes had to over-order to meet minimum order requirements, resulting in waste. “The anti-vibration material developed by Hanwha Ocean is cheaper than imported products and can be used without problems in terms of minimum order quantity or customs procedures due to local production, so production efficiency… Read more »
Not completing a frigate between 2002 and 2027 whilst continually reducing the fleet and expecting the Royal Navy to carry out the same tempo of operations has created a predicable and worrying mess! A vicious circle of placing more and more pressure on fewer and fewer numbers with little-no flex in the system when ageing vessels need extra TLC and virtually no choice but to stump up larger and larger amounts to keep them going. Apparently it’ll take over £100 million to sort Westminster out! That’s a huge figure and means having her in refit for several years for not… Read more »
700 million! Would buy just shy of 3 T31, at an increased build rate, higher reliability and fewer crew.
Shelf the update costs, sell them off as they come in and build 3 more T31s.
Tin foil moment?
But the RN would have No working ASW vessels in the mean time. Yes I agree some ot them are too expensive to LIFEX again. It depends really. how much work is required to keep a T-23 sea worthy.
No ASW variant of T-31 developed yet!
Not true. T26 will hit the fleet in 2027ish.
You retire the T23s as they come up for extension.
You put captas 4 on to the 31s. Not perfect, not ideal, but you save 700m quid.
Meanwhile, most of the GPs have gone leaving only tail T23s.
At least five T23 ASW’s, including near complete Somerset and St. Albans, will need an extension by 2027, in order to prevent a loss of four ASW vessels by then. I don’t think hms Northumberland will make it to 2029!
There are still 3 GP T23’s left, Hms Argyll, Iron Duke, and Lancaster. One of them could be given a tail, depending on the material state.
Would cost 10s of millions and take a year + to fit a tail. Lots of steel work and major reworks of the Power system to provide the volts for the transmitter. New cabling and displays into the SIS.
Not practicable.
However a Tail Captas 4/S2087 PODS fit on a T31 would be.
We have reached such a pass that spending tens of millions and a taking a T23 another year out of operations can’t be dismissed out of hand, even to gain only 4 years of ASW use. The tens of millions are already in the budget, earmarked for the cancelled Westminster upgrade. The drydock and maintenance crews similarly. A tail on Venturer or Active wouldn’t be operational before 2028, but one on Argyll could be in place by end of 2024. These can’t even be viewed as either-or. It might have to be both! If we still had a minister for… Read more »
I honestly can’t see the MoD giving a Captas 4 to T31!
I’m not an SME, however, the US put sonar devices on fishing trawlers…
…did they not?
Why?
The hydrophone bit is going to be pulled along at a long stay of around 2km behind the ship. The transmitter is going to be down 50+ m.
You tow at slow speeds so only need one propulsion engine reducing radiated noise.
You haul in to short stay and up revs to move at speed. At short stay ( Shallow array depth) you here very little mostly surface noise.
Get to the next position, pay out to long stay and carry on Sonaring!
And it would almost buy you a complete T26 give or take! Why didn’t they put the NSM on a more seaworthy T23 for trials? Amy spare change for few more T31s to bolster up the fleet?
If you wanted to save that £700m, you would have to decommission all T23s today! Then where would we be?
Admiring a contract document that said we had ordered three T31s.
Not all T23s are slated for repairs in the current financial year, so argument really does not apply.
My argument was as they come up for expenditure we sell them, next year? Year after, etc and use that ring fenced budget to build an extra three T31s today. Ergo, we would have T26s and T23s working along side each other, but, with additional T31s entering from 2026.
Yep, that makes sense. We seem to often spend huge sums doing a refit/upgrade/LFE to then sell the vessel only a few years later – eg.HMS Ocean
On 22 July 2014, Ocean took over the helicopter carrier role again, after her 15-month, £65 million refit, replacing Illustrious. HMS Ocean was decommissioned in March 2018.
Inevitable costs, until the UK delivers type 26+31+32 we have no choice but to maintain these vessels.
Unfortunately you’re right. These old work horses have to just keep hanging on for now. As long as they keep passing the Lloyd’s sea worthiness inspection every five years
Are we going backwards, George?
I remember when we were supposed to have 13 T26 Frigates – now diluted down with the T31’s.
And no mention if made of the T83 destroyers anymore.
1: I do not think the money £670M is expensive (overall) I “learned” in a naval book (written by naval ship specialist of 1980s in Japan) and understand that “through life refit MAY costs as much as a half of the initial build cost (of course, inflation corrected). Do you think T23 is equivalent to T31 or T26? 13/2 x £300M (T31 unit cost, not average cost) is £2Bn. 13/2 x £900M (T26) is £6Bn. The number £670M is very small. Actually, T23 had many other updates, Artisan-3D, CAPTAS-4, SeaWolf blk2, communication, MTU gen, etc. and this £670M is “only”… Read more »
I’m lost by your assumptions.
Iirc 3 T23 have gone through the upgrade, the issue is the 4th is in such material state of disrepair the price has climbed North of 100,000 – and work stopped – the budget is too small and for little gain.
Sell off the T23s and stick the £670m into rush build T31s. Simples.
Maybe I wrote it too complex. How about this “simpler” calculation? 1: T31 will cost about £300M, including “capability enhancements”. Divide it by 20 years (before her own LIFEX), multiply by 7 years, it is £105M. 2: T26 will cost about £900M. Divide it by 20, multiply by 7, it is £315M. If you can buy a “7 more years” of T23 with average £84M cost, it is much cheaper than T31. Note that a T23GP is much more capable (albeit aged) than a T31. Even if you spend £120M on T23ASW, it is still the similar cost to a… Read more »
T31 will cost about £350m, excluding any capability enhancements. Your argument is stronger than you credit and £670m is indeed cheap, if only it were realistic!
All of the remaining frigates have finished LIFEX, apart from Sutherland, which is currently underway. St Albans should be working up soon.
Its actually not a bad cost over the period for the number of ships. 100 mil for a T23 refit involving lots of hull work was excessive and I can see why they may baulk doing anything to Westminster. Bulwarks refit in 2010 came in at around 55 mil. That was upgrades, lots of steel work inside tanks, hull valves and mandatory Safety Items and LLoyds survey stuff. As for Somersets rudder issues. That is a massive bad call by the Abbey Wood desk. We have done repairs to rudder stocks and seals on way bigger ships. I managed one… Read more »