The news of the steel cutting for the first Type 26 Frigate, HMS Glasgow, was met with remarks by an SNP MP implying only three of the class are to be built.
Douglas Chapman, SNP Spokesperson for Defence Procurement, said today:
“While we welcome today’s long awaited start to cut steel for three frigates, three is clearly not the thirteen promised to the workforce on the Clyde.
Following repeated questioning yesterday the UK government could not confirm the date for the publication of their much vaunted National Shipbuilding Strategy due last year, which would help bring security and clarity to the future of naval Shipbuilding both on the Clyde and at Rosyth.
A key component of a steady stream of work for Scottish Shipbuilding is the new T31e smaller frigate and again yesterday the UK Minister could only say it was still ‘at the design stage’ – where it has been for the best part of two years. It is welcome that the workforce on the Clyde will push ahead of the Type 26 frigate programme. It is absolutely essential that the Clyde retains the skills and experience it has as a world centre of shipbuilding expertise.”
While we do agree that the Government are on the date for the publication of their National Shipbuilding Strategy, our issue here is the implication that only three frigates are to be built.
‘Three is not thirteen’, a contact in the University of Glasgow maths department assures us this is true.
Warships of this size and complexity are ordered in batches. The Type 45 Destroyer was ordered in batches, why should the Type 26 Frigate be any different?
As we predicted before the announcement that the first batch of Type 26 Frigates were ordered, some groups have taken the batch build process to indicate a cut and it’s becoming comical.
Ordering in batches is common for projects of this size around the world and was last seen with the Royal Navy for the Type 45 Destroyers and recent Offshore Patrol Vessels. The Type 45s first batch order was for three vessels just like Type 26.
Additionally, it was recently announced recently that work had started on the fifth of five new Offshore Patrol Vessels being built on the Clyde.
This begs the question, why would a defence spokesperson who has been party to Defence Select Committee meetings discussing this very topic imply that only three will be built? We’ll leave that up to you.
Someone should tell the SNP to be grateful for what they are being given. Portsmouth was sacrificed on the altar of devolution and if the SNP get a bit too big for their boots (they aren’t even a majority government in their own backyard of 5 million people) then tell them ‘You are getting three. The rest are being built in rUK’
Let them then explain to those out of work how they pissed off the people funding their £15 Bn deficit and all the jobs on the Clyde and Rosyth for the last God knows how long.
We owe the Jocks nothing. And I am getting really fed up with the incessant Scottish ‘gimme’ demands of a ‘victim’ culture. A short sharp shock is in order.
Answer is simple …….Independence for Scotland
you should watch your fucking lip
Portsmouth was sacrificed on the alter of absolutely clueless austerity and defence and strategic negligence, substantially by an English elected government
The clyde is literally one of the most historic ship building centres on all of planet earth. Not saying portsmouth doesn’t have a similarly prestigious history – just that you should show similar awareness
Building and maintaining a multi ethnic (or multinational) union (like the UK) isn’t an easy task. Maybe you should see the bigger picture and start acting like this union is something worth preserving (rather than acting like the SNP)
Yaldy Soft Lad it isn’t my lip needs watching its your abuse.
No place for it in an adult discussion board.
I won’t be drawn into your stupidity so I am out …
We like to try to maintain adult conversation in these postings if thats what you consider your opening remarks to be Yaldy then I feel you should not post again.
Any danger yaldy you could put your posts in a civilised fashion? Yes, Chris thinks it’s cool to talk about “Jocks”, but then his ignorance is no excuse for your language.
Not all Scots are interested in the SNP and their griping!!! Maybe that’s why they lost 21 seats in the last election. Thankfully!!!
SNP are nutters. They should consider the fact that nearly all military ship building in the UK is now done on the Clyde, at the expense of everyone else.
If Scotland ever voted for independence that would end immediately.
Trying to score cheap shots without engaging their nationalistic brains. It is a terrible shame that the type 26 numbers have been reduced to 8. You never know though, it could always go back upto 13 if the country ever wakes up to the perilous state of the Royal Navy.
Sign of the times – the ignorance about the forces in this country is quite astonishing considering that this is a martial country.
‘ if the country ever wakes up to the perilous state of the Royal Navy’ – and of the army and RAF.
Quite right. At any given time at least half or more of the capability is in for service or unavailable due to lack of spare parts or similar. The force capability is not what it seems at all.
Considering that a significant part of the man-hours involved in building a warship are in the design stage, perhaps the c**** tosser from the SNP should appreciate the order being split between two designs will actually increase the work the orders create.
Perhaps the c**** tosser from the SNP has read that the T31 is out for tender, and realises that even the design work might not be done in Scotland, let alone the build.
In truth, steady as you go might be the way forward. Two huge political issues face the UK, one is the Brexit exit costs, and the SNP determination to split the Union in either the short or long term. By drip feeding the ships, it may enable the UK Government to weigh up the ongoing situation, as it develops.
I’m sure the RN will get all eight 26’s and some cheaper variant, but the financial future for the UK is not clear and caution would be my option too.
Maurice 10. I’m peeved at you advising caution. As an SNP voter I was rather enjoying watching the haters drive Scots who are floating voters into our welcoming arms with their ridiculous ‘facts’ no doubt gleaned from your rite wing anti Scottish press . The same media that drove us out of Europe with lies, half truths, fear and disinformation and is now trying to replace their standard model scape goat of Johny foreigner with a new one . The new ‘ enemy within .’ The horrifyingly selfish, charity case, leaches ; the Scots ! Hopefully they will ignore your warning and continue spreading nonsense about my country and it’s people. They and their ilk are our best recruiting sargeants and I hope with luck they will drive just another five or six percent of Scots into the eager arms of our independence movement.
Mike – So is that the same reasoning that people applied when the SNP lost vast numbers of voters and many seats along with your ‘IndyRef’ heroes like Salmond and Robertson in the General Election?
Or when they lost their majority in the Scottish Parliament in 2016?
Or when they lost their only Council and many councillors before the GE?
The Scottish Nasty Party are now a busted flush, they have had their day and will become a footnote in the annals of Scottish history. Scottish voters gave you lot a try and saw education, police and other devolved matters crumble while Dear Nicola played the world stage acting way above her pay grade. She is the First Minister of what in Uk terms is a large local council. Yorkshire and Humberside has a bigger population and gets 16% less in public spending.
And yes you are a charity case when you lump the rUK with your £15 Bn a year deficit worth 9% of your ever smaller GDP. You were a week away from Recession.
Scotland is a terrific place and fantastic people. Quite why they fell for the SNP crap beats me. They deserve better.
Instead of recession, Scotland’s economy grew 4 times as much as the UK as a whole in the last reported quarter.
For the rest of the posting, LOL.
Wrong. Compared to the rest of the UK, the Scottish economy is lagging. You cannot cherry pick one-quarter’s figures. Well you can if you are an idiot which I suspect is the case here.
If they got independence it woukd be zero. Seriously the SNP have no creditable policies and are fading away. Its obvious that they have nithing positive to say about the multi million pound investment and as always in their victim state sychi, are not in tbe real World.
There were people like you in 1938, too.
The S.N.P. lacks credibility today even in Scotland. That said will the thirteen be built? That is a serious question in the light of recent disarray in defence planning and project management irrespective of ill informed or simple malign opinion.
Who says the SNP lack credibility in Scotland???
Seems like your Tory opinion is in disarray
Imagine the disaster that would follow if these decent patrol boats you propose were the only thing the navy had and the U.K was attacked? They would be useless against a real warship.
They might be cheap, they might be expendable and they would probably serve their purpose as “patrol” boats well, but replacing combat vessel with them is dangerous to the point of stupidity.
I don’t like the argument of “we don’t need these expensive defence projects because we will never be attacked”. It sounds good on paper, until the attack that will never happen, happens.
I am posting this here as well as another thread to ensure you see it TH.
Will you never stop? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If we halved the defence budget what would you do with the money? Piss it away on more socialist nonsense no doubt. Try to understand this. A governments first responsibility is to safeguard its citizens and their way of life. Everything else is secondary. There is no point having the best education and welfare systems ever devised if you can’t defend it. The world is not the hippie drum circle you seem to believe it to be and there are always threats to our national security. You clearly have little to no understanding of geo political affairs. What would have happened in WW2 if people like you had your way?
On to the Type 45s, they are not a financial disaster or any kind of disaster. They are in fact world beating AAW platforms and their only problem has been the much publicised engine woes. These will be corrected by project Napier at a cost of under £300 million. So averaged out each type 45 cost around £1.1 billion, hardly astronomical. The ships have a lifespan of approximately 25 years so cost less than £250 million per year of service. Pretty good if you ask me. Obviously that does not include running costs but that doesn’t change the picture that much.
Seriously, why do you visit this site? You clearly have no interest in the subjects discussed. Every post just makes you seem more idiotic. Surley your time could be better spent protesting about transgender animal rights or some other nonsense. I doubt you will pay any attention to this reply but you should. Go look in a mirror and realise that you are a waste of everybody’s time.
David think you need to check your maths, although the comment about transgender animal rights is amusing.
The SNP are just like TH or Lilly Allen as I like to call her. They are just slinging mud with nothing worthwhile to contribute. People up here are thankfully waking up to the SNP and their toxic crap.
The SNP have a clearly openly advertised agenda of wanting an independent Scotland, as much trying to make the rest of the UK out as the bad guys is their aim in life, as it would secure their agenda.
If you take apart the independence agenda from their message and it is kinda right. We all have the fear that failure to place a firm order on the full number of vessels means that they will get ultimately cut, I highly doubt down to 3 but two batches of 3 and stop is possible, with a vague promise of the numbers being built from the light frigates but again with no firm order and same problem 10 plus years later.
So whilst we are all bored of the SNP on their hobby horse, they may have a partial point.
Chapman’s point was this “”three is clearly not the thirteen promised to the workforce on the Clyde”.
Thirteen built on the Clyde became 8 built on the Clyde, and 5 built around the UK (blocks) and ASSEMBLED in the Clyde (a big difference).
Chapman’s point is this “the UK government could not confirm the date for the publication of their much vaunted National Shipbuilding Strategy due last year”
Chapman’s worry is clearly that, like the T31, the other 5 T26 will be built around the UK, and perhaps just assembled on the Clyde, and perhaps not even that.
Like me, he presumably read Parker’s review.
I’m afraid you were misled by an article which misread and totally misunderstood what Chapman was talking about.
Steve, just read my reply to you and I think it must have been meant to be to someone else. Oh well, too late at night for me.
TH
The second word is Off
LOL.
Im English and i am married to a Welsh women
I was born in Cornwall but moved to Plymouth when a young lad
I left school and got a job in Devonport Dockyard
I started on the Tugs and by god we had a fleet then
I had the fortune if being at the launch of the last naval vessel to be built at Devonport
I then went on to serve a very long time in the RFA
The jist of this is the fact that i now live in Wales
And beleive me when i say that the SNP are doing a good job
They are doing a good job of pissing off the English and Welsh with there incessant i want this and i want that as we dont get anything up here in Scotland
As i said i am from the West country and now live in Wales and if you want to come to theses two parts of the UK and see how hard done by they are you will realise that you dont have it so bad after all
Please dont be offended by what i just said as i do realise the not all Scots are supporters of the nationalist
Coverack has just been badly damaged and when i see those poor sods cleaning and mending there beloved little village and not blaming anyone i think of Grenfell and the moaning they are doing all the time demanding this and that
I’m a “nationalist” or at least support Independence for Scotland. And I often point out that, if we think (rightly) our road and rail network didn’t get the investment over the decades that it got in England, they should just look at a map of Wales to see how much worse it is there.
The lack of investment in infrastructure in Wales over the decades is an aboslute disgrace. Take out the gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, coal and now even steel.
Your grief is not with Scotland, it’s with the UK Government.
“The Russians and the Chinese are not a threat”
With a single sentence you prove your naivety and ignorance,
TH
I am afraid you don’t know what you are talking about.
Fact 1: Britain does not grow enough food to sustain itself and therefore imports lots.
Fact 2: The majority of our food comes via Sea and Air
Fact 3: A coastal/ border force will not secure our food and trade routes
Fact 4: By depriving the UK of food for 2 months an enemy or external force would starve the UK (which has a 3 week food buffer).
Fact 5: If your approach had been applied during either of the previous world wars the UK would have lost.
The UK require a blue sea navy in order to secure our trade routes – even China is aware of this now and is participating in international activities in securing trade routes. As such a coastal defence force will not suffice.
TH
I think you should have a talk with people in Ukraine and more specifically Crimea.
There may be a lot of change since the WW’s but a lot stays the same as well.
I accept your right to come on here and bait the group and you are conflating a number of disparate facts and giving them far more credibility than they deserve.
If you haven’t noticed the UK has been heavily deployed for the last 30 years + and this shows no sign of abating.
The aim of many people on this site is not to question the government per se, but to ensure that the people who are tasked with defending our country are given the best equipment to survive. I for one am happy to pay taxes for that. I am not happy to pay taxes to fund girl bands in Somalia through our aid budget.
TH
China is investing in the UK for 2 reasons:
1. to extra influence over our government
2. to get a return on its investment
China has a very long term strategy in comparison to western nations. The UK has a 5 year strategic cycle at best (which again leads to waste with taxpayer money).
China is outmanoeuvring every western government (possible exception Germany) across Africa and Asia as a result of this patience.
oh no not you again… “tax payers alliance” retard
what a retard…do you live in a fucking cardboard box just watching the world go by? “They’re not a threat” hahahaha, you made my day with that joke. You clearly don’t belong on this site, and you’re certainly not going to change any of our minds to your left wing nonsense, so why don’t you go read the daily mirror. XD
You do realise that if we cut our defence budget we wouldn’t be a part of NATO as we only just get to the 2% mark as it is. Cut the foreign aid budget however… and that’s where you should take your “taxpayer alliance” bullshit.
TH – “Germany 1,2% Italy 1,5% Spain 1,2%”
So basically our lovely EU friends have been freeloading off us and the USA for their defence? Therefore they are no friends and we are better off out. If the EU wants to be a nation state and have a military we should bin NATO, let the EU look after their own backyard and entrench our security with people we can trust like the ‘5 Eyes’. especially as we look to a global Britain post Brexit.
Plus you comments about the EU and food did make me smile. We PAY the EU some £13 Bn a year. Some of that gets recycled back to the UK in EU promoting projects with a blue flag on top but most gets swallowed up by the EU Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy (45% of total expenditure) which force prices higher as it protects less efficient French Farmers and the huge Spanish fishing industry and penalises the most efficient (British) farmers and the British fishing industry with really productive measures like ‘Set Aside’ which has the effect of shuffling £ Millions into large landowners bank accounts and doesn’t grow a row of beans. Literally and throwing dead fish back into the sea to ‘conserve stocks’! No really! That policy also discriminates against non-EU producers by erecting 10% External Tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
Out of the EU we can fire up the best farmers in Europe, exploit every bit of our natural resources and use EU money saved to incentivise Farmers to produce more and fund the rebuilding of our fishing fleet destroyed by the EU policies. And stop the stupidity of us buying fish caught in UK waters from bloody Spain! Trust me it happens. I used to drive those trucks. We can then also buy the best and cheapest food from wherever we choose tariff free. That in itself will help poorer countries and get them trading out of poverty rather than have us throwing £ Billions into corrupt President’s pockets.
Oh and that Girl Band you disbelieved? From Ethiopia and called ‘Yegna’. Thankfully we have pulled the pin on THAT stupidity. I would have that you clever people in the TPA would have had all that ‘Foreign Aid’ waste stopped years ago. Or does it appeal to your Liberal Tendencies?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38538631
TH – And in that one piece of garbage you call a reply you show your true colours as a sanctimonious p***k full of his own self importance and self righteous condemnation of anyone you consider ‘lower class’. You reduce a detailed 4 paragraph comment with attachment to THAT?
Yes I drove trucks to feed my family when times were hard. I was away from home for weeks on end just to pay my mortgage. For that I feel NO shame or regret or feel I should be castigated for my work. And certainly not by some half baked Leftie moron like your good self. But what it DID show me was the utter fraud and stupidity of this EU ‘Project’ and how it has been sold as one thing to the public and is quite another underneath the bullshit.
But I eventually stopped being a truck driver and worked my way up the promotion ladder and held positions with the top Logistics companies including as European Business Development Manager for the biggest. I had articles published in my Institute’s journal and transport periodicals. I have letters after my name. I speak 3 languages (other than English) and have managed staff in 4 EU countries.
So what has your contribution to the world been since you left school? I left aged 16 in 1963 to do an engineering apprenticeship and gained full City & Guilds Technician certification. And upon what qualifications are YOU relying to denigrate those with whom you disagree in such a moronic way?
The UK has 100,000 UK citizens living and working in the UAE alone. I’m not sure how couple of offshore patrol boats is going to provide enough cover for an evacuation and the required humanitarian effort whilst the evacuation takes place if hostilities were to break out in the gulf. Its not just about protecting the mainland UK, the UK has plenty of interests ie citizens around the world because we participate in something called the global economy. Over 5.5 millions brits live and work overseas.
Criticism for the SNP that doubts the MoD’s promise of 8 type 26??
Clearly you are not a student of history.
T45’s started at 12, cut to 8 then reduced to 6. On the flimsiest of excuses.
T26’s started at 13, already down to 8 before steel cut for the 1st.
You’d be nuts to bet on 8 being built.
Fact: Bae offered to build them half a billion cheaper if an order for all 8 was signed. Osbourne declined. Says it all really.
Possibly 6 x T26. 3 built on the Clyde, 3 built elsewhere. With 6 T31 and 5 OPV minus 3 retired OPV, that makes a gain of 1 to the fleet – which means Fallon wouldn’t have lied when he said: “we will end up with a fleet that is larger than the fleet at the moment”.
Perhaps I’m being too cynical.
TH as a member of the TPA I assume you believe in protecting taxpayers money from being wasted. So how can you mention being a member of the EU as a positive.
Food security comes at a huge premium from the EU something a money man like you should know.
TH you are not only a financial genius but obviously an expert in geopolitical issues past and present. I am sure if you asked many people across the U.K. they are concerned about Chinese and Russian investment because they are worried about the undue influence of two nations that are totalitarian dictatorships. They both use state sponsored commercial spying and do not comply with internationally recognised laws regarding patents etc. They are at best competitors and might prove to be far worst in the future. We hope not of course but credible defence forces are needed because these countries cannot be trusted.
come on guys, anyone that thinks China or Russia are the enemy are fouling themselves. Both have vastly more natural resources and potential man power than we can possibly hope for. I also doubt that the US could take on and win against China considering they couldn’t really win in Afghan or iraq without local forces. The days where a superpower could rule the world are over and it ended roundly with Vietnam. the same applies the other way and I guarantee Russia and China know it. p.s. the Falklands finalised it when a country that was considered miles advanced struggled to retake the islands.
So forget about a serious all out war situation and focus on the type of conflict we are realitcally going to fight. which is rogue states in the middle of a civil war (scarly not far from Vietnam was by PR of the day but not reality) that we need to support. Realitcally we are going to need to defend the ships against basic anti ships weapons and no more.
Steve. So the west should just roll over and let the Russians and Chinese do what they like and we just need patrol boats. They are both potentially dangerous undemocratic states whose interests and standards of behaviour do not match our own. Nobody seriously believes or wants an all out war but a credible conventional and nuclear deterrent are required. Our navy is our strongest military arm and has been decimated and this disarming is highly dangerous as it only encourages potential bullies. The world has certainly changed but human nature has not.
“The Type 45 destroyers have been an unmitigated disaster and a huge burden on the taxpayer.”
Sources?
Figures?
Cost analysis?
Anything to support that statement…anything …anything at all?
“T45s some of which spend extended periods alongside represent a financial waste.”
How so?
Alongside they have minimum crew, are not burning fuel, are not using spares are not running up hours on equipment.
Alongside they are spending less cash than when at sea.
“Warmongers happy to see tax payers money wasted on useless weapons of war. The campaign to cut defence spending goes on. Letters to MPs in the weeks ahead.”
So how about
” happy to see tax payers money wasted on a hugely inefficient and wasteful NHS. The campaign to cut NHS inefficiency goes on. Letters to MPs in the weeks ahead.”
No??
Thought not.
Make sure u do not mistake SNP for Scotland guys,they aint
As for the boats 3 is not 13 but u dont order 13 in single go.
However BAE need to deliver quality and on price, boat numbers need to increase we are below in desirable numbers for RN. Take a mix of 26 & 31s but dont get mix wrong. If BAE cant deliver then we need to look abroad to get value
“If BAE cant deliver then we need to look abroad to get value”
I suspect that’s a possibility – the MOD is strapped for cash, and the 15 year 2009 BaE TOBA runs out in 2024 – just about the time the 3rd T26 will have been launched.
After that it’s open season on naval shipbuilding tenders.
Tim – Is stand corrected – it was Ethiopia (apologies to anyone from Somalia reading this post)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/19/ethiopian-spice-girls-given-5m-british-foreign-aid-despite-previous/
From a respected source
Umm, if it’s the Telegraph is the respected source, that’s the same paper thinks the Kuznetsov sheltering in the Moray Forth after a planned exercise in the North Sea, was discovered by a fishing boat, and the RN weren’t aware of that till they read it on the internet.
Umm.
You really are a naive,sanctimonious prat.The proper defence of an island trading nation can’t be conducted by a fleet of OPV’s.Perhaps its you who should grow up and grow out of the half arsed student union debating society mentality you have.
Or better still take your moronic sanctimonious put downs and shove them where light cannot be found ….
Oh wait no … Your head is up there …
“While we do agree that the Government are on the date for the publication of their National Shipbuilding Strategy, our issue here is the implication that only three frigates are to be built.”
First part is correct, your second part is wrong. The implication isn’t that only 3 frigates are to be built, the implication is that only 3 will be built ON THE CLYDE. The first part of your statement I quoted explains that worry.
As for built in batches, yes, I know that, the SNP know that, and Douglas Chapman, SNP Spokesperson for Defence Procurement, knows that. In fact every man, woman and their cats and dogs know that.
Sorry, you appear to have totally missed his point, and a potentially valid point it is, and a very worrying one. Not just for the Clyde, but for the UK as transferring the build of the next batch will inevitable cause delays. And eveb if anti-SNP, THAT is what should concern you.
The simple truth as to why the government has not paid for more f35b, initiated the construction of the 31frigate as well as incidental programs like surface to surface missiles for our destroyers and frigates as well as a host of other programs is that the country has no money to do so.
It amuses me when some people on these sights
bang on about what the government should be doing when they obviously haven’t taken the time to look at the state of the nation’s finances. A great post on another page shows that if the government had reduced it’s Overseas Aid program by the same percentage that it had reduced every other Ministry budget including Defence an amazing benefit to all could and would be achieved. The question that must be asked why does the Government not do so? Is it they desire the cudos of being the country that gives the most even to the detriment of its own people, if that be the case they have already lost that position to France another country that can’t afford it.
TH shows his ignorance. Well done.