Type 45 Destroyer may get life extension after all

The Ministry of Defence has left open the possibility of extending the life of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers, saying detailed transition planning will determine whether an extension is implemented and that a final decision is not expected until 2027-28.

The position came in a written parliamentary answer from Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard on 10 July, responding to Andrew Bowie, the Conservative MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, who asked whether an assessment has been made of the potential risks in maritime air defence capability as the Type 45s approach retirement without a replacement.

“The role of Maritime Air Defence, currently delivered by Type 45 Destroyers, will be delivered in the future by a mix of crewed Common Combat Vessels and uncrewed, autonomous missile (Type 91) and sensor (Type 94) ships,” Pollard said. “The decision to move to this hybrid approach was taken after detailed analysis of current and future threats, including lessons from ongoing conflicts. The specific analysis is necessarily classified, but the mix of crewed and uncrewed systems will produce a more flexible force, with greater missile capacity while also improving mass.” He added: “Detailed planning for the transition between Type 45 and the Hybrid Navy Maritime Air Defence capability will be undertaken in consultation with industry, which will determine whether a Type 45 extension is implemented. A final decision is not expected until 2027-28.”

The language is a big shift from the position set out when the Defence Investment Plan was published, when a senior defence official said the six destroyers would leave service from 2035 without life extension, with the plan timing the arrival of the Common Combat Vessels to their out-of-service dates. The answer now makes an extension an open question to be settled through transition planning with industry, and in doing so it acknowledges the risk Bowie’s question probes, since the destroyers begin retiring in the mid-2030s whether or not their successors are ready, and the seam between the two fleets is precisely what the planning must manage. A prototype Type 91 uncrewed missile platform is intended to be in service by 2030, with no service entry date yet set for the class, while the Common Combat Vessel remains in its early design stages with hull form options still being explored.

The answer also gives justification yet for cancelling the Type 83 destroyer, the ship once intended to succeed the Type 45. “The alternative, an expensive, exquisite platform such as the Type 83, would have resulted in too few ships to cover all the Royal Navy’s tasks, increasing risk,” Pollard said, an argument that echoes evidence given to the Defence Committee this week by Strategic Defence Review author General Sir Richard Barrons, who described the Type 45 as likely to prove the last of its kind and defended the shift of resources towards systems that deliver mass. The department told Parliament separately on the same day that the Type 83 was an early-stage concept on which no build decisions had been made.

The Type 45s are themselves mid-way through significant upgrades, with the Sea Viper Evolution programme improving their capability against ballistic missiles and all six ships receiving power and propulsion fixes, investments that would carry additional value should an extension be chosen. The answer does not say what an extension would involve, how many of the six ships it might cover, or what conditions would trigger it, with those questions now folded into the transition planning running to the 2027-28 decision point.