The Ministry of Defence has sought to reassure Parliament over the progress of the Type 31 frigate programme after a series of written questions by Mark Francois, Conservative MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, raised concerns about delivery confidence, costs, and complex integration risks.
Responding, Defence Minister Luke Pollard repeatedly stressed that “the Type 31 (T31) frigate programme will deliver a maritime security capability at a value for money price, in a timescale that compares favourably with other international warship procurement programmes.”
However, he acknowledged that “in common with other enterprises, the T31 programme is experiencing inflationary pressures, which are understood and remain in line with the latest plans and forecasts. The Red delivery confidence assessment rating reflects this impact and on completion of full assessment and assurance, formal updates will be provided through official channels at the appropriate time.”
On schedule, Pollard confirmed that “HMS VENTURER is the first in Class of the T31 and is currently scheduled to be in service by the end of the decade. All five of the T31 ships are planned to be in service by the early 2030s and are forecast to meet the Key User Requirements.” He noted that three ships are currently in build—“HMS VENTURER, which was floated off a launch barge in June 2025, HMS ACTIVE and HMS FORMIDABLE.”
Francois pressed the department on whether complex combat system integration posed risks to the programme. Pollard replied that “there has been substantial investment in risk mitigation. For example: significant investment in Babcock’s facilities at Rosyth, which include digitising the shipyard, new manufacturing facilities, and a new purpose-built Assembly Hall. In addition, there has been the generation of a Shore Integration facility at Portsdown Technology Park, to mitigate risks to the integration of the combat system.”
While no specific figures were provided on the scale of additional costs arising from inflation, Pollard said the department’s forecasts accounted for the pressures. The government maintains that despite the red rating, the programme remains on track to deliver its promised capability, with investment in infrastructure intended to reduce future schedule and integration risks.
The Type 31, also known as the Inspiration class, is intended to provide a versatile general-purpose frigate capability for the Royal Navy at lower cost than the more advanced Type 26.
Fantastic looking ship, such smooth lines and sleek appearance, near perfect bodywork and paint job. I’m sure she’ll Impress when finally commissioned.
You can see the benefit of “Lean Crewing” too, just the 5 windows to clean.
Will we see different shades of Red to be used as program warnings now that the “Reds” are at the helm ?
Some of the PLAN future shoals look good too, and are armed to the teeth… although trashing your own Coast Guard cutter might be a sign of poor leadership that would give Allied powers an advantage in future warfare.
Maybe? Let’s not forget the many examples of Western ships smashing into one another.
Here are a few:
2021 collision between HMS Chiddingfold and HMS Penzance in Bahrain
2024 collision between HMS Chiddingfold and HMS Bangor in Bahrain
2019 sinking of HMS Helge Ingstad in Norway.
2017 collision between the USS Fitzgerald and the ACX Crystal
2017 collision between the USS John S. McCain and the Alnic MC
2021 collision between the USS Connecticut and a Chinese seamount in the South China Sea
2010 grounding of HMS Astute off the Isle of Skye
It seems a little hypocritical to label this Chinese incident as exemplary of poor leadership and potentially leading to an Allied advantage whilst neglecting to mention the countless collisions, groundings and occasional sinkings suffered by Western navies.
Weren’t the Chiddingdfold collisions/Allisions, at least the 2024 one, due to a combination of technical failure and poor reaction times in an enclosed port?
Whereas to collide with your own ship on active operations in clear water suggests a deeper lack of coordination.
Yeah, though I’d argue that failing to check for/missing a major technical malfunction prior to operation also shows a lack of coordination on the part of the RN, though not a wider issue. Especially given the same ship had been the cause of a similar accident just three years prior.
I think that commentors are very quick to attribute greater significance to these incidents when they involve Chinese vessels. For example, despite Western navies having plenty of publicised accidents, we rarely see analysts implying deep-routed failures in communication of a force-wide level, as we’ve seen suggested for the PLAN.
When an American cruiser downed a fighter jet in the Middle East during operations against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, there were few suggestions that it represented a force-wide failure in communication and coordination. There was a similar lack of wide-ranging criticism following the grounding of Astute in 2010. Instead, blame was placed predominantly on the individuals in charge of the vessels. I argue that we should do the same for the Chinese. Rather than assume this represents a force-wide failure, assume that this is an individual failure. Should repeat similar incidents occur, then we should entertain the idea of a force-wide issue. Currently however, this eagerness to suggest a deep-routed issue is symptomatic of an anti-China bias across amateur (and some professional) defence circles, in which a lack of information enables reporters with an agenda to craft their own narrative. A similar situation occurred following the alleged sinking of a Chinese nuclear submarine during construction, despite there being no evidence to support such a conclusion.
I’m not blaming any one person, though there are definitely people on this site who suffer from this.
But I thought everyone on here was an Expert and deadly serious about what they write, you mean they are not ?
Well blow me down with a feather.
You’re a special case lol.
are RN ships still built strengthened to allow for ramming. Seem to remember it being something to do with the Cod Wars???
Yes, that was when HMS Haddock got heavily Battered.
🤡
HNoMS Helge Ingstad
Both are right. The Norwegian Navy uses a translation of the HMS prefix, so it’s perfectly fine to call it the HMS Helge Ingstad. It’s still ‘His Majesty’s Ship’, even if it’s referring to a different monarch.
yes no doubt the NAO will be along shortly to provide us with its coveted Red Warning before downgrading it to green five years after the ships first enters service.
It’s going to be grossly under-armed if the Mk-41 silos aren’t fitted at inception. I don’t understand why they don’t make it a priority to fit the silos during build.
@NickB
The reasoning is pretty clear to get #1 into trials ASAP and hopefully accepted into the fleet.
Anything that slows that process down is bad for the program as well as exports.
I suspect we will see #2 or 3 onwards fitted with Mk41 and NSM from the off.
No chance of Mk41.
Hi SB,
I read sometime ago that Babcock were dead against any change to the current contract, hence the Capability Insertion Program (CIP) contract that they signed with the MoD which I believe covers all 5 ships, so I think they will push the ships through to completion ASAP.
At the time I wondered why they did that as it would have been a clear opportunity to renegotiate the existing contract and perhaps claw back some of the £90m program loss that was being forecast at the time. Given the recent announcements I now wonder whether their resistance to changing the RN spec and contract is because any delay would have clogged up their production line in which they have invested heavily and need to keep busy for years if it is to pay for itself and RN T31 program alone would not have been enough. My guess is that they may well have known that they were in line to build 3 or 4 corvettes for the Swedish navy as they are now in a partnership with SAAB in which Babcock build the ships and SAAB fit them out. I recon that they had sufficient confidence in their developing order book such that they did not want their ship building capacity blocked by delayed RN T31 so they dug their heals in about changing the contract. Winning the CIP means they will be able to keep their fit / refit people busy while the heavy engineering side of the yard is kept busy with building hulls for Sweden and perhaps Denmark. (Not forgetting that Queen Elizabeth is due for a refit as well!)
It would also have been in the RN / MoD best interest to get the T31 into service as early as possible given the condition and run down of the T23 frigates.
If Babcock can win the frigate order from Sweden as well their strategy (whatever it really was) will have paid off handsomely. Personally, I think they have played a blinder and in the medium term their stand may well demonstrate how contractual stability can pay dividends for both parties to a contract. Lets hope MoD can learn the lessons…
Cheers CR
Priority 1 was to get the ship built launched and commissioned, it’s worth remembering this is the first in class, that means this ship is going to spend a lot of time in first of class trials. Essentially the first in class will spend a year or so being poked and prodded…then get sent back to the yard for rectification work before finally being made operational 18 months to 2 years after commissioning.
So essentially wasting time in reworking to get MK41 launchers inplace on commissioning essential would be counterproductive as it delays first in class trials..and this is an important part of the whole build process, because it finds the issues for the later ships before they are commissioned.
Personally I would go for numbers over everything else, because it’s lack of numbers that kills a navy, without numbers you cannot deploy and if you cannot deploy you cannot practice and if you cannot practice you have poor quality crews and less of them… which mean you cannot deploy and so on leading to a death cycle, a cycle you can see presently in the RN… i paraphrase a bit but as one U.S. admiral put it “quantity is the foundation of quality in any navy”.
It’s a little known fact that the RN of the 19c generally had inferior ships, we were simply not as good at building warships as the French and RN captains were always happy to command a captured french build warship as they were on the whole faster more agile and generally made of higher quality materials. But it was the RN that had far the better navy and that was because of size and therefore practice.
Naval and maritime supremacy has always been a game of numbers, you don’t need the best ships, you need the most ships. Pretty much every naval conflict in history has been won by the navy with super numbers.. and the most powerful ships on the planet hunted and destroyed by numbers.
“Naval and maritime supremacy has always been a game of numbers, you don’t need the best ships, you need the most ships”
This is absolute rubbish. Naval battles have historically been won by the side that has the best captains, weapons and ships crew. Like a lot of the verbal diarrhea that infest your posts, a dose of facts would improve matters
Sorry no it’s numbers that matter this comes directly form a piece from the US navel war college. Of the last 30 maritime and naval wars and campaigns the navy with the largest numbers won 27 out of 30. If you have the smaller navy you almost invariably loss.
As for diarrhoea.. I actually read seminal articles and academic papers, not just insult people..maybe you should try the same..instead of just vomiting insults.
As for the best captains and crews.. they come from large navies.. because large navies have lots of experience to draw on..see experience and ships crews don’t come out of thin air… they come out of lots of sea time and lots lots of very experienced people with sea time teaching you.MASS creates QUALITY.
So stop taking rubbish and educate your self.
Hi Jonathan Quite an interesting observation regarding the Napoleonic Naval balance of power, you are quite right regarding the French Warships generally they were better built, but a lot of that had to do with materials and necessity ! For instance we had far more access to quality Oak and Eastern hardwoods which meant they built lighter but stronger by using techniques such as iron knees and reinforcing fish plates.
However they also tended to build larger ships with more numerous guns, which meant slower and less manoeuvrable ships, the majority of RN ships were 74 / 64 gun with a smattering of 100 + gun (like Victory) ships of the line, our crews and commanders learnt how to use that to their tactical advantage,
The other primary difference was in gunnery practice the RN generally had fewer but larger cannons and better trained gun crews, the Carron Ironworks at Falkirk produced both Carrions and Carronades both were superior to the French and Spanish weapons.
As for the argument about numbers mass has a quality of its own and if the WW1/2, IJN WW2, Italy WW2 for examples, there has to be a huge disparity in quality or ineptitude for the opposite to occur.
Because changes to the contract requirements is how slippage in dates and costs always occurs. It starts with just a little change here, and just a little change there. However, I haven’t heard that the Mk41s have even been ordered yet. If a capability insertion plan is to start soon after commissioning, I’d have hoped we’d have heard something by now.
To be honest I do wonder if they are having a bit of a rethink around the MK 41s, because in the end what they need to do most is up the number of CAMMs and also give it some strike and ASuW capabilities. They can do that a lot more cheaply by just dropping in 4 more standard CAMM farms to give 36 CAMM and due to the speed of the T23s falling apart that are going to have five spanking brand new sets of 8 NSM launchers with no ships to go on that will essentially be free. So I suspect the capacity upgrade may well be more CAMM farms and 8 NSM.
Because quite frankly with its very good gun armament and ability to take a Merlin that would be a pretty good fit for a second rank GP frigate and make them more capable than a lot of frigates.
There is a promised capability upgrade as soon as sea trials are done.
But given the MODs current reputation for glacial procurement, that could be 10 years down the road.
I suspect that the capability upgrade may just be to a realistic second rank GP frigate level.. 24-36 CAMM in a standard farm and 8 NSM.. because that could be done cheap as chips ( the RN already has the CAMM missiles and NSMs and launchers)… the fact the type 23s are falling apart faster than you can say “whoops” means there is a lot of spare already paid for kit.
The MK41s would be lovely but quite frankly a bit gold plated and at present the RN does not have the missiles for them… give it a good number of CAMM and NSM and jobs a good one.
‘value for money’ = skimping on capabilities = a floating liability in contested waters = death trap. Value for money / cheap shouldn’t mean giving them limited ASW capabilities and arming like a corvette.
It is very hard to understand this announcement as it makes no direct mention of the successful systems integration validation announced a few days ago.
Whilst I’m very grateful to @George [and team] for researching this material and publishing it might, I suggest, be good for an SME to deal with a particular platform so that articles can be cross referenced?
It would be really handy to insert links to previous announcements and possibly have a sub menu for say T31, T45 etc so it is a bit easier to comb through the history of a platform?
All the great issues of a growing platform and readership as defence, thankfully, rises in the national ajenda.
💯
This is a great idea.
I have a further suggestion, in that perhaps these smaller articles could be placed into a kind of live feed for each subtopic, where the user could scroll through articles and posts. It might save time as opposed to writing a whole article for these more minor developments.
A sort of Wiki style summary article?
Once the template is established pasting the info in should be relatively straightforward.
Hi SB, I’m not entirely sure how anyone can do a proper assessment of the T31 yet as it’s an unknown quantity, it’s really a different ball game with lots of equipment that is new to the RN. In fact I will be very intrigued to see how the T45/26 BAe ships integrate with the T31 Thales ones.
As for a summary I think Navy Lookout are pretty well the go to SME for this sort of thing or even Jane’s. t
“HMS VENTURER is the first in Class of the T31 and is currently scheduled to be in service by the end of the decade”
Say, what?! Nick Hine said when the ship was rolled out in May that he expected it to be handed over to the Navy at about the same time next year. I’ve read articles saying sea trials will begin by the end of this year. Last month Naval News declared commissioning was expected in late 2026 or early 2027. Now Pollard is saying it will be in service by the end of the decade! What is going on? The difference between these statements is why people need reassurance, and Pollard’s statement offers none of it.
With possible export orders for Denmark and Sweden on the line, spamming random dates is unhelpful. At the moment “on schedule” is any date you like.
Will Babcock and MOD please agree a schedule and publish it?
I assume the discrepancy comes from the date the ship will be handed over to the RN for sea trials as first of class, and the date of her actual entry into service which is likely to be at least a year and likely more on from that
I agree. But these are simple ships, especially as initially outfitted. It shouldn’t take until the end of the decade before they are brought into service. 2028 was the operational target date for quite some time, and I’d have thought that was still eminently reachable if the ship is handed over mid-2026.
I suppose I should have said congratulations to Luke Pollard on his elevation to Minister of State, and I hope his written answers are better than this in his new job. Also welcome to Louise Sandher-Jones, taking Pollard’s old job.
What people often forget is commissioned is not operational.. especially for the first in class you are looking at 18 months to 2 years after commissioning before a ship is operational.
First in class trials will take a year as the RN tests everything and writes the how to operate manual, they will also create a massive long this does not work list.. some will be fixed by Babcock staff who will still be on board as part of sea trials and some will be fixed when the ship goes in for post trials remediation work ( which any first in class will have in spades).. after that back out and work up for first operational deployment.
This is the big issue with the T23s falling apart so quickly.. when you look at the planned commissioning dates for the T31s and T26s add 2 years before the first in class is operational and 1 year before all the subsequent ships are operational.
Before it enters service there have to be trials, meetings, more trials, meetings and the there is armament to be discussed and the fitting thereof postponed. The price of each ship will have doubled so build will need to be slowed which will need meetings…….
If they ever make a live action Family Guy film there will be a point to Mark Francois. Until then, there isn’t.
Next decade??😳
I kept reading 2027.
5 years to trial a ship?
I thought she was fitting out already?
You can add 2 years to the commissioning date of a first in class before its operational ( with -/+ six months). The first in class sea trials will be about a year.. then it goes back into refit for remedial work then it’s back out for work up to first deployment.
Couple of examples:
HMS Norfolk was commissioned 1 June 1990, it finished trials and completed its BOST in December 1991 after its BOST the crew got to play in Exercise joint warrior as a treat for all their hard work, before the ship was taken in for its defect rectification period, it was then formally deployed in May 1992.. so almost 2 years to the day before its first deployment.
HMS daring.. handed to the RN on December 2008 but not formally commissioned until July 2009, She did her BOST in June 2010 and was declared operational in July 2010.. which was actually utter BS in the case of Daring because she had no functioning weapon systems apart from her 4.5in gun and 30mms at that point. She then went back into trails ( even though she was formally commissioned..I actually don’t understand how she past her BOST to be honest because part of the BOST is testing systems are functional). After 2 years of trials she had a working sea viper system and CIWs and went on her first operation deployment in January 2012 just over 3 years after being handed over.
This delay between being handed over and commissioned and actually being operationally deployable is one of the big concerns around the rooting type 23s and why I always estimate very low numbers on the RN major surface combatant fleet from 2028-2033.. because commissioned is not operational.
Thanks, J.
I’d forgotten the furore in the press about Daring.
The 1 billion ship armed with a Main Gun.
Cameron, Clegg, and whoever was Chancellor and DS need hauling in for an in camera enquiry. I’d bring the 1SL too but he’s probably enjoying his pension with feet up.
Our Escort numbers are dropping away.
She is fitting out, but you have all the installation of kit, followed by setting it to work. This all takes time, particularly for the first of class. Then you have to trial everything, one system at a time, that will take most of next summer, then hand over to the RN, who will then check everything. It won’t work straight out of the box, the last big system that did that was the Horizon system for the Post Office, and we all know how well that went. Then you will almost certainly need a period back in dockyard hands for remedial tweaks and changes. All that will take her well into 2027, then you have work up, which again will be protracted because everyone will be learning on the first of class. By the time ship 5 comes along it will be an almost easy!
Thanks Nick.
Pretty much as J explained above. 👍
Probably typed at much the same time as well!!