The Ministry of Defence has set out its thinking behind cancelling the Type 83 destroyer, saying the classified analysis that shaped the decision drew on lessons from ongoing conflicts and concluded that a mix of crewed and uncrewed vessels will deliver greater missile capacity and mass, where an expensive, exquisite platform would have left the Royal Navy with too few ships to cover its tasks.
The rationale came in written parliamentary answers 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 what assessment has been made of the impact on the Royal Navy’s high-end air defence capability of cancelling a planned class of up to eight Type 83 destroyers intended to replace the Type 45 fleet, and what analysis was used for the decision to replace the programme with the hybrid navy approach.
“The decision to move to this hybrid approach was taken after detailed analysis of current and future threats, including lessons from ongoing conflicts,” Pollard said. “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. 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.”
The maritime air defence role currently delivered by the Type 45s will in future fall to “a mix of crewed Common Combat Vessels and uncrewed, autonomous missile (Type 91) and sensor (Type 94) ships,” the minister said.
The up to eight ships referenced in Bowie’s question would have exceeded the six Type 45 destroyers the class was to replace, and the answer’s argument is one of affordability and numbers rather than capability, holding that the cost of a high-end crewed destroyer would have constrained the fleet below what the Royal Navy’s tasks require, where the hybrid mix of six Common Combat Vessels operating with Type 91 missile platforms and Type 94 sensor platforms offers greater missile capacity and mass for the money, and the uncrewed escorts extend beyond the air defence group, with the eight Type 26 and five Type 31 frigates each expected to operate accompanied by a number of drone escorts, making the family the underpinning of the whole surface fleet rather than of the Common Combat Vessels alone.
The department has addressed the cancellation’s other dimensions in parallel answers, telling Parliament the same day that the Type 83 was an early-stage concept on which no decisions had been made about where or how it would be built, and that detailed planning for the transition between the Type 45s and the hybrid maritime air defence capability will determine whether a life extension of the current destroyers is implemented, with a final decision not expected until 2027-28.
The answers do not say how many Type 91 and Type 94 vessels will accompany the six Common Combat Vessels in the air defence role, how the combined missile capacity of the hybrid force compares with what eight Type 83s would have carried, or what the classified analysis concluded about the survivability of uncrewed platforms against the threats the destroyers were designed to meet.
Basically, the only thing that’s changed is that they’ve realised using a cruiser as the control node was too expensive, and have swapped to a frigate.
So the obvious answers, first don’t replace the 45s fix them and keep them in addition to the 83s and add the drone boats as well. It is a humiliation that a maritime country doesn’t have a navy that could defend it’s own harbour never mind our trade routes.
Run that past me again?
So 6 x T83 is ‘not enough to cover all the tasks’.
But 6 x CCV can magically cover all these tasks?
MOD logic
There wasn’t the budget for six Type-83. They could afford maybe 3 or 4, which means there would at best be 1 available.