UK to build all eight Anglo-Dutch assault ships

Britain is expected to build all eight ships in the planned Anglo-Dutch amphibious fleet, including the four vessels destined for the Royal Netherlands Navy, Defence Minister Luke Pollard has confirmed.

Speaking to a joint session of the Treasury and Defence Committees on 8 July about the government’s plans to maintain a continuous shipbuilding workload, the day after Prime Ministers Keir Starmer and Rob Jetten signed the £2.4 billion agreement at the NATO summit in Ankara, Pollard described the arrangement with the Netherlands as an export success for British industry. He cited “the agreement that we have made with the Netherlands to build the new Amphibious Transport Ships, both for the United Kingdom and, importantly, us building them for the Netherlands as well,” adding: “that is effectively an export campaign win.”

The joint programme covers eight Amphibious Transport Ships, with four intended for the Royal Navy and four for the Royal Netherlands Navy, and Pollard’s comments therefore indicate that all eight vessels are intended to be constructed in Britain, although the final allocation of work between UK shipyards has yet to be decided. He said he could not identify the yards involved because the programme has not completed procurement, adding that work could be distributed across several sites through block construction. “To a certain extent I can’t say which yards yet because that hasn’t been procured, but that could be across a number of our new shipbuilding projects, that could be block builds,” he said.

Block building, in which sections of a ship are constructed at different yards before final assembly at one site, would spread the amphibious work beyond a single facility, and the evidence leaves the field open days after Navantia UK publicly positioned its Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast for the programme, telling the UK Defence Journal the £98.5 million recapitalised site gives the UK a proven, sovereign capability to build the vessels. The overall number and the intention to build the Dutch vessels in Britain are now clear, while the precise industrial strategy, contracting structure and geographical distribution of the work remain unresolved, with the final build locations depending on the procurement process and the government’s wider effort to sustain shipbuilding activity across the Clyde, Rosyth and other British yards.

Previous government information described the £2.4 billion programme as involving ships built in UK yards alongside Dutch industry, based on a Dutch design, with each vessel approximately 160 metres long and displacing around 15,000 tonnes, carrying troops, vehicles and equipment including drones, and fitted with flight decks able to operate current and future long-range uncrewed systems. The work is expected to support hundreds of skilled UK jobs, and the first ship is intended to enter service during the 2030s, with Pollard telling the House of Commons earlier this week that the programme restores a dedicated amphibious capability following the withdrawal of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. “We are working with the Netherlands to develop a joint capability, and our ambition is for the first ship to enter service in the 2030s,” he said.

The Amphibious Transport Ship programme replaced the Royal Navy’s earlier Multi-Role Strike Ship proposal, which envisaged up to six substantially larger vessels of between 25,000 and 40,000 tonnes, after the government concluded the previous concept was too complex and no longer aligned with its planned model for the Commando Force. A joint design was first pursued under Project Catherina, signed in 2023 on the fiftieth anniversary of the UK-Netherlands Amphibious Force, before being set aside in 2024 when the two nations judged their requirements too divergent, a position the Defence Investment Plan has now reversed in favour of the Dutch-led concept.

The Royal Navy has had no dedicated amphibious assault ship since Albion and Bulwark were retired in late 2024 and subsequently sold to Brazil, and building all eight hulls in Britain gives UK yards a second export programme alongside the five Type 26 frigates being built for Norway, which Pollard told the same session has extended Clyde production by fifteen years.