Earlier this week our embattled Prime Minister, speaking at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the capital announced the 8th and final Type 26 frigate will bear the name HMS London. The government may be desperate for some good news stories, but this is scraping the bottom of the PR barrel. The MoD is unable to say when she will be ordered or even approximately which year she will be in service. Projecting from the current glacial rate of construction, this ship could be at least 18 years away from joining the fleet.
The contract for the second batch of ships is still under negotiation and the exact schedule is subject to conjecture. It is possible that these ships will be laid down and constructed faster, but if the rate of production for the first 3 ships is maintained HMS London may not be operational until sometime between 2036 and 2038. Some of the first members of her ship’s company may not even have been born yet.
As a fascinating sideshow, there was some consternation when it appeared from the First Sea Lord’s announcement that God had been removed from HMS London’s Latin motto “Domine Dirige Nos” (God guide us) and shortened to “Dirige Nos” (Guide us). The Navy maintains ships of this name have officially used the shorter version of the motto since 1926 but there is dispute amongst historians and examples of recent ships using the full-length version, possibly unofficially or in error. We believe God should take His rightful place, but you can disappear further down this particular rabbit hole by reading the UKDJ article and comments here.
The naming of the City class Type 26 frigates was done in a strange sequence, with announcements made by politicians at what the MoD has described as ‘appropriate occasions’. Currently, ships 5, 6 and 7 have yet to be assigned names. The first three vessels HMS Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast have been named and contracts signed for their construction. The Defence Secretary revealed in October that the 4th ship would be named HMS Birmingham, at the Tory Conference held in the city. It is extraordinary to be announcing names for ships that have not even been ordered.
The naming of HMS Dreadnought, a decade in advance of her expected commissioning in 2028, makes more sense. She is the lead ship of her class, from which the convenient nomenclature “Dreadnought” is derived for the whole programme. Furthermore, Dreadnought has actually been ordered her construction is underway. The winning bid to build the five Type 31e frigates will be decided next year and construction should start soon after. None of these ships has yet been named, despite the fact they are all supposed to be in service before HMS Glasgow.
The Navy itself is not especially concerned about the naming sequencing or when and where they are announced. Naming ships that are only pencilled into the programme may actually be seen as reassuring, making them harder for a future government to cancel. As we have discussed before, the real concern is the construction timetable. The RN needs frigates delivered on time to replace the Type 23s, one of which is scheduled to go out of service every year from 2023.
Besides the obvious absence of badly needed new frigates, stretching out the Type 26 programme will create a variety of other issues. As night follows day, delays incur additional costs. There may be greater logistical and support complications that come with an increased diversity of age and equipment fit for ships of the same class. As a light cruiser-sized vessel, the Type 26 comes with space and power generation facilities to support future upgrades but the £3.7Bn build contract for the first three ships does not allow for major changes during their construction. A design that is cutting edge in the early 2020s will have to be considerably evolved to avoid ships entering service in the mid-2030s being obsolete. The nature of warfare is changing fast and it is likely the equipment that goes to sea on HMS London will need to be quite different to that originally fitted to her much oldest sister, HMS Glasgow.
Any ‘feel good’ benefit derived from announcing the names of vessels so very far in advance seems rather hollow. If the government was to commit to a much quicker drumbeat of deliveries and make public a target In-Service Date (ISD) for HMS London that would be something to celebrate.
Politics trumps logic every time. They are named at politically advantageous times and delayed so that another government has to cough up our money. They can’t be obsolete if they are fitted for but not with!
Cynical – moi?
PS One of them must surely be called Sheffield.
2 classes of ships one built too fast, one too slow ,both being built by the most inefficient methods imaginable.It would be a challenge to think up a more suicidal industrial and procurement strategy.As you say,we will end up developing 2 sets of systems for 4 ships each,expensive backfitting followed by no money for the next class,a bit like now with the type 23.
How is the build method inefficient? Pre-completion of outfitted blocks and integration needs a practice but once you have it right, it’s very efficient and is the way most places in the world do it these days.
Block building is efficient and the way its done, and even if it wasn’t we would have to do it for political and various other reasons.Transport is expensive but bearable and specialisation is a good thing. The problem is a limited crash programme across multiple sites. All of them are going to need investment and training and will probably struggle on with sub optimal infrastructure.Integration nightmare and lack of experience with personnel being shunted around, they will probably just about have cracked it when the programme comes to an end and then it will be deliberately destroyed like Portsmouth.
I feel like everyone just downvotes Grubbie out of habit now. This is one of the occasions where he’s right.
Spending over 2 decades to build 8 ships isn’t logical or efficient by any standard, it’s just government ineptitude. The equipment fits are going to need to be completely different to avoid obsolescence at launch.
Don’t worry, challenger said the same thing below and got loads of upvotes!
‘We want 8 and we won’t wait!!!’
Actually we need at least 10 and don’t want 5 type31,but I can’t think of a ryme.
I’m sure everyone will be delighted that I want to order more ships!The real issue is critical mass, resulting in acquisition death spiral.
I wonder what the optimum efficiency build speed would be?I’m absolutely certain that its somewhere between what we are planning to do.
I found this announcement equally ridiculous and pathetic as well. It only demonstrates how desperate those in charge are to conjure up some good news and how fearful the RN is that even 8 Type 26 are far from assured.
What next? Shall we start thinking of names for the QE & PoW replacements we’ll be looking to order in the 2060’s!
Both the industry and the RN need some degree of stability and assurance. 8 Type 26 built way too slowly (with inflated costs and potential obsolescence) coupled with 5 Type 31 built way too quickly and cheaply (what happens when this comparative glut of work dry’s up by 2028?) just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Perhaps the idea is that by naming the ship, somehow it would force it to be built?A bit like Lord Wests publicly expressed idea that if we built 2 whipping great carriers it would force the escorts to be funded.
Pretty desperate if that’s the case. I think operating carriers does at least force the funding of the 12-14 escorts needed as a bare minimum to ensure the former don’t deploy without adequate protection.
Beyond that i guess it remains to be seen whether the stated aspiration for more than 19 will come to anything. I don’t think a shift towards the French Navy’s model of a high/low mix is necessarily a bad move, but at the end of the day critical mass still matters.
Ark Royal and Hermes, problem solved
The chances of this ship ever being built are entirely 0%. Like previous recent ship building programmes, the type 26 is over-engineered and complicated, so the cost will blow out and the intended quantity will never eventuate. I predict that no more than 4 or 5 will get built. It is reasonable to assume that each new over-engineered ship built by monopoly BAE equates to at least a halving of capacity (optimistic assumption), so 16 Type 23 into 4-5 Type 26 seems about right.
Plus massive costs of operating defective Type 45 and F35 will need come from budget somehow, so expect more cuts elsewhere, not just in Frigate numbers.
I don’t know why they have to cycle through the same names so often,the RN has a huge backlog of fantastic names and could come up with some new ones as well.I like the Greek ones best.National icons like London are best avoided because it makes them a special target for enemies obsessed by propaganda, such as daesh.
These days it’s a toss up whether PC brigade would embrace or avoid HMS Pansy or the joyful Gay class.
I’m personally looking forward to the next step in the alphabetical system. We’ve currently got D class destroyers, but we also technically have E class survey ships, so the next letter is F.
Fearless, Furious, Formidable, etc. Now THOSE are some good warship names
Should of went I Class for Trident replacements instead of Dreadnought.
Invincible, Inflexible, Indomitable and Indefatigable
Should have, not should of, and it’s gone, not went
Seem to have morphed into “Save the English language” here, not the Royal Navy.
No they shouldn’t Dreadnought is much better.
Stephen if they follow history boat 2 & 3 will probably be Valiant and Warspite.
Boat 4 is anyones guess.
I’m with Callum and Rick in liking the alphabetical naming system as it allows for a mix of place names, historical battles or figures and a whole range of evocative adjectives.
Completely agree that the In’s should have been used for the successor subs and i hope we see F, G or H names for Type 31.
A Frigate should take no more than 3 years to build, and if you building in succession as blocks building 8 should take 10 – 15 years. not 9 year for one and 30 years for all 8 it’s ludicrous..
These type 26’s will likely take longer than some wooden wall battleships where sometimes they suspended construction to allow the wood to properly season or because the war had ended. Made sense then but now its a joke.
Yup, Victory took 6 years to build. The battleship Iron Duke took 2. The frigate Leander took 4.
It’s not lack of ability to build faster, it’s to guarantee jobs for longer and manage expenditure better: it costs more for fewer ships overall, but it technically costs less each individual year. Bureaucracy at its finest, as long as it LOOKS like we’re spending less it’s ok
How interesting. Why did ‘Victory’ take so long; I know she was a ‘dreadnought’ in her day but was that an intentional drawing-out of the build, wood seasoning, etc.?
Remembering the 12 type 45s that became 8, then 6 warships, HMG have a lot to answer for on the question of trust, morale, recruitment and the contribution towards the loss of Portsmouth shipyards and Appledore.
Can the UK afford to keep outsourcing equipment procurement budgets (RFAs, anti-ship / cruise missiles, Wedgetail aircraft, …) in order to prop up and support foreign tax paying defence businesses and foreign engineering development?
If the UK builds more ships for the RN / RFA (planned order book for one warship per year), leisure cruise ships, tankers / containers, fishing trawlers, ferries then yards will have the capital to invest in future-proofed infrastructure and tooling to make them more competitive going forward.
Long-term vision vs. political 4/5 year calculations.
But guys are you aware that General Electric who builds the motors for these ships, and whose kit proples 92% of the fleet is thrreatened with closure and the Yanks want to move production to France meaning the UK will loose a national Strategic asset ! Both the MOD and the 1st Sea Lord seem willing for this to happen, documents available on request, so we will all be paying taxes to pay French workers to make our motors whilst we also pay almost 200 workers unemployment benefit. Total scandal.