At a ceremony held at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Govan, Glasgow today, work began on the fifth Type 26 frigate. According to current scheduling, HMS Sheffield is likely to enter service sometime in 2031.
HMS Sheffield is the second of the batch II vessels and the programme is now well into its stride. She will be the fourth Royal Navy warship to carry the name.
Previous Sheffields have maintained strong links with their namesake city and were given examples of stainless steel items manufactured by the steel industry the city was famous for. The first HMS Sheffield was a town-class cruiser and saw extensive action in the Second World War, winning 12 battle honours. She was nicknamed ‘the Shiny Sheff’ and her wartime exploits are recounted in this excellent book.
The second HMS Sheffield was the first Type 42 destroyer, built by Vickers in Barrow and commissioned in 1975. She was subsequently hit by an Exocet missile in the Falklands conflict of 1982 with the loss of 20 sailors. She was the first RN warship sunk since the Second World War and an analysis of the events surrounding her loss can be read in our previous article here.
The third HMS Sheffield, a batch II Type 22 frigate built on Tyneside by Swan Hunter, was originally to be called HMS Bruiser but was renamed in honour of the destroyer lost in the Falklands. A victim of defence cuts, she served for just 14 years in the RN, was decommissioned in 2002 and sold to Chile. Renamed CMS Almirante Williams, she was substantially re-equipped, losing her Sea Wolf system replaced by Barak 1 VLS missiles. A 76mm gun was fitted on the focsle in place of the Exocet system and 8 x Harpoon anti-ship missiles were added.
Really glad to see a Type 26 given this storied name, the seven year build time is great too compared to ten years for HMS Belfast.
The word previous is repeated in the third paragraph by accident.
Yes but HMS Belfast is much bigger with twelve 6″ guns and thicker armour! Just joking, but I’m thankful the build is quicker even if 7 years seems still too long to me.
The batch 2 version almost certainly could’ve served to current day, nuts how we throw young enough ships away.
She would be roughly 36 today, so maybe not current day but certainly into the late 2010s. I’m not sure if the Chilean Navy has different standards for their vessels, the RN or notoriously strict. Replacing the SeaWolf with RAM or SeaRAM launchers would be a good swap for a frigate to patrol the Falklands or the North Sea, or even some CAMM tubes. Adding NSM canisters give a anti-ship punch.
If I ran the MOD I would keep every ship for at least 30 years and store them in dry dock. Unless its the T23’s when I’d keep them in commission all that time. I agree we should have run on the Batch 2’s till the T31 became their replacements. The RFA should been sorted yesterday.
Not really feasible for any one to drydock mothballed ships permanently, especially with our terrible infrastructure
Indeed we don’t have the dry docks to do so, I reckon around 17 in total in the U.K.?…
To be fair if you used Hartlepool you could store all the ships in 1 dock…
Really nice ships’ badge with the interlocking arrows. One of the better ones out there I think.
I’ll be interested to see if there’s much difference between Batch 1 and 2. By the time the last ship is planned in service about 2038 it’ll have been about 20 years since the design finalized in about 2017.
Hopefully with NSM canisters above the mission bay like on the Aussie and Canadian ships 😀👍🏴
It’s the old symbol for Sheffield, a sheaf of 8 silver arrows. The uni also has it as its symbol.
I thought I had read that BAE were looking to reduce the build time down to 60 months from the pre piously scheduled 78 months.
Yup. The last ship could be in service as early as 2035 if they manage their targets and the Navy sea trials and work up reduces to not much more than a year. But the final date would be up in the air anyway if the Norwegian contract comes in.
Article serves largely to remind me how prematurely we scrapped the very capable batch 3 type 22’s with the former HMS Sheffield still giving good service to the Chilean Navy post upgrades.
We also got rid of three T23 to Chile far to early as well. Sold off reduce costs after politicians decided to fight major conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq on a peacetime defence budget. The same reason that we cut the T45 from 12 to eight and then six ships. While 12 was always ambitious, we should never have gone below eight.
Touche, I remember those 3 hulls going and being incredulous at how young Grafton (in particular) was.
The sale of those 3 is certainly now impacting the RN available escort numbers now. Those and the Bay to Australia were probably the worst RN sales since WW2.
The Bay to Australia has got to be the worst by a country mile – closely followed by T23 sales.
T22 was a very expensive beast to run in terms of crew size. They would have been scrapped for crewing reasons alone.
I’d say the T23 sales are the worst, as had they been kept we would have 1 or 2 more escorts available to plug the gap until T26.
But the Bay was a ridiculous penny-pinching sale.
RFA was glad to get rid of that particular Bay….it had issues…
Why, was it the one with flooded engines
It seems that we can now build frigates and destroyers at a rate of one every 18 months so we will never more than about 16. I don’t count the T31s as frigates; they rather are a modern incarnation of Victorian gunboats or Napoleonic War sloops.
Pity that Swan Hunters starved of work and driven to its demise.
The fiasco around the construction of the Bay class, with Lyme Bay being towed to Govan as the final humiliation, sealed the fate of Swan Hunters as a shipbuilder.
T31s – 32 x Mark 41 VLS, 57mm gun, 2 x 40mm guns, and most probably the NSMs once the T23s are retired, and you don’t think they count as frigates…
Tbf the weapons fit will be delayed on at least ship 1, maybe more
The last ship built by Swan Hunters was HMS Richmond. She sailed in November 1994. The company involved with the Bay class fiasco was Swan Hunter (Tyneside) Ltd, a totally different company which was set up primarily for offshore conversion work.
Swan Hunter (Tyneside) was created from the purchase of the assets from the receiver of the previous incarnation of Swan Hunter. To everyone on Tyneside, it was still Swan Hunter, just new management.
Not to anyone familiar with Swan Hunters. The new company knew little about shipbuilding
John
I have posted this one before here on NL
NAO report (HC 98-iii 2007-2008): Ministry of Defence: The Landing Ship Dock (Auxiliary) Project
Simple fact of the matter is that the MOD / RN placed a contract order with Swan Hunter: then over the next few years P***d them about something chronic (i.e. until they went bust).
The key issue is shown on P13: the table giving us the truely eye-watering cost increases.
Peter (irate Taxpayer)
Thanks Peter, this is very interesting. It refers to Swan Hunters throughout and not correctly as Swan Hunter (Tyneside ) Ltd. Note the paragraphs at the top of page 9.
In 2000, Swan Hunter lacked recent experience of defence commercial arrangements and complex ship delivery. The Department identified this as a risk at the outset. Following the collapse of the company, it was bought by Jaap kroese in 1994 and virtually all of the senior project and commercial staff changed. Therefore, whilst the Department had done business with Swan Hunter for decades, it was effectively dealing with a new company.
Not only were the design, project and commercial staff new, so were many of the construction and fitting out trades. The preference was for offshore experience rather than shipbuilding – the new company was set up for offshore conversion work.
John
I have had this debate with N-a-B (who has posted directly below) here on Navy Lookout previously. The outcome of a lot of work, by both me and N-a-B on the Qwerty was:
“we agree to disagree about what happened with the Bays”
Simple fact of the matter is that Swan Hunter – who had used a very competent dutch design team to win the Bay contact “fair and square” were then messed about – something cronic – by MOD & RN: which instigated many many hundreds of design changes.
If you read into the details of the financial numbers on page 13: a rather different story emerges – look at the variations account (which is huge). that key topic is barely touched upon anywhere in the NAO report….
That, coupled with the acceleration of the MOD timeline to build the first ship, completely screwed swan hunter over….there was no time to design it properly before build started.
—————–
Then BAE got really stuck in = to play “corporate monopoly”
It is no coincidence that Scottish devolution (and the definite risk of independence) was very very high on the political agenda at the time = which is why jobs were saved on Clydeside, and not in Newcastle.
The NAO report was, quite frankly, papering over the huge mess which had been created by the MOD, RN and politcians – and especially trying to avoid “political embarresment”.in the run up to awarding the huge QE carrier contracts…….obviously to Scotland….
The NAO report only tells parts of the whole, sadley true, full story
.————–
Also let us not forget that BAE corporately – which had reorganised and also had very big merger in 1999 – was concurrently in a right mess.
Thus BAE was also screwing up (note 1) on both the RAF Nimrod upgrades and especially on the RN Astute Class submarines: both of which it subsequently issued profits warnings for (and ultimately BAE took very big financial losses on both)
————-
Fact of the matter is that what occured here was getting very close to the offence of “misconduct in a public office” (by certain MOD officals)
———–
And to reply to your quoting “complex ships” – the NAO neatly skimmed over the key fact that the Bays are RFA’s (not RN):
the BAYs were supposed to be commercial ships, painted grey!
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1; Correct technical term
Exactly this.
I won’t count them as a useful frigate until they have a sonar
That’ll be never then, don’t forget T45 doesn’t have a functional one either.
T31 with 32 Mark 41 VLS is pipe dream at this moment.
It’s been confirmed they will be fitted with them at build.
In what way is that a pipe dream?
Not at build, in upgrade periods after build. Which is why it’s so uncertain if that will happen.
I found a tweet from HMS Venturer saying only mushroom vls
The whole mushroom/ExLS/mk41 thing is very confusing at the moment, for both types of frigate.
Model of Sheffield at steel ceremony appeared to show 12 x 4 ExLS cells next to the mk41, which leaves nothing for the midships space even though the raised area above the mission bay was visible in the photo.
T41, no idea if we are getting the Iver Huitfeldt arrangement of mk41, or the number of CAMM if we are doing that, or even a mix. I suspect the MoD hardly know themselves.
You obviously missed this story
https://www.navylookout.com/royal-navys-type-31-frigates-to-be-fitted-with-mk41-vertical-launch-system/
Eh, its unclear when it’ll happen, how many, etc
Is only what you have from that article. No timeline, no order, no time even for the confirmation.
I will concede that the T31s might be useful gunboats in the Falklands, the West Indies, the Gulf and BIOT (oh dear!) but fleet escorts they are not.
Highly likely to be employed in a goal keeper role for the carriers though!
CAMM and the Bofors guns are good for that, I suppose.
The guns at least would be better on the carrier itself, but that is a separate discussion.
Davey B
If one “parks” a Type 31 between the incoming threat (enemy ASM’s and UAV’s and their “preferred” target (QE carrier) along the imaginary line called the “Threat Axis” – then
= the incoming missile(s) and UAV’s will (probably) hit the goalkeeper
Unfortunately, the key issue with the RN repeatedly using this tactic is that, once a few T31’s are sunk, one’s team runs out of goalkeepers….
The first time this tactic was tried out by the RN was by sending three under-armed cruisers to patrol off the Dutch coast at the start of WW! – the so called Livebait Squadron
– and that one did not end well…
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
The F125 are considered Frigates
They are but I’d challenge that classification due to the same issue as the T31; key capability gaps. It’s notable that a German F125 has just sailed all around Africa to avoid the Red Sea as it’s considered too dangerous for the ship to operate there.. In the same way, you can’t deploy a T31 anywhere near a potentially hostile area where there are submarines due to it’s lack of a sonar and the lack of ASW detection equipment on it’s Wildcat helicopter.
Just to point out that HMS Lancaster operates in the Gulf and Red sea region and is a GP frigate with no ASW tail anymore
Like other T23 General Purpose frigates, Lancaster has a very capable hull mounted sonar, is quietened for ASW operations and has shipboard torpedoes. The T31’s which will replace them have none of those capabilities and it would be a criminal risk to deploy them in the Gulf.
They’re almost certainly going to be deployed there so clearly they don’t see the ASW threat
REF ASW Threats
Hugo
Sunmack is correct
There is today most-definitely a very serious asymmetric underwater threat in both the Gulf and also in the Red Sea.
Iran Focuses on Modern Submarines in Major Naval Expansion
US Navy knocks out first Houthi submarine drone, 5 UAVs in the Red Sea
Earlier this year, one RN T23 captain was reported, in open sourced intelligence (WH Smith – £8.99), that these modern and smaller subs – which are believed to be based on recent developments of (and hence improvement) of a few much-older North Korean “mini” designs – were, and I quote him word for word “extremely hard to detect”
It is just that the Iranian’s and their allies have – not or at least “not yet” – choosen to use them in anger
A very simple ASW solution exists: just do a “Bomber Harris and carpet bomb the IRGC ports that these small submarines operate from! (Note 1)
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1 An action which I strongly suspect might well be on “The Donalds” agenda, certainly as a very serious option, early in the New Year.
Intresting, guess the plan is to just not p**s anyone off yet and hope they don’t tail our frigate around. To be clear they should have a basic hull sonar at least.
Hugo
On both points = I certainly 100% agree with you
With regards to you point as why they have not used them yet:
The Iranians have been, over the past forty-plus years, very very good at this grey zone warfare = so escalating “just enough to really annoy us”: but always without going so far as to poking us who are living here in The West “right in the eye”
That may “all change soon” – especially IF it is soon proved, by the US justice system, that one of the most-recent assassignation attempts on “The Donald” was being planned and funded by Iran….(which is what was alledged last week)
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
TLDR
How many submarines you think the Houthis have?…
this many
https://news.usni.org/2024/02/19/houthi-lethal-underwater-drones-adds-new-threat-to-red-sea
It’s the Iranian’s I’m worried about
Insufficient air-defence is considerably more dangerous to a ship than lacking ASW. Far more anti-ship missiles (with aircraft or ground-launchers) around than submarines.
Sean
From the horses mouth, USNI, quoting US intelligence eoports from four years ago
Iran Beyond the Gulf | Proceedings – March 2020 Vol. 146/3/1,405
……it only takes one submarine to put a very large hole in a ship
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Centcom says :
Most other countries GP frigates seem to manage air defence and ASW capabilities
Royal Navy is a one trick pony ship navy.
It’s a balancing act. The Fremm design are all equipped to deploy aster 30 but have terrible missile depth, T26 is much better in this regard
It’s T31 I was discussing mate. T26 is excellent
Not all bad though A&P making blocks for T26 the other side of the river and lots of work supporting the wind farms on the Tyne.
So that’s five T26s and three T31s currently under construction, that great news, just a shame it’ll be so long before they’re all in service. Hope the T23s can last long enough.
My worry Sean is the long history if temporary reductions becoming permanent. As I understand it from a previous article on here, we’re going to be down to six T23 frigates with towed arrays. It would be no surprise to see politicians decide that if we can cope with six for a few years then that proves that we don’t need eight. This would enable them to offer two to Norway (also previously discussed here). This ticks all the boxes for politicians; job’s sustained by building the ships (which is all they care about), two of the ships funded by Norway rather than the MOD and savings in crew and operating costs in the RN.
I’m just speculating of course and I always hope that your optimism is right and my pessimism is wrong but the long track record of poor decisions by useless politicians of both parties gives me cause for concern.
By optimism is based on the facts as they currently stand.
Still time to get back to drawing board, replace the obsolescent radar for non rotary planar 360º facing like everyone else and change the hangar configuration.
It’s way too late to change the hangar, and we’ve already ordered all the masts presumably so too late to change those as well.
High mounted radar is for looking for skimmers and periscopes.
You don’t need a high mounted radar to look upwards.
So no need to change the mast. Just put volume search on the hangar roof or similar.
And since Italians will add anti drone radar to their next ships besides dual band planars, i guess that needs to be done also.
Any available anti drone radar?
Depends on the size of the drone. If it’s a TB2 sized drone, S-band radar will have no issues detecting it. A Lancet sized suicide drone should also be fairly detectable using S-band radar. The smaller quadcopter and FPV drones are fairly hard to detect by S-band. However, if you chuck loads of signal processing at it, S-band can also detect these. Having an X band or Ku-band would help detect these smaller types of drone, plus also be useful for directing an automated guns.
Both Thales and Leonardo with the APAR 2 and Kronos respectfully, produce a maritime X-band radar that can detect small drones.
But Italians are adding anti drone radar to the already dual band ones they have for the FREMM EVO and PPA EVO. So they expect to be necessary.
one they might use is the Omega360 called a “ubiquitous” radar.
“Ubiquitous” radar. From Plextek webpage.
-Wide beam on transmit, digitally beamform on receive (in case of Omega360 transmits 360º )
-Radar able to detect returns from many directions simultaneously
-Contrast with traditional scanning radars which scan a narrow beam around the scene
-Enables tracking of multiple dynamic targets simultaneously
-Enables extended dwell times on a target which aids target classification, without compromising simultaneous wide area coverage
Its NOT obsolete.
Its a fully AESA style radar system
And its impossible to change in practice nor desirable.
The software in the CMS gives a ‘gods eye’ view on screen no matter where the radar antenna is sitting in the superstructure
I wrote obsolescent not obsolete.
Is there anymore news whether Norway is any closer to deciding if they will go for the T26 for its new frigate program?
There is a shortlist of 4 types of which the T-26 is one, Constellation is another along with a German and another I can’t remember.
The French FDI. The French one is really too small, but there is some serious sales work being done by the French and their paid for experts in Norway, to the point where I fear the Norwegian government may go French.
There is also lobbying from Vard in favour of the Constellation, as they may build parts of them in Norway if that design is chosen.
You brits need to get your act together and really sell the Type26 if you want this contract.
The Consternation Class are hardly the post child for on time or on budget!
They are massively more expensive to build, crew and run than T26 and won’t have the accommodation standards either.
All true, “but what about the Norwegian shipyards?” I hear local unions and industry cry in the background… I do hope they will end up going for the 26. Only choice that makes sense considering cost, timeframe and capability. 5-6 extra Type 26s in the North Sea and Arctic would really help.
Norway also plans an extensive domestic build programme. It’s because that programme will press the domestic capability that the frigate build is to be done abroad.
Yup, and there is no way Norwegian yards can manage 28 standard pattern ships, and partially build 5 frigates, but still the yards lobby. Hopefully the politicians will see some sence, but more likely the pro-EU part of the Norwegian Labour Party will go for German ships and screw themselves over.
Norway isnt an EU member, they voted not to join 1994 with 52% NO.
It seems they have acceded to many EU ‘arrangements; but they dont sit in Brussels as a member state
Its Britain’s RM that (hopefully still ) will land in northern Norway to defend the country not the germans
For sure. Trusting the Germans to defend Norway is madness, and the only major power in Europe with serious national interest in the freedom of Norway is Britain. The logical thing to do is to cooperate with the UK. Unfortunately the current Norwegian PM is educated in Paris and is a huge EU fanboy. He is not stupid though, so things may work out. Fingers crossed.
I would say the current statsminister is an absolute fool, the amount of damage he’s done to the Norwegian economy in his tenure is staggering.
Norway is a defacto EU member, it’s daft that we aren’t. We follow all the rules, implement most if not all of the EU regulations, all the good bits which would visibly benefit Norwegians we aren’t part of.
There are no Norwegian shipyards who could build the hulls and none with the experience to fit out a complex naval vessel.
Constellation-class, Type 26, FDI, and F-126 have been selected for the next phase.
The Nansen’s aren’t that old, the first was commissioned in 2006 the last in 2011. The project took 8 years to delivery 5 ships, I doubt they will get 5-6 new ones in a similar timescale from any of the above builders today.
T26 is also hardly the post child for on time or on budget! Glasgow will reach IOC in 2028… that makes it 11 years!
Constellation still have to make a big effort to reach that level.
The Conservative government set the build time, not BAE, not the RN, but HM Treasury, the Treasury set the allocation of finances at a snails pace. it’s on time with respect to covid and usual teething First-of-class problems and are always challenging, lessons learned improve the build performance on subsequent ships.
8 years with Covid slap bang in the middle of construction.
From – Save The Royal Navy (now Navy Lookout). April 2018
https://www.navylookout.com/why-will-the-royal-navy-not-have-its-first-type-26-frigate-operational-until-2027/
Norway is not just looking at buying frigates but they see the acquisition as part of a much larger strategic partnership. My reading of that makes the U.K. the obvious front-runner.
I hope you are right.
We Need all 8!! But we need them NOW!! What a message it would send to our Allies & Adversaries to get all of the current 8 Frigates in Build accelerated!!!
There is little that can be done to accelerate these, especially with crewing issues
first steel cut… not steel produced in the UK, I hasten to add! One of the very few industrialised, developed world, countries without a virgin steel manufacturing facility to produce material for anything – let alone ships!
Is it better to have fewer really good ships or more poor ones (like the T42s and T21s)
As everyone has said, retiring the T23s was madness. But the madder thing was the economy was in great shape, the government was spending record amounts, so there wasn’t even the excuse of ‘there’s no money’ like for the RFAs and the most recent short sighted disposals.
It was because Tony Blair decided to fight two major conflicts on a peacetime defence budget
Yep, a lot of people point the (awful) SDR 2010, but much of the rot was from those two strategically pointless wars. Especially true for the Army as well who still haven’t worked out who they want to be.
Grant
A very good point – very well made
Anybody would think the British Army has had a full decade since the Afgan war finished to be able to re-equip and re-arm and retrain …
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS I suggest you ask Santa for the book called “The Changing of the Guard” for Xmas. It is wriitten by an Economist journalist and he interviews all of the key UK military players …. It spells out the full extent of the British Army’s F….Ups throughout both Iraq and Afgan Wars
Not quite
£18 BILL from 2001-10 came from Treasury contingency fund specifically war time operations- so it couldnt be diverted to standard defence spending
https://www.bbc.com/news/10359548
I dont know how much the Tories put into operations contingency from 2010-2020 ?
Another £20 bill plus ?
The T31 and even T26 get called under equipped and in some regards they are so no cheaper is probably not an option.
Hi, I am the Sheffield apprentice that was asked by the admiralty to make parts for HMS Sheffield. I was 17 and worked at neepsend steel training department. I was supplied with Sheffield stainless steel to make 30 port hole cover handles, they had to be polished to a mirror finish. I still have the photo taken by the Sheffield star of me working on the lathe.
Nice.
Hi I forgot to mention this was about 1972.
It seems to me that we should primarily be a maritime and air power with more, ships, sailors and marines and fewer soldiers. I’d prefer a 4% military budget, but only Reform would shrink wasteful spending elsewhere to make that possible.