Type 23 frigate, HMS Richmond returned to Devonport today having received her outfit of Naval Strike Missiles.
HMS Richmond recently visited Haakonsvern Naval Base in Bergen, Norway where she received the missile canisters directly from the nearby Kongsberg factory. She in the next frigate after HMS Somerset and HMS Portland to be fitted with NSM.
HMS Richmond will be part of the 2025 carrier strike group deployment, due to sail in April for 8 months, passing through the Mediterranean and on to the Indo-Pacific region. HMS Dauntless will also be on the deployment but none of the Type 45s have yet been fitted with NSM.
HMS Portland received her outfit in Norway during December 2024 but returned to Devonport without the missile canisters and has been taken into the covered dry dock at the Frigate Support Centre for what appears to be an unplanned maintenance period.
NSM is primarily an anti-ship weapon and is designed for use in complex littoral environments with advanced ability to discriminate between neutral/friendly or enemy targets. It is effective against small-medium-sized surface combatants and in its secondary role, it can also be programmed to strike land targets. In RN service it is now officially designated as the ‘Maritime Offensive Strike System’ (MOSS).
Overall, the delivery of this relatively simple programme to fit this weapon to 11 ships in the fleet has been disappointingly slow. HMS Somerset was first to be equipped in December 2023. Although well-proven in service with other navies, an RN fleet weapons acceptance test-firing of the NSM system has been expected for sometime.
RN Fleet Weapons Acceptance test firing?
Do we have special electrons?
Is the guy in charge called Thomas?
Are we special — in a good way?
Does it involve lawyers?
What is the cost?
Not a good look — stinks of obtuse paper shufflers wanting their day in the sun.
No wonder Donny John gets an audience?
You know…….
Quite agree.
Somerset — mech issues / in the garage getting fixed.
Portland — no missiles / in the garage getting something done.
Richmond — fingers crossed that the NSSM isn’t a Jonah for the RN.
Not a good look.
T23 life expectancy increased – not a good look
T26 and T31 ordered very late – not a good look
Fair point — but if you are on top of your game service lives can be managed.
Users work to what the platform can do.
Service people know what to look for.
We seem to be bullet magnets — surprises everywhere.
Argyll, Westminster and Northumberland written off during refit – there’s only so much you can manage!
Their condition shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
That is the main issue — we don’t know what we are dealing with.
Too many examples to be bad luck.
Failure of design and asset management in equal part.
Should we have scheduled a hull inspection of Richmond right now to plan for the state she’ll be in on return? She’ll have done as much as Westminster and Northumberland by then, and at least that way we’d be able to plan ahead of time if this deployment is her swansong.
Not really.
T23 had a design hull life of 18 years to keep through life costs down.
Other than construction the other ‘economy’ is in the way it is maintained [allowed to deteriorate] as it was never meant to have a mid life refit.
So various thing were deliberately not periodically done as they were not in the manual.
LIFEXing T23 was from desperation of not having anything else and G Osborne not listening to good advice and being obsessed with flattening his short term cash flow curve.
‘Failure of design’? They are significantly beyond the service life originally requested by the RN. The fact they are still going is testament to the original design and build. Damn good ships, wish I’d served in more than one of them.
Westminster and Northumberland were never in refit, they were laid up pending refit, but never started them and Argyll had almost completed hers – and is now likely to be sold to an overseas navy.
Argyll could and should have been re-commissioned, they’re actively looking to sell her abroad now.
Somerset was at sea very recently ( March) escorting a Russian corvette through the channel.
Yes but it had a lot of issues before
Exactly, she is participating in Cobra Warrior right now – not in a shed
Somerset is in Norway not in the garage, she is participating in Cobra Warrior as we speak
Fair point — I think we get the message x 2.
The earlier article had the ship in the garage after getting the new missiles.
Not a good look but it would appear to be the new norm.
Have the Russians got a S/H tug we can Beg , Borrow or Steal? Maybe Trump can pull some strings.
The slow progress is all about budget constraints. The government talk of an increase in spending but this will only be six billion pounds a year by 2027.
In the meantime the navy as to stay within ut annual budget spend.
We need to spend the current budget better as a kick off towards rearmament.
More resources into our current moneypits will get us nowhere.
Ukraine — Russia’s build economics are 4 times better than the West’s.
We cannot rely on their poor tactics and personnel deficiencies for ever.
They will find their new Zhukov eventually.
There’s a little more budget this coming year (about £800m), but with the increasing spend on nuclear, I doubt any of it will get to the surface fleet.
Regarding surface fleet spend — are we just spending lots of money in dribs and drabs fixing design and build issues?
Vibe would appear to be very much fire fighting rather than fire prevention.
If it is then nowhere near best practice / not even close.
Then you have the base point on the MOD’s understanding of value and its ability to get UK MIC to deliver at this level and beyond.
Contractor friendly artisan levels of build quality and productivity are not a good look — craftmanship being the ability to join two shonky / non spec parts together and deliver an initial level of performance but not something to boast about.
Outsider looking in — MOD / RN are wee boys in a man’s world.
Other worldly / all must win prizes / over analysis with poor foundations.
Money draining away / glacial delivery with little to show for it
Obviously we are not just “spending lots of money in dribs and drabs fixing design and build issues”.
Or have you not heard of the Type 26 and Type 31 build programmes?
Not to mention the NSM upgrades, Sea Ceptors for T45 upgrades, etc.
Budget management involves everything — including the nasty surprises that seem to catch us unawares from time to time.
Then there is the concept of value — are we getting any bang for our many bucks.
Ships at sea vs total spend — not looking good.
That’s lack of build continuity for you. We stopped building new frigates for 18 years and when we restarted we deliberately chose to go slowly. Really bad from the value standpoint and the fault of the government and HMT, rather than the Navy. I think we’ll eventually get some bang for our buck but we could have done a lot better for the same money.
It is the reverse of the Army ‘song’…..DNE ate my fleet….
Given how tight things are relatively small amounts allow things to proceed.
If about 2.25 years for the first 3 ships (and no test) is the ‘at pace’ rate, I hope the remaining 8 sets aren’t at much slower pace!
Surprised they haven’t fitted a set to a Type 45 ( Dauntless?) Yet.
Not much use in a dry dock!
3 aren’t in a drydock
Best dressed man in Cov style boast.
“All but three of our fleet of AAW kit are available to sail”.
Reminds me of an old Jag joke from the US.
High dollar / they were cheap to the Country Club set so you could buy 2.
One to drive and one to leave in the workshop when it broke down.
At some point we will get back to doing real engineering.
Minor miracle they even float.
Dragon will be the first, she has had the Deck Mounting work done.
The deck mounting work, and stripping the Harpoon cabinets etc, can be done during normal insertion periods.
Overall this is a very lethargic installation that does not reflect well on management as this is a high visibility system. You sense a small team of people totally overwhelmed managing T45 PiP and upgrades and the serial issues with the T23’s without the resources or bandwidth to cope this this.
By resources I mean skilled people. Skilled people who are booked into weld the deck mounts get diverted to weld something else that needs patching up on a T23….that is my sense of this…..juggling really.
Dauntless almost sank last year during Joint Warrior, she had to take shelter in The Firth of Forth to make her seaworthy before heading to Newcastle for hull work. Suprised she is actually part of CSG tbh.
a bit difficult that when she was refitting, checked the Royal navy site.
She talk part in exercises in October and November 2024, her last entry before that December 2023. Joint Warrior 24 was held in February 24 to March 4 2024,
Telling porkies…
Something DOGE should get interested in.
(a) this is not America
(b) DOGE has its handfuls tracking down and rehiring the employees it fired without knowing what they did – Nuclear Weapon Specialists at NNSA, outbreak response staff at CDC, bird-flu epidemic response staff at Dept of Agriculture, etc etc.
(a) it once was…and when UK dominated industries was not this afraid.
(b)I am sure you will also find that US also have many more companies that go bust proportionally, but they also have many more that make their impact in the world.
Lots can happen in 30 years.
Wasn’t the Type 23 supposed to have some level of stealth in its design.
HMS Richmond in the picture looks like some sort of maritime bog brush.
Not a great advert for MOD / RN delivery and lifecycle design.
Just stick on new features anywhere you can find space.
Also F239 — has this number been used before?
“Wasn’t the Type 23 supposed to have some level of stealth in its design”.
FBOT
Back In the mid 1980’s – so forty odd years ago, when Mr Scargill was King Coal – when the T23 was being orginally designed (using quill pens on parchment) noboby here in the UK was aware of the huge leap that Lockheed’s Stunk Works had achieved in stealth technology
…….: with their development of the F117 Nighthawk stealth figher bomber.
so, throughout the 1980’s, the F117 was a top secret “special access required” development programme = therfore not even most senior of the USAF generals knew about the development that quite-revolutionary warplane.
However, as you have quite rightly point out (just above), since the 1990’s the RN has got into the very nasty habit of welding lots of bits of old junk onto the outside of their ships = without thinking twice about the very detrimental efffect that has on a T23’s radar signiture.
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1
Not sure the F117 is a great example of anything — service life measured in lettuces.
Law of unintended consequences — mobiles phones were supposed to be about personal communication not passive airspace detection arrays.
Might be a shaggy dog story — but once you knew what to look for you could track a F117 by its impact / influence on an old school “analogue” mobile phone network.
If you could track it then the F117 was toast on account of its poor flight dynamics and lack of performance.
File under flash in the pan.
QE handrail fetish — hopefully not everything that is painted grey is steel.
However the QE design vibe was double bad honking from the off.
Little chance that they got the minor details correct.
Fat Bloke on Tour
Wrong!
During Gulf War 1 – i.e. the last really big shooting match when we were up against a very well prepared enemy…..
…..the F117 was the only manned allied aircraft allowed to attack the very heavily defended targets inside Bagdad…..a very big city which, back in 1991, was ringed by about three thousand triple A gun sites and about fifteen thousand AAD missiles
(the only other thing that got through was the Tomahawk cruise missle – which was flying low through the back alleys: whilst reading the Bagdad A-to Z map, and swervng to avoid the Big Issue salemen siiting on the streetcorners)
Thus the F117 had a quite incredible record for “hitting the mark”: both on
————————
However the F117 was a low observable (stealth) plane and ….
Nobody ever claimed it was invisible!
———————-
So, in the former Yugoslavia, one was shoot down down:.
I am afraid that, in war, “S**T happens”
(or – to use the official term – “no plan survives first contact with the enemy“)
and thus, after he had hiked home, the USAF’s F117 pilot was sent a memorial tie: by the Martin Baker Company of Dehham in leafy Buckinghamshire
You will have read on the internet the conspiracy theory about that jet being shot down by a Nokia mobile phone (note 1). That theory was printed in several UK national newspapers soon after the downing…
The truth was far more simple…..
The very intensive Soviet era Yugo air defence centre had noted a very regular pattern of very predictable behaviour – i.e. the USAF flying the same routes in and out to the same general target area – over the previous week (or so)
and so the Yugo’s simply moved plenty of their mobile AAD teams onto that route one night = so then then they got lucky (as Clint E famous said “Make my Day!”
————
And the seventy odd F117’s which were phased out of USAF service – simply because it was old – and also it was also being rapidly replaced by its long-planned sucessor- the F22 and also, more recently, the F35. (both also by Lockheed: now called Lockheed Martin (which is no relation whatosever to the aforementioned British ejection seat company)
because that “planned obsolescence” does happen to warplanes which were designed way back in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s (ie the “sell by” date on your lettuce’s yellow sticker!)
(think RAF Tornado – which was repeatedly shot down over far less well defended targets in iraq back in 199! – thus the Bagdad Hilton was not bombed by the F117. and of course = the RAF subsequently received many more ties than the USAF F117 crews ever did …)
—————
And of course, in the mid 1990’s, the USAF B2 batwing bomber was brought into full service……
……once Whieman AFB had completely redesigned its vast B2 hangers – with upward firing fire fighting nozzles cast in the concrete floor slab.
and, lets not forget, a low observable B2 was “downed” in Guam ($2 billion!!)
= by an AAD system called “excessive condensation”… (aka friendly fire)
————–
And if you want truely invisible flying machine for deployment with the RAF and RN by 2030, I will – for a suitably large design fee paid directly into my unlisted and numbered Swiss bank account – quickly design you the right airframe for a very low observable flying saucer.
However would you mind then supplying me with
Peter (Very Irritated Taxpayer)
Its disappointing there isn’t an Admirals walk round the stern. Flagships always had them.
👎🏻
Sean
This time around you have claerly read it (i.e. before giving it the thumbs down!)
So that can only mean my posts are, after plenty of rrecent practice, constantly improving!
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
There really is a very big different between stealth in a ship and an aircraft..stealth on ships is really sort of secondary as they will normally be hidden by the radar horizon… which for another ship is about 25 km .. at that point most decent radar will burn through stealth anyway..
T23 was supposed to have radar signature of a medium sized trawler. More specifically they were designed to give radar returns that didn’t look like a warship.
The idea of enclosing everything with sloping sides, like T45, etc was around but nobody was building that in the late 1980’s when T23 matured.
T23 was built far too small so lots of things were stuck on externally….
I’d actually come to a different conclusion looking close up : T23’s look amazingly well kept and well detailed for their design through life age.
Bankrupt country, no money for anything , no idea what is done with taxes. The beautiful Royal Navy is just barely afloat, really sad and for the country just plain dangerous.
All
Last autumn – so back when the last article was posted here on NL about this all-new (note 1) Norweigian Strike Missile (NSM)……..
…..some of you may remember that I suggested – very very seriously – that the next “ship set” of NSM canisters got fitted to the next T23 by the manufacturers up in Norway
(i.e. so well away from Baby Cock-Ups scrapyard down in Devonport)
So the really news today – buried in amoungst all of the really bad news feeds (or no news) – is that somebody senior in the RN is now reading this website…… and, even better, taking our advice…..
Accordingly, I believe that the editor should really have titled this article:
Note 1. Clarification – that should have just read “all new to the RN” = because this highly effective long-ranged ship killing missile has actually been in service with other navies for about a decade
Best let the shipyards know that given they’re all busy working on building new frigates and submarines…
F minus on your trolling, must do better to avoid being sent to the Kursk Front
They should retain NSM for the Type 31s.
Typical of the UK government no matter who’s in power at the moment they never do things in the right way instead they’d rather do anything 10 times as difficult as it should be
The RN and the defence ministry deal with these sort matters not the ‘government level’.