Here we provide a brief overview of progress on the Type 26 Frigate programme as of November 2024.
Ship 1, HMS Glasgow has been flooded up in dry dock. Inclining experiments have been successfully completed. (This is a test where weights are placed around the ship to check the ship’s basic stability and metacentric height calculations).
The Platform Management System (PMS) successfully passed Factory Acceptance Trials (FATs) in September. The ship’s electrical switchboards were supposed to go live in Q1 2024 but this was delayed due to cabling issues. The switch-on should commence shortly.
Ship 2, HMS Cardiff was loaded onto the barge, floated off and docked down in Scotstoun in early September. A Gearbox pinion change started at the end of October.
Ship 3, HMS Belfast gearbox completed FATs (at David Brown Santasalo, Huddersfield) and is expected to be delivered to Govan in mid-November for insertion into the hull unit. Unit construction and consolidation are ongoing in the Shipbuilding Outfit Hall (SBOH) with the first units planned to be moved into the new Janet Harvey Hall in January 2025.
Ship 4, HMS Birmingham Unit construction continues in the SBOH and at subcontractors, Cammell Laird.
Ship 5, HMS Sheffield. The first steel for the ship will be cut at a ceremony to be held at the end of November.
Main image: HMS Glasgow and HMS Cardiff fitting out at Scotstoun, September 2024 (Photo @liz_c177).
Any idea on how far the Norwegian decision/negotiation is going?
T26’s for Vanguard MCM motherships would be good. But we can afford to divert any hulls to them before Birmingham, and if we did it needs to go hand in hand with construction being sped up given the T23’s are on their last legs.
I suspect HMG will offer whatever is needed to win the contract. I wouldn’t expect much of a build rate difference. A longer T26 build helps fill the gap to the realistic start of “T83” build. Given the upgrades T45 is getting in both propulsion and weapons systems the OSD of the type is realistically going to be extended. This won’t be good for the RN in the short/medium term but likely they will have to suck it up.
Nice to see windows visible on Glasgow. Makes it feel more like a warship and less like a work in progress, somehow.
It changes nothing I know, but I would have preferred the name Coventry to be revived not Sheffield. No disrespect to those who were lost but Sheffield’s demise was unfortunate and in reality a mistake. Coventry fought hard and bravely until her last moments in a position that was always demanding of the greatest skill and courage. Just an opinion. I’d like to have seen both, but with only 8 hulls the choices were always going to be tricky!
Nah, it should be Sheffield
It changes nothing –
Shiny Sheff of the Towns was one of the greats. We have never been afraid to reuse names; except I cant see another HMS Hood anytime soon.
In the long history of the royal Navy, there were a lot of better names than Prince of Wales to be used again. Just a personal opinion
They could order an extra 1-2 hulls to accommodate additional names!
Or another 100 to accommodate the names that never get a shout.
HMS Swindon
HMS Croydon
HMS Milton Keynes
Charles
Given how small our navl fleet now is, are you not being “a bit too ambitious” with the list of names you have just suggested?
Would not naming our warships after villges be more appropriate?
Peter (Irate Txapayer)
No, not Coventry, don’t do that to the new generation of matelots. I was in the last HMS COVENTRY, wouldn’t wish another home town visit to Coventry on my worst enemy! Most unwelcoming place in the country.
Some good milestones and some okay ones. Great to hear that the new build hall will be in use from January next year. Around 21 months between first steel on Birmingham and Sheffield is a little disappointing. I was really hoping to see that drop to 18 months or even faster for the second batch. I hope when the new hall is open we can see a significantly faster start rate for the final three, especially if the Norway order comes in. Until then, we’ll have to hope for a much faster build to speed up the delivery rate.
I’d like to see the RN T26s also have the 2×4 canister NSM option like the Australian and Canadian T26s. It’ll free up the MK41s for other things.
At the moment there is nothing beyond the Anglo French Anti Ship/Land attack missile announced for the MK41.
I read they are looking at an AS rocket.
Hello Quentin D63, what would you suggest?
If you speed up the delivery rate you increase the problem with the gap between the end of T26 and realistic start of T83. Even with the current build rate and the possible Norwegian order this is an issue.
First, we could get the spec for T83 sorted far more quickly than we are. It should have been out of Concept already but it’s officially not even in Concept yet, while people chew over FADS as a whole. Arguments over capability are what slows things down. Ben Key pointed out the solution only last week. You design and build highly modular platforms which lets you swap capabilities within certain design constraints. He was talking about it in the context of upgrading platforms across the life of the ship, but it can affect initial delivery too, with the capabilities built separately to the platform. You’d need to over-engineer certain things, such as size and power generation, but we were looking at a big ship anyway. I have no idea how the plumbing can be modularised, but I’m sure it can.
If not, we’d just build something else. There’s a very high probability there will be some build-for-export in the current environment, and if not, build B3 Rivers, Castle motherships, MRSS, escort hulls without fit out. Who cares? The trick is not to match speed with cashflow to make the Treasury’s life easy (as we saw with T26 B1). It’s to match the speed with long term unit costs, so if you need to pad, build the expensive stuff quickly and the cheap stuff slowly and use the financial markets to even out cashflow.
With the T45’s getting major weapons and drive line upgrades the is no way they’ll be replaced before they are 30y old. Defence has and will always have more calls on money than it has money. That means nothing is likely to enter service before the very late 2030’s. That makes it easy to see why the RN is in no hurry to commit to anything yet.
” I have no idea how the plumbing can be modularised, but I’m sure it can”.
Jon
This video is but one, of very many, examples of how to modularise plumbing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEk-7e9Jmqw
I first had a guided tour of this particular facility in Bradford about two decades ago (ie when it was almost new)
Thus Mr B Key’s recent comments are yet another example of just how far behind the RN has fallen when it comes to the key topic of “understanding technology“…
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Cabling issues, In this case a rather discreet synonym for Sabotage!
We need more than 8 of these frigates and more than 5 type 31s. If the government can squeeze out a further 2 examples to take the fleet of type 26 upto 10 that would be money well spent. Especially if as predicted defence budget is going up from 2.3-2.5% GDP to defence ratio.
Alot more priorities than more equipment for that tiny budget increase.
Very true. People are are far bigger problem for the armed forces than kit. I suspect a large amount of money is going to be needed to improve the forces “offer” to attract and retain people. Particularly people either with high technology skills or a proven aptitude to learn these skills.
A way to do that would be to cancel Type 32 and instead put the funds into more T31 – No ‘first in class’ hassles, no extra design costs and economies of scale.
T32 looks more like another Boris press-release-in-search-of-a-policy thing anyway.
T32 has never had a definitive design, was either Boris nonsense or a variation of T31. Either way we won’t be seeing either.
Production needs ramping up , we need these ships asap .
Sadly, we all know we need more T26, I like to have the 20 we really need, that would truely turn us back into a formidable navy. Sadly, the government isn’t listening, they would rather spend our money on paying for school children to visit the Holocaust museum ( don’t get me wrong the museum is very important). They just don’t spend our money wisely and they never learn! We had a carrier exercise where a carrier was left on her own because the two escort frigates were needed elsewhere, it is getting to being ridiculous and embarrassing!
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to build 6 more upgraded T45’s, than wait around for a T83 design, lets face it the first batch won’t set sail for probably 15 years! On the T26 ending gap waiting for the T83..lets just build more… In reality, we should have 20 frigates and 12 destroyers like the French. Even the Italian Navy is bigger than ours and we are on a hull parity with Spain. Accounting for India and Japan, we’ve gone from the 4th largest navy to the 8th in 10 years!!
No, because that design has several flaws and much larger radars and more power are required.
France only has 2 destroyers and 13 frigates
Italy is looking to be the largest Euro navy, but only into the low 20s numbers of escorts
Where is the steel being manufactured