The Importance of Not Being Quite So Earnest - Why the Type 26 should not be accelerated into service.

There have been several media reports featuring commentators recently who are suggesting that construction of the Type 26 Frigate should be accelerated. The theory is that to help bolster RN capability and modernise the fleet against growing threats, the Type 26 should enter service sooner than its currently planned initial date of 2027.

There is no doubt that the Type 26 has had a very long gestation period. Humphrey was first told about the project, known then as the Future Surface Combatant in 1993. By the time HMS GLASGOW enters service, it will be almost 35 years later. The design and build life of the class is almost as long as the entire service life of many classes of RN warships.

But, for all the suggestions that the ship be brought forward, there are several good reasons why this is neither feasible, nor necessarily sensible.

Type 26 will replace the older Type 23 - Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is a common perception that the MOD is able to flex funding around its budget easily and pump cash into one project to bring it forward faster. In theory it could do this – but the MOD procurement budget is not infinite and is very carefully assigned to ensure the maximum possible value is derived from it.

When a major programme is under way the spending pattern does not divide into equal chunks, nor is a capability paid for in one lump sum. Different projects will require different spending at different times depending on the stage of construction.

In practical terms this means that saying ‘bring forward Type 26’ doesn’t mean that the project team can instantly just throw money at the problem. The money must be found from elsewhere in the wider budget and reallocated, which in turn causes a wider knock on impact.

For purely hypothetical example, it could be that the Type 26 could be brought forward by 2 years if the MOD spent £100m now rather than over the next three years. While on the surface this means the RN gains a new ship in 2025, it also means that £100m must be stripped out of other budgeted and funded programmes now to deliver this.

For the MOD the question is where does this money come from? What capability should be delayed, reduced or cancelled now in order to pay for this? There is no magic pool of cash that allows this acceleration to occur without wider impacts. Anyone advocating a bring forward needs to clearly understand that to do so puts a lot of other programmes at risk as a result.

The problem too is that this sort of in year reprofiling doesn’t just have an impact in one year, but can have a major effect for years to come. If, for example, the MOD was planning to spend £50m in the next three years on Project X that was to enter service in five years, but the project is now slowed down in order to find £30m of funding for Type 26, deferring its entry to service to seven years time, suddenly the MOD has to find an extra £30m of funding in years 5-7 that has already been allocated to other projects.

In other words, bringing something into service early can have a major long term impact on the equipment programme as a whole as all manner of projects are moved around. The challenge for financial planners is to keep things affordable – which means suddenly a bring forward of Type 26 by two years delays Project X by two years, and in turn disrupts Project Y which suddenly has to enter service late, and Project Z is no longer affordable because the cash programmed for it in 6 years time has been swallowed up by Project X, and so it is cancelled.

Be very wary of demanding stuff is brought forward, for the consequences can be long term and dire for Defence as a whole. Unless a Spending Review finds genuinely new money, or major long term changes are made to free up cash, then there is no such thing as a painless acceleration into service.

The wider challenge too is not just about money but the practicalities of preparing for the arrival of a new class of vessel into service. New ships do not get built and then pop into existence for the RN to sail them off on operations.

Underpinning every new class of ship is a complex package of work ranging from building up the right logistics chain of spare parts (all properly codified and ready for use), getting all the training pipeline ready for people to learn how to use the equipment and fuse it together to make a variety of systems into a coherent warship, and the practicalities of turning a naval base into a home for the new vessel.

This all takes a long time to do – for instance the RN was planning ahead for the QUEEN ELIZABETH class entry to service years ahead of time, with everything from Bridge and Ops Room simulators being put into use for training people up through to dredging Portsmouth Harbour and updating power supply and base logistics.

A warship in its base port is the sharp end of a very long logistical spear, without which it cannot hope to operate successfully. If you rush a warship into service without investing in all of the complex logistical and operational support chain in place to make it ready for operations, then its value is significantly reduced.

For the RN to accelerate the Type 26 programme means having to take a much wider look at the state of the support system and not just the building cycle. Are the training schools physically capable of training people on the systems used onboard in time to get them ready to go to sea? Is there space on the courses being run and are there sufficient staff to teach them, and are the right number of personnel ready and able to attend these courses in the right time frame to come together and form a Ships Company?

HMS GLASGOW under construction 

It is not as simple as people coming together and sailing a ship off to sea – the Type 26 is going to be one of the most complex and advanced warships ever to be operated by the Royal Navies (Australia, Canada and the UK), and it takes time to get the preparations right.

A lot of planning will be going into making sure everything is ready to meet the 2027 timeline for HMS GLASGOW, not just in the construction yard, but across the Naval Service as a whole. To bring this date forward will have repercussions for the whole system, not just the builders.

The big challenge for the Royal Navy in all of this is sorting not just the logistics but the people too. There are roughly 15000 people in the ‘General Service’ (e.g not Submariner, FAA or Royal Marine) and the RN is stretched very thinly for manpower.

Bringing a new class of ship into service requires drawing people off all manner of roles into new tasks to help get the ship ready, ensure the work is in place to sail the ship and then conduct trials and work it up. This will range from the embarked ships company to naval bases, training schools and of course the FOST organisation.

At the moment the fleet manpower planners will be working to various assumptions and timelines that ensure people will start receiving drafts over the next few years to work to help bring Type 26 into service as planned. This will be a carefully designed process to minimise pressure on the existing force and ensure a fairly seamless introduction to service.

If the decision is taken to bring the entry date forward, this has the potential to cause all manner of wider manning problems. Suddenly people will be needed on new courses and training years ahead of when they were expecting to be required – and in turn this will mean gapping other roles.The RN does not have a glut of manpower sitting around to go to sea – people who are tasked to go and work on the Seaceptor missiles will come from the Type 23 force, which in turn means drawing on this pool of manpower a lot earlier than planned. It can be done, but it will mean gapping posts across the fleet to find people to do this. Is it worth the risk of putting ships alongside as safety critical posts become gapped in order to find people to begin the process of getting Type 26 to sea early?

The wider issue too is that to do entry to service properly, the RN needs to focus on bringing the whole programme forward, and not just rushing one new ship in. Suddenly you find yourself having to generate crews for an entirely new class of ship en masse many years ahead of when you were expecting to need them, which will have repercussions throughout the system.

Its important to understand that the manpower challenge doesn’t begin in 2027, it begins earlier than this, so any acceleration is also much earlier too. The RN will be faced with incredibly difficult decisions about whether to keep ships at sea, or where to run the risk of breaking harmony time for critical sailors (thus damaging retention rates and long term structures) in order to get the Type 26 in to service early. Is this a price worth paying?

The final factor to consider is the sheer scale of the challenge facing the Royal Navy right now. Over the next 8 years the Royal Navy is delivering one of the largest and ambitious shipbuilding programmes of any navy on the planet.

Between now and 2027 the RN will be introducing and working up an entirely new Carrier Strike capability built around the two largest warships ever to fly the White Ensign. This work is complex, challenging and occupies a lot of time and peoples effort.

More widely the RN is also introducing (in no particular order) five Batch 2 River class – a LEANDER sized OPV into service, delivering 2- 3 new Fleet Support Ships designed to support the carrier task force, five Type 31e Frigates and also continuing to design and build four new DREADNOUGHT class SSBNs and roll out the final few ASTUTE class SSNs.

This is in addition to the wider work going on to regenerate the wider infrastructure, ranging from moving the Submarine Service to Faslane, reportedly developing plans to modernise the refit capabilities in Portsmouth and investing a lot of other funding into the naval estate to ensure it remains fit for purpose.

At the same time the RN is also going through a major cultural change programme as it adapts to the reality of trying to deliver Carrier Strike through the so-called Maritime Task Group (a significant doctrinal and cultural shift in approach), generate vessels differently to support more permanent overseas basing (such as Type 23s in the Gulf) and respond to a plethora of global challenges from the North Atlantic to Antarctica.

This is an exceptionally ambitious programme that will deliver enormously capable ships and submarines into RN service. But, it is one that is placing huge pressure on the system – as noted introduction to service of new ship types is complex and hard work. Adding Type 26 early will put enormous pressure on a small group of people who are already hard pressed to deliver the existing new force.

So, be wary of what you wish for. It may sound attractive to blithely assume the RN can rush ships into service – and there is no doubt that if the money was there then the magnificent workers in the UK shipbuilding and defence industries could accelerate production. But this comes at a much wider cost, and one that is not as easy to quantify.

A move to bring new capability in early may in fact do real damage to the RN as its people struggle to prepare for and handle the enormous influx of capability that will be entering service over the next 8-10 years. It is easy to play ‘fantasy fleets’ on the internet and speculate about fitting Missile X or Gun Y, but the reality of bringing ships into service is far more about the challenge of finding the right people, ensuring they are trained and supported and putting the logistics chain in place than it is about discussions over whether to fit a 20mm or 30mm gun onboard.

The worst thing that could possibly happen would be for the RN to be pressurised to accelerate entry into service now, only for the system to be unable to properly crew and support the Type 26 when it arrives. Having the worlds most advanced ASW frigate tied up alongside long term due to a lack of sailors or parts because she was rushed into service early is not an optimal outcome.

Good things come to those who wait…