A Fantastic Future Frigate - Thoughts on the T31 announcement

It has been a good day for the Royal Navy. The news that Babcock has been selected as the preferred bidder for the Type 31e frigate with its ‘Arrowhead 140’ design, which is based on an existing design for the Royal Danish Navy will provide significant reassurance for both the RN and shipyards around the country.

The Type 31e is a frigate with a curious gestation, emerging out of the 2015 SDSR as an intended light frigate to cover 5 of the 13 replacements for the Type 23 frigate, and optimised for the patrol role. Intended to be purchased for a fairly small sum (an average of just £250m per hull), there was a lot of speculation around what the final version may look like – would it be a small hull, similar to a Type 12 or 21 Frigate, or would it be something a bit different?

In selecting the Arrowhead version, the RN has committed to buying a class of ship materially larger than the Type 23 it is replacing. These are not small vessels, coming in at nearly 140m long and displacing some 5,700 tonnes, they are not far off the dimensions of a WW2 Light cruiser such as the DIDO class. (For a good study into the Arrowhead, its worth a read of the ‘Save the Royal Navy’ page on the ship).

Babcock Image of T31 at sea

The build will occur at home, securing several thousand jobs among the UK supply chain, with an ambitious delivery programme that will see the first of class in service within 5 years and all in service by 2028.

On paper, assuming these targets are met, then the class should be fully in service before the Type 26 arrives, hopefully helping reduce pressure in the supply chain to prevent challenges on the Type 26, and also providing some much needed new hulls for the frigate force at a point when some of the oldest Type 23s will be fast approaching their 40^th birthday.

The design has already been proven in service elsewhere with the Danes, which should hopefully derisk large parts of both construction and trials, meaning the entry to service date is perhaps less overly optimistic than some assume.

The arrival of the T31 will come at a particularly exciting time for the RN, which by then will be in the final stages of a transition plan first envisaged some 25 years previously in the 1998 SDR.

The ships will be able to operate globally, and based on comments by Admirals this week at DSEI will almost certainly find themselves permanently based around the world as the basic RN presence for the region. It seems likely that one will go to the Gulf, while a quick look at the map suggests a plethora of locations where the RN could send them if the will is there.

Over the next 10 years the arrival of both the Type 31 and the Batch 2 RIVER class will give the RN the ability to develop an effective and new look approach to deployments. It seems likely that both classes of ship will be spending a lot of time abroad, representing the UK in a variety of areas.

Their capabilities will be enough to range from low intensity maritime security operations such as counter piracy or support to UK shipping or evacuating UK nationals, through to working with international partners in exercises and certain operations. This will provide the UK with a very capable regional presence that can meet and adapt to most of the challenges that the RN will encounter globally.

Meanwhile back at home the T23/26 and 45 force will provide the core of a highly capable carrier strike group, able to provide enough escorts and other capabilities to deliver a truly potent range of options to the Government. This force, built around a high readiness carrier will be a very impressive means of being able to deploy at short notice to reinforce UK interests, or support national, or international, military operations as required.

The look ahead then for the surface fleet suggests an extremely exciting time, with a variety of new ship classes coming into service at the same time as new ways of operating emerge that will fundamentally change how the Royal Navy does business.

But one thing that remains unclear is the aspiration for what to do with the Type 31s in the medium term. As envisaged the 2016 Sir John Parker report into shipbuilding in the UK, intended to look at how to safeguard the long term capabilities in the industry, saw the T31 as an opportunity for export orders.

The report suggested that the RN should build the ships as much for export as for itself, and not be afraid of buying them, using them for a few years and selling them on in order to secure new export orders as long as a replacement was in train.

What is not clear is whether this is still the aim, to produce a genuinely long term strategic approach to guarantee work for 20-30 years to come, or if it is going to be a short term ‘buy 5 now’ and then worry about replacements in 20 years time.

It has to be hoped that the former option is the plan and that the RN moves to a mentality of creating series production of these vessels, using them for 5-10 years and then looking to dispose of them in due course.

The challenge here may be that the market for good condition 2^nd hand frigates and new builds often overlaps, and that there is a risk that early disposal of hulls to other countries may not necessarily generate follow on orders for new builds – particularly if the nation knows that more are readily available in due course.

A big challenge is going to be to create the conditions where buyers want to firstly buy second hand, then secondly want to operate an overseas design built abroad and not at home. The pool of nations in the market for this sort of model is relatively small, and plenty of cheaper (and less capable) options abound in this market – for instance the Chinese excel at gifting or selling very cheaply low capability frigates. The potential export market for the T31 is going to be interesting, and it will be worth watching to see where the first ones end up going in second hand sales ahead of new build orders in due course.

The wider challenge is how does the purchase and sale of T31 in line with the proposed export strategy fit with the stated RN aspiration to grow the escort fleet over the next few years? If more ships are sought then buying a follow-on batch may seem an extremely good option to take, but would this disrupt planned sales abroad, and would the lack of 2^nd hand vessels hurt UK sales prospects?

It is clear there will be a careful balancing act to be struck between the needs of the RN and the desire to grow the escort force, and the need to keep orders flowing in for the UK shipbuilding industry. This may at times prove challenging to deliver, and will require difficult funding decisions for the RN, and wider MOD, about how to find sufficient cash to keep a production line open long term, particularly when the T26 programme will be absorbing a lot of the budget in the mid – late 2020s.

There is also a challenge around the fit of the vessel and the decision on how much to invest in it. At present little is known about what the ships will be armed with, and whether a fairly austere ‘fitted for but not with’ approach occurs, or if the RN will invest more heavily in an impressive range of capability for the ships. It is also not clear whether there is additional funding for equipping the ships as a result of the 2019 Spending Review increase to the Defence budget either.

On paper the design offers significant room for investment, providing a wide range of capabilities and options for service. The balancing act though is on deciding how much to invest in the hull and the class as a whole.

For instance, if the RN is serious about the aim to secure export orders and knows that the first batch of hulls is likely to be sold on within a few years of entering service, does it want to invest finite resources in them in providing a full range of missiles, defensive capability and helicopters etc, or does it hold off and keep them relatively austerely fitted, and use them primarily in the patrol role?

The former option helps ensure the ship can remain credible (and sought after) for coalition operations and be able to hold its own when working solo. But, this represents a potentially significant investment of time and money to fit the ship with these capabilities, and to run the costly integration trials needed to be certain it can work effectively. This investment could arguably be lost if the ship is then sold shortly afterwards, and the RN then has to start again by fitting fixtures and weapons into the replacement vessel.

But, if the RN keeps them austerely fitted in order to keep costs down, will they seem too weak and not capable enough to be seen as credible contenders on the export market as direct sales, and will other navies opt for a large OPV or heavily armed export design from another builder instead (for example the F100 series).

Striking a balancing act between investing sufficiently to keep the ships operationally credible for their intended role, while being able to make them credible for export, but at the same time not being too costly is going to be a real challenge for the RN and industry to meet.

The wider question too is whether the RN finds that having invested heavily in the ships, and provided them with a UK specific equipment fit, will it want to let them go to a foreign buyer, or will it want to keep running them on medium term?

This may be good for the RN if it builds hull numbers up, but could potentially lead to longer term challenges for the UK shipbuilding industry if the combination of expected export orders and follow on orders for batches from the UK fail to materialise.

The T31 will support work as planned out until the late 2020s, but then there is a gap until the late 2030s when the RN will need to replace the Type 45 destroyers and deliver a new amphibious solution into service. On paper there is relatively little in the way of orders to fill this gap – possibly some replacement survey vessels and elements of the future MCM capability, but otherwise its not clear what work UK yards can compete for.

So, while there is rightly short term good news for UK shipbuilding as a result of this announcement, it is important to note that this is not the end of the process. What is now needed is some kind of clarity about future Government intentions for the Type 31 and how it will be employed – is it to be a genuine export design, or is it something that will be a short term boost for UK shipbuilding but without a longer term follow on plan.

Hopefully the Type 31 will become the low cost backbone of the future escort force, providing a series of highly capable escorts capable of meeting the RN’s maritime constabulary roles, and providing long term security for the UK shipbuilding industry.

If managed properly then the potential for the Type 31 to become the next ‘LEANDER’ class design is high. In other words a ship class successfully operated by the RN and allies both as new builds and as second hand hulls for many decades to come.

The ultimate potential prize for the RN is that the costs of T31 reduce as export orders rise, making significant growth in the escort fleet possible as a result over the next 10-15 years. It would not remotely surprise Humphrey if, in this scenario, by the mid 2030s the T31 was the largest single ship class in RN service.  

There is a lot of potentially very good news to look forward to for the RN at the moment. The continued growth in capability by the Carrier Strike Group, now being tested on WESTLANT 19. The imminent sailing for trials by the PRINCE OF WALES will herald for the first time ever the UK having two super carriers at sea at once – only the second nation in global history to achieve such a feat.

More widely the continued delivery of the Batch 2 RIVER class, which is quickly becoming a hugely versatile addition to the fleet, coupled with the welcome news of the Batch 1’s being retained helps remind us that the RN is continuing to invest in very capable patrol ships.

Right now too the UK is constructing multiple Type 26 frigates, a world class anti-submarine frigate that will be more than capable of tackling the threats from hostile submarines for decades to come, and continuing construction of three nuclear attack submarines and the next generation of Ballistic Missile Submarine. Meanwhile the RFA have just introduced their fourth new TIDE class tanker to service, and will soon be ordering large future supply ships for the force too.

All this is being done against the backdrop of a vibrant refit and repair programme that continues to upgrade and update RN warships to keep them at the absolute cutting edge of military capability. This is also good news for the UK ability to design complex warships – a skill set arguably more important than being able to build them, as it permits the UK the ability to design, as a sovereign nation, the vessel that best suits the requirements for the Royal Navy. 

It is worth reflecting then that while todays announcement is not only good news for the RN and shipbuilding industry, it is just one small facet of a very large programme of military shipbuilding that sees significant work for companies across the country for the next 15 years at a minimum.

The Royal Navy is on the cusp of massive operational and technological change, and it is doing this supported by the magnificent people in the UK shipbuilding industry. There are very exciting times ahead, and the T31 is just one part of a much bigger success story.