A Great Week To Be A British Sailor...

It has been a very good week for the Royal Navy, which has seen the confirmation of plans to order three Future Support Ships and five Type 26 frigates have been placed on contract for construction. This news cements a very substantial future work package for the next 10 years at least, and provides both certainty and long term stability for the UK shipbuilding industry.

The Type 26 order is good news for several reasons. Firstly it provides confirmation that the RN will see out the full construction of this class of ship, with 8 hulls entering service between the late 2020s and mid 2030s. These will be in addition to large orders from both the Royal Australian and Canadian Navy for the design, which will become one of the most numerous and capable Western ASW frigates of the next decade.

The decision to order all 8 hulls provides certainty for BAE Systems in Scotland, who can now progress with further investment in the Clyde and have guaranteed business for many years to come. With planning (and arguably a bit of luck) the end of the T26 build should coincide with the ramping up of the next generation of vessels – the Type 32 design and the Type 83 destroyer are all now in sight, as well as the Multi Role Support Ship (MRSS). The future for shipbuilding on the Clyde, for as long as it remains part of the UK, seems incredibly bright.

Its not just the Type 26 order that is good news here – the placing of contract of all 8 hulls means that thanks to earlier orders for the Type 31 frigate, no less than 13 frigates are committed to construction in the UK right now. This is one of the largest naval construction programmes in NATO and will help ensure a 100% refresh of the Royal Navy’s frigate force over the next decade, providing it with some of the most modern and capable warships on the planet.

At the same time the decision to select the FSS design and proceed towards contract award early in 2023 is incredibly important. The FSS design is central to ensuring that the Royal Navy can continue to operate globally with its own integral support and supplies – these ships are effectively a combination of floating supermarket and gun shop, providing everything from food, fuel, spare parts and munitions to help keep ships at sea for longer. Without them Task Groups become reliant on shore ports for support, making them far less able to conduct ‘blue water’ operations.

Currently there is only one vessel in the RN capable of this task – RFA FORT VICTORIA, a 30yr old supply ship. Without doubt this is the ‘weak link in the anchor’ in that as an older singleton hull, she urgently needs replacing to be certain that the RFA can support the carrier groups ambition as well as wider global deployments. It is vital that these ships enter service as planned to prevent any disruption to Royal Navy operations around the world.

The build solution will incorporate both construction at home, parts built in Spain and a combined assembly in the UK to create a British ship, built by British workers in a British port. Some will moan (and indeed are moaning) that this choice hurts opportunities for UK workers. While it is the case that parts of the ship will be built abroad, this is a UK design, built and assembled in the UK to ensure that it meets our standards. Plenty of other navies rely on foreign yards for elements of construction, and if this is a means of affording three hulls, rather than two, then that is a good trade off.

There is a delicate balancing act to be struck here – there will always be calls to build ships in the UK for British workers, but there also needs to be a credible construction programme to deliver a credible design on time and not be late. The award here fuses both support for UK yards, helping them continue to design and build specialist military equipment, as well as jobs, while still being affordable. The likelihood is that when these ships enter service,  there will be follow on orders of some form for other RFA platforms to follow, so this is potentially building an extra line of work for many years to come for yards linked to the RFA.

It is easy to feel concern or hurt pride that ships aren’t being built in the UK, but look at the bigger picture and you see not bad news for British shipbuilding, but in fact the dawn of an incredibly promising era. Having delivered two enormous aircraft carriers in the previous decade, a project that saw shipbuilding flourish across the UK, there is now a similar scale of ambition in current shipbuilding plans. With four ballistic missile submarines on order or under construction, and plans for a follow on class of nuclear submarine,  no less than 13 frigates (more escort ships than most countries have escorts in their entire navy), totalling some 100,000 tonnes of shipping, plus three enormous (e.g. longer and larger than an INVINCIBLE Class aircraft carrier), as well as investment in all manner of other capabilities, it is hard to be anything other than extremely upbeat about the opportunities for British military shipbuilding.

The danger of saying ‘but why not make it purely British built’ is that there is only finite yard capacity in the UK, and only so many organisations able to deliver the ships. With the military shipbuilding yards at full stretch, there is realistically only so many places that could bid to build these ships. There is also a cost issue – it is likely that a UK bid would have been so much more expensive that only two ships, not three would have been ordered, a bad result both for the Taxpayer and Royal Navy.

It is also disingenuous to suggest that the winning consortium is not British – rather it is working with partners more widely to deliver the finished product from a British yard. There is a danger that if the UK constantly adopts a ‘Buy British At Any Price’ mentality, then the loss of competition will push prices up, with manufacturers having no incentive to remain competitive, and it will be harder to win work abroad. Why would a foreign nation place an order for a British design, knowing that the British would never themselves buy or build global?

In an integrated global economy, we need to ensure that the UK can show itself as a global exporter of vessels. By creating the condition to deliver these ships efficiently and on budget, there is a chance that other navies may order similar vessels in due course, and the tantalising prospect of a build strategy for follow on RFA’s in years to come. We are getting dangerously close to an integrated national shipbuilding strategy being delivered in practise, not just on paper.

There is doubtless difficult decisions to come – the ships need to be built to a speedy timescale to ensure all three are in service within 10 years – but even more importantly is the need to replace RFA FORT VICTORIA asap. At the same time they need to survive the inevitable budget cuts that loom as a flat growth defence budget contends with large inflation and real terms cuts, and also ensure that the RFA is able to get sufficient personnel to sea to crew these ships at a point when many of its most experienced personnel will have retired. There are challenges to come, but today is a time of relief and good news.

No less than 11 British warships and auxiliaries have been ordered or put into a point when they will be ordered this week, and this is coming on the back of the decision to progress with two MROS platforms earlier this month. More British military vessels have been ordered or committed to this month than for many years previously combined – it is by any measure, a great day to be a sailor!