Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

[marktigger]

It look looks like that.

Its a shame, the crossover series have many attractive features for a multipurpose combatant. There is the mystery design from Babcock that will likely be an anglicized European design.

mybe they should bring in Damen Sigma

[PAUL MARSAY]

that could very well be the XO design , fingers crossed . i would like to see type 26 built on the clyde and type 31 built at Appledore or camel laird hopefully 8-8 .
the XO logistics design could the WI guardship and maybe morph into the MCM mothership role like the WW2 Abdiel class minelayers eagerly waiting the return of "Manxman and Welshman".

[marktigger]

type 31 has been promised to clyde by Cameron hopefully that will change. But would like to see Appledore taking the lead for a proper MCM/Hydrgraphy vessel

[PAUL MARSAY]

I think we will go the same route as the French with "motherships" for future mcm .

[donald_of_tokyo]

I cannot be optimistic on T31 and MHC vessels. Sorry, Repulse-san, 16 hull with CAMM and 3 in gun? I really hope I turned out to be wrong, but UK is never famous for building ship in cheap. May be RN "hates" low standard level. I'm afraid they will say, "T31/MHC with CAMM and 3 in gun, but build in "FLOREAL STANDARD!!?" cannot be sent to war, not credible".

I do think MHC itself can be of Floreal standard, but not as an escort, I think.

[shark bait]

16 does sound quite challenging. 8 billion is supposedly allocated to the construction of the T26 and T31. Working off the european benchmark for a GP frigate at £80,000 per ton;

16 x 3,000 tonne GP frigates will eat up half of the frigate building budget.

[marktigger]

so refurbishing the Hunts might be a cheaper/better option for the MCMV

[dmereifield]

Wait I thought I read (only Wikipedia or such other "reliable" source) that it was £8 billion allocated for the 8 x T26, I thought as the original £11.5 billion allocated for 13 x T26 was insufficient the 5 ("at least") T31 would be allocated the other £3.5 billion?

[Repulse]

16 x 3,000 tonne GP frigates will eat up half of the frigate building budget.

We'd be looking to build the first 8 in the next 10 years and the next 8 in the following 10 years (to replace the MCMs / Echos). So at @£250mn a unit that would be £6bn left for a purchase of 10 T26s at £600mn a pop. Assuming no spend for the CVFs.

[shark bait]

Wait I thought I read (only Wikipedia or such other "reliable" source) that it was £8 billion allocated for the 8 x T26, I thought as the original £11.5 billion allocated for 13 x T26 was insufficient the 5 ("at least") T31 would be allocated the other £3.5 billion?

It could well be that, it has never been made clear.

£11.5 billion was thrown around pre SDSR, with no real meaning about what it included. Remember we have already spent £1.5bn, plus a few hundred million on infrastructure.

Now we have the 8 billion figure passed around quite a bit as well, again with no specifics about what is included.

because the eight Type 26 frigates are approximately £8 billion-worth of planning going forward

Over the next decade, we will spend around £8 billion on Royal Navy warships

The commitment is to spend £8 billion—that is the budget envelope

I was working under the assumption that £8 billion was allocated to procure the replacements all of the T23 frigates. Now the T26 is more expensive than expected, we now have to fit a cheaper class of frigate in within the same financial constraints.

any other data / interpretations? That top quote does make it sound like the T26 is a billion pound frigate which blows my mind.

We'd be looking to build the first 8 in the next 10 years and the next 8 in the following 10 years (to replace the MCMs / Echos). So at @£250mn a unit that would be £6bn left for a purchase of 10 T26s at £600mn a pop. Assuming no spend for the CVFs.

Thanks, much bigger time scales than I assumed. I see how that could work then.

My worry is £250mn isn't going to buy the Royal Navy very much frigate. Using the benchmark above we can guesstimate the BMT Venator 110 should be expected at about £350m, and that already struggles with a credibility issue.

[donald_of_tokyo]

My understanding is, 8G GBP is now allocated for 8 T26. Note that when is was told 600-650 M GBP unit cost, already it was 11.5G GBP per 13. So, it was 3.7+0.6*13 or 3+0.65*13 [in G GBP]. So it includes development/design cost and maybe some ammunitions of 3G GBP or so.

What is allocated for T31 is not known, my guess is ~2G GBP (as I stated earlier). (This is why I struggle to make 350M GBP 4000t Venator 110, because 2unit-equiv.(for design)+5 units means 2.45G GBP. A small but non-negligible excess)

A 250M GBP Venator 90mod (maybe 3000t), is doable as a light frigate, similar to Netherland's M-class, but added with "large mission bay", the "fighting" part will become "less". Maybe amounts to 150-200M GBP or so = 2000-2500t "frigate/corvette", like Lekiu-class frigate, I'm afraid.

[ArmChairCivvy]

any other data / interpretations? That top quote does make it sound like the T26 is a billion pound frigate which blows my mind.

Repulse wrote:
We'd be looking to build the first 8 in the next 10 years and the next 8 in the following 10 years (to replace the MCMs / Echos). So at @£250mn a unit that would be £6bn left for a purchase of 10 T26s at £600mn a pop. Assuming no spend for the CVFs.



Thanks, much bigger time scales than I assumed. I see how that could work then.

My worry is £250mn isn't going to buy the Royal Navy very much frigate. Using the benchmark above we can guesstimate the BMT Venator 110 should be expected at about £350m, and that already struggles with a credibility issue.

Good summaries, and it would be good if folks would quote their sources. Otherwise this becomes a bit of a waterwheel, each new assertation keeping it in motion (and as we know, the movement is circular).

In the latest equipment plan T26 (T31 was split off the main frigate prgrm after the publishing date) is the only item among the major projects that has its cost estimate withheld (i.e. there isn't one for the public domain as it is unresolved/ numbers therefore undecided/ and the convenience of commercial sensitivity is used for withholding even min&max estimates). As a sign of the chaos within the prgrm it is also the only one that has not even been assessed with "traffic lights" for the different aspects of risks!

Forever dilly-dallying gives us different types of risks (Successor having been the Hot Potato over the 5 years of the Coalition Gvmnt):
"52 months for the Core Production Capability project. The unforeseen need
to produce an additional reactor core as a consequence of the refuelling of
HMS Vanguard and to retain the capability to produce a core for HMS Victorious,
if required, means that the final phase of regeneration of the production facility has
been deferred."
- it is not only the cost of stretching out old kit into further years of service (we all know when it becomes economical to change our car, from the total cost POV?)
- in this case, the transitioning to producing cores for the "S" boats has been pushed to the right by 4+ years (not quite by 5!)

[seaspear]

Certainly there have been no unit costs given , but how does it then tender when promoting for the sea 5000 ,surely there would be some figure provided .

[ArmChairCivvy]

how does it then tender when promoting for the sea 5000 ,surely there would be some figure provided .

- but not into the public domain? Have you seen any (and of course, the commercial details of tender docs tend to be secret, until the winner is announced).

We haven't had a competition over here, and the winner was "announced" in which decade (I already forget, it was so long ago)?
- the whole T31 is (?) an exercise in finding out how much better value could be extracted through a competitive approach
- just difficult to see the industry having whetted appetites for investment in new designs as the previous PM committed to the first 5 to be built in a certain location (as long as Scotland is part of the UK; our version of the US pork barreling!)

[Repulse]

the previous PM committed to the first 5 to be built in a certain location

Could be undone quickly if a meaningful replacement of the missing work can be identified in my view for the early 2030's (e.g. 1-2 additional T26s and 3 LPDs).

[seaspear]

Would be interesting if the concept was open to foreign tender,proviso being they were built in the U.K, of course the requirements of class would also have to be listed

[Repulse]

As we all know getting warship costs is very difficult and impossible to reliably compare. Two notes however:

- A simaliar build for the T23 for 16 units achieved a drop in cost per unit from @£138mn to @£100mn for the final unit. From this i think you can make a fairly accurate target of an overall reduction of 25% if a simaliar build was started.
- Going for the same base design, but in a lite and heavy format on a 50/50 basis, would reduce average costs further.

As such a think an average cost of £250 is doable if the build volumes are large enough.

[dmereifield]

What would be the minimum requirement for a credible frigate? As the following text will convey, I know eff all about naval or military matters. I’m 100% civilian, with a general interest in the RN.

To my limited understanding, wouldn’t any credible T31 have to have the following:

Hull mounted sonar
Medium gun
8/16 mk41 VLS
24 CAMM
Hangar for medium helo
Suitable endurance and speed to keep up with the carrier group
Artisan radar, decoys etc etc

From what I have seen from the BAE and Venator designs there doesn’t seem to be inclusion of mk41 VLS – so can the offensive punch be provided by box launchers and/or torpedo tubes on our hypothetical type 31? I have read that the harpoons and stingrays are obsolete(ish) and the harpoons are on their way out of service.

If the T31 lacks any ASW or ASuW offensive kit other than via the helo, and it lacks a hull sonar/TAS (most of the speculative literature seems to indicate that it won’t have a sonar?), won’t it just be a floating target unsuitable for anything other than constabulary duties?

Appreciate any useful responses to my top trump style understanding….

[shark bait]

Your assessment seems accurate. It is very worrying that we would end up with a "floating target unsuitable for anything other than constabulary duties". Harpoon and stingray are "obsolete(ish)", and it indeed seems unlikely we'll see the the MK41 on the T31.

It looks as though we could end up with a patrol frigate featuring only a gun and CAMM, in which case it has no credible offensive capabilities, so it can't escort, leaving it suitable for low intensity maritime security operations.

Its really not what the royal navy needs, they will have 2.5 frigates available for antisubmarine operations, which is wholly inadequate for a service tasked with with providing a continuous nuclear deterrent and carrier strike. That like nothing else describes the hollowing out of the navy, lots of shiny kit on the surface, but no equipment to make them usable in a non permissive environment.

It could be solved by making the T31 and small multipurpose patrol frigate, and ASW frigate that can be equipped with a towed sonar to counter the increasing sub threat.

[dmereifield]

Thanks for the useful response.

Given that the batch 2 rivers are capable of doing the maritime security type of work, what is the point of spending a fair whack of change on a patrol frigate?

Is it not possible to build a low end credible frigate for ca. £350-400million? Something like a beefed up La Fayette (anyone know how much they cost to build?) class to RN standard? I read that the La Fayette refit programme will include fitting a sonar. If they had some onboard ASW capability and CAMM (I think the La Fayette's are ffbnw aster 15) wouldn't this type of vessel (with UK design and build) be acceptable for RN and available at a reasonable price (e.g <£400 million)?

[abc123]

It seems to me that nothing good can't be expected fot the RN and HM AF in general without increasing the level of defence spending above 2%.

Without that, we can beat the dead horse as much as we want- but the RN will continue to deteriorate in every possible aspect...

[marktigger]

What would be the minimum requirement for a credible frigate? As the following text will convey, I know eff all about naval or military matters. I’m 100% civilian, with a general interest in the RN.

To my limited understanding, wouldn’t any credible T31 have to have the following:

Hull mounted sonar
Medium gun
8/16 mk41 VLS
24 CAMM
Hangar for medium helo
Suitable endurance and speed to keep up with the carrier group
Artisan radar, decoys etc etc

From what I have seen from the BAE and Venator designs there doesn’t seem to be inclusion of mk41 VLS – so can the offensive punch be provided by box launchers and/or torpedo tubes on our hypothetical type 31? I have read that the harpoons and stingrays are obsolete(ish) and the harpoons are on their way out of service.

If the T31 lacks any ASW or ASuW offensive kit other than via the helo, and it lacks a hull sonar/TAS (most of the speculative literature seems to indicate that it won’t have a sonar?), won’t it just be a floating target unsuitable for anything other than constabulary duties?

Appreciate any useful responses to my top trump style understanding….

If you are adding in recovered kit from T23 you have a hull sonar coupled with Merlin sized hanger you have ASW capability will they recycle the torpedo tubes in both the 26 & 31.

but if you've been following the thread these vessels are to also replace the hydrography and Mine counter measures fleet to so will they have survey sonars to and mine hunters sonars. Or will they be devoind of anything armament or sensor wise that isn't on a pallet or in a container. With crews having to try and integrate diverging capabiliies to generate a cohesive fighting ship with Jigsaw crews

[marktigger]

Your assessment seems accurate. It is very worrying that we would end up with a "floating target unsuitable for anything other than constabulary duties". Harpoon and stingray are "obsolete(ish)", and it indeed seems unlikely we'll see the the MK41 on the T31.

It looks as though we could end up with a patrol frigate featuring only a gun and CAMM, in which case it has no credible offensive capabilities, so it can't escort, leaving it suitable for low intensity maritime security operations.

Its really not what the royal navy needs, they will have 2.5 frigates available for antisubmarine operations, which is wholly inadequate for a service tasked with with providing a continuous nuclear deterrent and carrier strike. That like nothing else describes the hollowing out of the navy, lots of shiny kit on the surface, but no equipment to make them usable in a non permissive environment.

It could be solved by making the T31 and small multipurpose patrol frigate, and ASW frigate that can be equipped with a towed sonar to counter the increasing sub threat.

what do you need harpoon, stingray,5inch gun and CAMM on a minehunter/survey vessel which yesterday you were promoting the T31 to replace?

[shark bait]

The T26 isn't getting torpedo tubes, I assume the T31 wont either.

I don't think its quite right to say they are replacing the hydrography and Mine counter measures fleet, rather that capability is being transfered to a platform agnostic off board system, which may be deployed from anywhere.

what do you need harpoon, stingray,5inch gun and CAMM on a minehunter/survey vessel which yesterday you were promoting the T31 to replace?

I wasn't. Over 200 pages I have been advocating a credible T31 that can actually escort, I think that means it must have an ASW capability.

The future MMCM system should be deployable from anywhere, T26, T31, auxiliaries and land.

[marktigger]

to be a "Credible" escort it can't do both escort and Mine hunter/hydrography vessel , because if it is a "Credible" it will be to much in demand as an Escort. Whch is why Minor warships IE patrol vessels, MCMV's and hydrography needs to be kept seperate!