UK Defence Forum

I’ve moved the US Navy/Yemen discussion to the US Armed Forces topic. Feel free to continue your discussion there but let’s keep this topic focused on Type 31 news from now.

http://ukdefenceforum.net/viewtopic.php ... start=1400

Parliamentary written answers 17th Oct :-

Asked by Mr Kevan Jones
(North Durham)
[N]
Asked on: 14 October 2019
Ministry of Defence
Type 31 Frigates
95
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when a decision will be made on what Government Furnished Equipment will be attached to the UK's Type 31 Frigates.
A
Answered by: Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Answered on: 17 October 2019

The full scope of the type of Government Furnished Equipment attached to the Type 31 frigates will be determined when the Design and Build contract is signed by the end of the year.



Asked by Mr Kevan Jones
(North Durham)
Asked on: 14 October 2019
Ministry of Defence
Type 31 Frigates: Procurement
98
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the Government's contract with Babcock on Type 31 Frigates contained any stipulation on which yards in the UK would conduct the work.
A
Answered by: Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Answered on: 17 October 2019

The Government announced the preferred bidder for the Type 31 General Purpose Frigate in September 2019 and looks forward to contract award in due course.

Whilst it was a mandatory requirement for the Type 31 frigates to be built and integrated in the UK, the specific build strategy to meet the Department's time and cost parameters was proposed by the Preferred Bidder as part of the Type 31 competition.

jonas wrote:to meet the Department's time and cost parameters

Yet it appears not to have. But maybe the other guys couldn't either.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... y_2019.pdf

The incredibly easy to miss independent review of the National Shipbuilding Strategy (all six pages) - with a few bits redacted re T31.

A very good read thank you I fully back the idea of a funded 30 year plan and that all defence funded ship should be UK only competition and these are to things I have said in the past

In my view the funded 30 year plan is probably the most important part as it removed the year on year budget bottleneck that plagues existing large procurement programmes, and is something the Treasury continues to resist as it makes their spreadsheets more complicated.

I am so proud of my perceptive post on STRN, I am copying and pasting it here. Donald-san was commenting on the latest fuzzy CGI that looks like it only has 12 CAMM mushrooms:

"Donald-san, I am going to go out on a limb and say I think the CAMM launchers in that low res picture are two ExLs and not mushrooms.

That would line up with the refresh of Lockheed’s ExLs sales material a few months ago to focus almost exclusively on CAMM. Plus basically being a plug in module, ExLs would much better fit the concept of Arrowhead having a “modular” design that allows for simple customization of weapons and sensor fits to meet customer needs.

The Arrowhead weapons/mission bay space midships is basically an empty, hull wide, two deck high, box from main mast structure back to the main engine up & down takes. That empty box can have many different modules fitted. A lot like Stanflex. The RN version would fill that volume with two boat/container bays, 2 ExLs and space left for anti ship missiles. Other navies could have Type 41’s like the original IH and maybe one boat bay. The combinations are many.

Just a thought."

Am I daft or does any of this make sense?

PS two ExLs would hold 24 missiles. 6 could be fired v quickly because of the 6 channel fire controls that can come with that configuration.

From the very end of SJP's review:
Progress on implementation should be reviewed internally in 2021, by which time...[reasonably there should be clarity] on the procurement of Type 26, Type 31e and Fleet Solid Support ships.
- i.e. the mix between T26 (incl? AAW) and T31 (incl. any? Batch2) within the surface combatants fleet
- and restarting FSS with revised terms of reference

ArmChairCivvy wrote:From the very end of SJP's review:
Progress on implementation should be reviewed internally in 2021, by which time...[reasonably there should be clarity] on the procurement of Type 26, Type 31e and Fleet Solid Support ships.
- i.e. the mix between T26 (incl? AAW) and T31 (incl. any? Batch2) within the surface combatants fleet
- and restarting FSS with revised terms of reference

Or contracts for the Type 31 and second batch of Type 26 will be signed by then. FSSS? god knows.

https://www.investegate.co.uk/babcock-i ... up%20Alert

Babcock, the Aerospace and Defence Company, has been awarded a contract by the UK Ministry of Defence to deliver its newest fleet of warships. The Type 31 general-purpose frigate programme will provide the UK with a fleet of five ships, at an average production cost of £250 million per ship.

The formal contract award follows the announcement earlier this year that Babcock's Team 31 had been selected as Preferred Bidder following a competitive process. Babcock's Arrowhead 140 is a capable, adaptable and technology-enabled global frigate with a proven design and build strategy.

The frigates will be assembled at Babcock's Rosyth facility, and involve supply chains throughout the UK, in line with the UK's shipbuilding strategy.

ends

UK MoD Formally Awards Type 31 Frigate Contract to Babcock

The UK Ministry of Defence today formally awarded Babcock International Group PLC the contract for the Royal Navy's future Type 31e Frigates.

The Type 31 general-purpose frigate programme will provide the UK with a fleet of five ships, at an average production cost of £250 million per ship. The overal program cost is set to be £2 billion (£1.25 billion value to prime contractor Babcock).

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/20 ... o-babcock/

Excellent news. Thank you Xavier.

Great news! Wasn't expecting this to be confirmed before the election is done and dusted.

If £1.25bn is going to Babcock where is the other £750m going?

This might just be a misprint (like the picture) but Forces Network is reporting that the T31 will have a 4D radar. Could this be NS200?

https://www.forces.net/news/type-31-bab ... e-contract

Poiuytrewq wrote:Great news! Wasn't expecting this to be confirmed before the election is done and dusted.

If £1.25bn is going to Babcock where is the other £750m going?

This might just be a misprint (like the picture) but Forces Network is reporting that the T31 will have a 4D radar. Could this be NS200?

https://www.forces.net/news/type-31-bab ... e-contract

Great picture heading that article (not).

Anyhoo, they're all 4D: NS110, NS200, Artisan. Hard to find a ships radar without doppler these days.

Excellent news about the T31. Wondering what the 750M is for. Is that for the government furnished equipment I wonder.

GFE can't be account for much of that, surely. Is it for servicing and maintenance contracts post build?

dmereifield wrote:GFE can't be account for much of that, surely.

Why not?

I (optimistically) imagined that it reflects the decision to "add" non-negligible GFE to the program?

# If total money is not enough, for exmpke, by disbanding HMS Monmouth now and relocating CAMM system (and its ~60M GBP update cost), directly to T31.

By the way, from there this "2B GBP" came from?

donald_of_tokyo wrote:

dmereifield wrote:GFE can't be account for much of that, surely.

Why not?

I (optimistically) imagined that it reflects the decision to "add" non-negligible GFE to the program?

# If total money is not enough, for exmpke, by disbanding HMS Monmouth now and relocating CAMM system (and its ~60M GBP update cost), directly to T31.

By the way, from there this "2B GBP" came from?

Sounds surprising that GFE could comprise 40% of the programme costs, especially since Babcocks AH140 seems to use so little kit from RN inventory. What are they using exactly other than CAMM that could be furnished by HMG?

dmereifield wrote:Sounds surprising that GFE could comprise 40% of the programme costs, especially since Babcocks AH140 seems to use so little kit from RN inventory. What are they using exactly other than CAMM that could be furnished by HMG?

Not 40%. Added 500M GBP is only 32% of the 1.25B GBP. And, I moved to escort thread.....

donald_of_tokyo wrote:By the way, from there this "2B GBP" came from?

Both Janes and Xavier have reported that the overall budget is around 2 billion.

Hardly any other media comment. I assume the MoD is keeping the announcement very low key, even announcing on a Friday and little or no mention on any of their media outlets., because they are concerned they will be accused of breaking purdah. Which, of course, they are. But whatever, this is the UK, anything goes.

Major decisions on policy are postponed until after the purdah period, unless it is in the national interest to proceed, or a delay would waste public money.

MOD has signed the T31 contract and the Boxer contract during the current purdah. A little odd. But in both cases it has been argued that a delay to after the election would waste public money.

Also, in both cases, the decision to go ahead with the purchases was made and announced well before the calling of the election. The signing of the contracts is just confirmation of an earlier decision. But MOD are keeping it low key.

If any of the parties had made any statements to the effect that they wished to cancel either T31 or Boxer, MOD would probably have had to wait until after the election.

As it is, defence programmes and defence spending have hardly been mentioned by any party.

Purdah is all about not using executive power to buy votes. Placing a big order for work in Rosyth during an election would be viewed as being unfair as it would influence the shipyard workers to vote for the incumbent party. But seeing how quiet the announcement has been kept, I doubt if many voters there even know about it. Not seen any mention in any of the UK's major newspapers except a one liner behind a paywall in the Financial Times and the circulation of that paper in Rosyth can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I think the big announcement was the preferred bidder status tbh

Everyone's known it would be going to rosyth + a140 for yonks

According to Jane's, the overall programme costs for T31 will be GBP 1.98 billion. This comprises GBP 1.25 billion production cost of five Type 31s in addition to other associated costs for work required to achieve entry into service. These additional costs include integrated logistic support, initial training, provision of spares, wider programme costs to provide government furnished assets, steady state training and completion of capability trials.

Aethulwulf wrote:wider programme costs to provide government furnished assets

The transfer value of which being subject to MoD accounting policies... no need to say which (as I have stated the case ' a couple' of times).