Iv seen you point to the orginal planed costs before but as we can see with FTI £450-£500m for a world class teir 1 ASW vessel was never going to happen, if you look around no teir 1 vessel be that ASW or AAW has be built for that price range in the western world.NickC wrote:My understanding of the sad history of the RN Type 26 (not for BAE)
Why did the MoD/RN allow the Type 26 costs balloon out of control with the result that the for the first 3 ships BAE contract £3.7B, £1.23B each, overall programme cost per MoD Nov. 2018 Equipment Plan £4,242M, £1,414M per ship.
Plan was to control the costs and risk of the T26 by keeping with the principles of through life capability management to maximise pull through from the QNLZ, T45 and T23 capability sustainment/upgrade, capitalising on previous investments and/or existing inventory. The £1B Type 45 was characterised by approx 80% new equipment and 20 % re-use, with the T26 Navy promise that it would be reversed with 20% new and 80% re-use.
March 2010 BAE awarded £127M design contract with original working baseline for the Global Combat Ship design a 141m vessel with a displacement of 6,850t and a range of 7,000 nm at 18 knots and costing an estimated ~ £450M/£500M.
In November 2010 it was reported that the specifications had been pared down, to reduce the cost from £500M to £250-350M per ship. Subsequently, new specification details began to emerge of a smaller 5,400t ship emphasising flexibility and modularity. Unlike the Future Surface Combatant for the Global Combat Ship there would be only one hull design, three versions for export, ASW, AAW and a GP variant.
In 2014 BAE design concept was revealed that it had returned to original working baseline of a large 6,900t ship 149.9 m x 20.8 m (actual true displacement disclosed by the Australian Hunter T26 as 8,000t FLD and with 10% margin built in for normal in service life growth for EOL of 8,800t). Why was this 80% increase in displacement needed from the T23 4,900t which was designed for cold war ASW operations in the North Atlantic.
The answer is it was driven by requirement to act as an amphibious operations platform for special forces with its 100 feet plus mission bay for 4 x 12 metre boats for the insertion of RM/SAS troops and a flight deck big enough and with necessary strength (weight) to accept a CH47 Chinook (ramp down) for troop embarkation plus Mk45 5" gun with its very expensive automated magazine which saves 3/4 crew to give marginal additional firepower support over the standard RN 4.5" Mk8 Mod 1 gun.
The actual T26 GCS KURS: Maritime Fires, SF Operations, Anti-Air Warfare, Anti-Surface Warfare, Anti-Submarine Warfare, Coastal Suppression, Maritime Interdiction Operations, Interoperability, Survivability, Readiness, Reach, Intelligence, Standing Commitments, Concurrency, Flexibility and Availability.
Future proofing the multi-mission amphib T26 was a stated requirement informed by the work undertaken by the Defence Concepts and Doctrine Centre to describe the strategic Defence and security context out to 2045 (a total joke as it’s impossible to predict future technologies and their associated requirements, the only solution is to over engineer the ship to a ridiculous degree which costs big time).
All this under the watch of the FSL's, assuming mainly under the failed management of Sir George Zambellas FSL from April 2013 when the KURS were set in stone with the 2014 8,800t design.
In September 2015, the Treasury/MoD added up the cost of the future proofed multi-mission amphib T26 at £11.5B, that figure now looks low, Australian Hunter budget for 9 ships £20B and Canadians budget for 15 ships £48B.
The result surprise, surprise November 2015 SDSR T26 numbers were cut from 13 to 8, Navy had shot themselves in the foot big time by allowing their future proofed multi-mission amphib T26 costs to get out of control. Navy are way under strength in frigates and destroyers numbers so now Navy will have to make do with five T31s to replace the cancelled T26s which in no way can be classed as a RN capable ship.
The 2010 plan was ISD of as early as possible after 2020 to replace the T23's, now ISD is 2027, 17 years after design contract award and presumably stretching out to 2039 with one every 2 years, no wonder BAE cancelled its frigate factory as its investment would never be paid back at such a low build rate.
Its so disappointing after the experience with the T45 and its £1B cost leading to class cut back to six ships, that so say lessons would learned and applied only for the FSLs to dig an even bigger pit for the T26 to fall into.
The lesson to take away is not to build costly, ever larger and more complex multi-mission ships with very expensive future proofing capabilities. The goal should be to build affordable ships to replace on a frequent basis (revert to the T23 thinking whose design life was for 18 years), smaller and cheaper that can be replaced often enough so that the technology is current, only possible with a primary single function ships as with the T23. YVMV.
(Ref: Michal Fallon SECRETARY OF STATE, MINISTRY OF DEFENCE, letter 9th Oct. 2014 to Chairman HoC, Defence Committee)
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/com ... t_Ship.pdf
The £250-£350m price range was just complet fanacy that was never going to happen even in our wildest dreams.
One of the big reason the cost for the first 3 in class is so much is due to money being spent on extra equipment such TAS atrisan and so on, as well as set up cost for new surplie chains like the mk41s or the mk45.
The big reason behind costs is due to the snail pace of the build 10 years from start to being I service for first in class and nearly 20 years for a total of 8 ships, this artifial slow down adds major cost as we saw with the QEs.
