Oh think my comment might if not been clear when I said I don’t see the benefit of a stench OPV/Covert it was interns of the current T31 with my idea of a class of 3 variants based on the T26 being the C1 and C2 if the RN with export potential.Repulse wrote:Agree on the second part, I see very little benefit building a foreign design, even a variant of it, because the UK will never be the cheapest place to build and the RN variant will be for the RN so even then build support services etc would have very limited appeal elsewhere.Jake1992 wrote:stretched OPV/Covert or a foreign design
I do however so a lot of potential of a stretched OPV (Sloop) or Corvette, based on the River design which has already 17 variants in build (inc 8 for other countries). Setting up a 2nd yard to build a parallel class of Multirole Sloops with a “Sloop Factory” is both feasible and affordable (say a fleet of 16 with a drumbeat of one a year) with some chance of export sales as well as selling design / build / maintenance services as well as kit.
I do agree a multi mission sloop of some sort would be very good for both the RN and export, I always thought of something based on the Venari 95 design discussed on here or an evolved version of the black swan set up for the C3 part to to replace the mcm and echo classes as well as giving a low level security platform for things like anti piracy.