Ron5 wrote:The Type 31 has 3 competitive advantages: 1. It is cheap, 2. It will be used by the Royal Navy 3. It will be built with a high degree of commercial practices and is therefore suitable for local country build.
However, the overwhelming first priority in all warship sales is politics. Countries will only do business with countries they want to do business with...
Overall, I agree to your point. What UK now need is, "a so-so competitive" UK based light frigate design, to be proposed to nations within a package of a political deal.
But, I'm not sure if T31e will be "cheap" = "compared to contenders". We know its total cost will be 1.25B GBP for 5 hulls, but no information yet for its capability. We need to at least make it "comparable cost to contenders". It is clear British ship building industry is inefficient, so "comparable to" is a big challenge. Keeping a few small yards across the UK is never going to make it efficient, never.
I think, regardless of exports, whatever CL or Babcocks Type 31 build capability is created, it will eventually whither and die. The NSS offers no realistic solution to the biggest underlying flaw: there is not sufficient long term work for more than one frigate/destroyer shipyard.
Umm, so what is your proposal? Just stop T31e and invest the money into T26 program?
donald_of_tokyo wrote:... What is not clear for me is, in many case Treasury is supporting the fund available, while the hull number decreases because of development/initial cost and unit-cost rises. For example, T45 program saw no money cut. I also think T26 is not.
I don't understand your point here. No UK government is going to commit to a long term defense spending plan. It's an idle dream to think they will.
My point is, which is much important for industry, hull number or total budget?
UK has 10 years equipment budget program, coupled with "2% GDP" defense budget. The items within the list should show the industry how much money they will be able to bid. What is NOT clear is how much hulls they can build, because of cost inflation. For industry, money shall be more important than hull number, I guess. Isn't building three 333M GBP hull and one 1B GBP hull the same for the industry?
The Type 45 program was cut from 14 ships to 12 to 8 then 6. Some were due to increasing costs, some were due to Treasury cuts.
Thanks. I was re-checking the document.
Referring to "Ministry of Defence: Providing Anti-Air Warfare Capability: The Type 45 Destroyer":
In July 2000 Defence Ministers approved expenditure of £5 billion (with a maximum acceptable cost of £5.47 billion) to procure six (out of a planned class of 12) , but finally £6.46 billion was used for the 6 hulls.
So, it looks like 4 (12 --> 8) was cut from Treasury first, and then ~2 hulls (8 --> 6) were lost by cost overrun.
I fear you have an unworldly view of how the UK government operates.
As I stated, I am talking about 10 years equipment program. I understand this is a (certain level of) commitment. My point is, why industry cannot base their investment plan on this numbers. (But I agree the current optimistic (e.g. efficiency saving) listing always causing 5-10% shortage of money is a big risk for industry, because MOD will
surely cut some of the items on the list, which might be related to the ship yards future...)