Ron5 wrote:From the Daily Telegraph. Checkout the build price quoted.
Type 26 frigate: Inside the world's most advanced warship...
...The £3.7bn for the first three works out at £1.3bn in development and design, with each ship costing £800m to build.
Great info. Thanks a lot. Interesting is their CAD based agile approach for its design control. Great technology. I guess it is one of the reasons Australia and Canada selected T26 out of other proposals.
On the cost,
£3.7bn total = "£1.3bn in development and design" and "£800 x3" on build
is reasonable. Fit well in as we argued before (initial + detail-design costs ~2 unit cost equivalent (or even more)). (Definition of unit cost here is "the cost needed to add one more hull (in this case, the 9th hull)" (which is surely much cheaper than the average cost)) *1
In this case, "~2 unit cost" is £640 x 2 = £1.3B. Good match!
All equipments for the first 3 T26 has been purchased (no cross over from T23), and included in the £3.7B contract. So, if there were GFE added, it could be quite small. So, this is the build cost. Interesting.
Lessons learned from each vessel could allow BAE to cut the price per hull by a fifth.
This statement itself is also reasonable = logical, while I think it means "the last hull (8th) will cost £640M (without inflation correction)",
AND if no modification was applied.
Caribbean wrote:That's the way I see it. We now have more clarity on the actual build costs vs the total program costs for both the T26 and the T31, which is great, but unfortunately you still have to spend the money on the rest of the program costs. The initial development and design costs of £1.3 billion will add £162 million to the cost of each of the 8 frigates, so a build cost of £640 to 800 million per hull will become a program cost of between £802 and £962 million and there is still the initial maintenance and training contract to add to that. I would not be surprised if that added more than £50 million to the cost per hull, for a 10-year contract. Then add in the actual running costs. When you look at it that way - £2 billion pounds could only buy two more T26s, (though with maybe enough left over for another River B2)
T26 is more high-end than T31, so its operating cost is surely higher than T31, by its nature. Comparing the capabilities, the cost difference is also reasonable. The crew size of T26 will be 157+flight ~ 180 or more. That of T31 is stated to be 100+flight ~ 110-120. (But, as natural, it will grow a little at the last moment), which will be reflected into the operation cost. I do not think T26 is too expensive, nor T31 is too cheap. Simply these cost reflect their capability.
Now, we must be careful that we do not know the actual build cost of T31. The £1.25B contract with Babcock does include detailed-design cost (re-formatting the existing Iver Huitfeldt detail-design (note it is not only the blue print, it is the full set of all procedure)), but it does NOT include some of the GFE (including CMS integration of SeaCeptor system, software and CAMM LMS and 12 mushrooms) and other support costs (included in £750M). I guess actually unit cost (=cost needed to add one more T31 = 6th hull) will be around £250-300M.
*1: Note I understand £640M figure is for the 9th hull. As the learning curve grows, the cost of the 6th hull of T26 might be a bit expensive. Say, £700M or so? But, this is all excluding inflation and not expecting any design modification to come. As we hope T26 Batch 2 will be modified in several respect, it will surely be a bit more expensive...
