Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Contains threads on Royal Navy equipment of the past, present and future.

Which Anti-Ship Missile Should be Selected for the Type 26?

Lockheed Martin LRASM
164
52%
Kongsberg NSM
78
25%
Boeing Harpoon Next Gen
44
14%
MBDA Exocet Blk III
21
7%
None (stick to guided ammo and FASGW from Helicopters)
8
3%
 
Total votes: 315

Ron5
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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

pko100 wrote: 18 Nov 2022, 15:33 My point is very simple. I'm fed up of people making stuff up on this and most forums.

From open source material, the price of the Type 31 contract is a fixed price of £1.25m as Badcock were not prepared to accept pricing risk. The only other costs have been for 3 sets of mounting hardware for sonar 2070. Please feel to correct me.
Seeing you directed your initial post to me, I assume you are claiming I have made up stuff.

If you could be more precise, I can let you know the source of my comments. All open source by the way.

I see Donald-san has already refuted/corrected your claim that little T31 spending has been made outside of the 1.25 billion contract.

Jane's and other reputable defense sources, have detailed the MoD and Bae/Babcocks discussions that led to significant movement of items from within the 1.25b contract to GFX as opposed to simply increasing the 1.25billion.

The MoD guy that said GFX would be kept to an absolute minimum said it on camera. A quick search of YouTube should turn that up.

It's my characterization that the solution chosen (increase GFX to keep contract target) was to avoid public criticism of the price increase i.e MoD/Treasury spin. Such misleading actions, unfortunately, has become a way of life for them. It's called spin rather than falsehoods but that's just another spin, isn't it?

Let me know if you need more. I don't mind being called on stuff. I'm not always right by any means. Just mostly :D

pko100
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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by pko100 »

I don't think my comments have been refuted at all. Previous posters have confirmed my summary of GFX provision for Type 31 based on open source material.

What we do disagree about is your assertion that various people have tried to distort the cost etc of the ships to save face. I don't believe this, these same people have used the GFX argument to say that MoD have moved items out of the Babcock contract to hide the true cost. If anything the opposite has happened that the additional equipment previously ordered such as type 997 radars to de risk the introduction of early type 26/31 prior to decommissioning type 23 are not being used on the type 31s.

The marginal cost of the type 31 is the price of the Babcock contract. The GFX has already been paid for. The biggest change in the cost will be when the quoted fixed price is converted into a firm price. That is the primary risk that Babcock were not keen to accept and not the GFX risk.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 11:06
pko100 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 10:15 Donald, thanks. I have not read the NAO report so dont know the rationale for the programme cost quoted. It is probably based on the approved cost in the Main or Full Business Case depending which approvals regime was in place at the time. This will include risk within costing,initial in service support a typical figure being 2 to 5 years per ship and other costs to mature the other DLODs.

So the point is yes, the approved programme could be £2b with cost changes deemed sensible by the NAO. The contract with Babcock remains £1.25b fixed price.

Lots of people seem to be suggesting that some dodgy dealing has been going on between MoD, Treasury and the NAO to obscure the costs on the Type 31. I don't believe this to be true in this case.
Thanks.

Total purchase cost: It is clearly stated in the NAO report that T31 program cost is £2Bn. So, that's it. Details are not known, as is the case with "£3.7Bn" of 3 T26s, or all the other programs. There is no number of T26, which can be equated with "£1.25b to Babock" on T31.

In summary, I understand the following two must be compared;
- "8 T26s for "£3.7+0.26+4.2 = £8.16Bn"
- "5 T31 for £2Bn"

Unit cost: First of all, let's define the "unit cost" as the "cost needed to add one more hull". Of course, this is different from "average cost", which includes initial cost divided by the hull number.

I understand "initial" cost of brand-new design ship is 2 unit-cost equivalent or more (see FREMM case on wiki), while that of T31 I have no good idea because there are already a good detailed design to build it, but changing the shipyard to Babcock Rosyth, as well as changing the boat alcove and armaments, sensors shall cost to some extent. Adopting RN compatible equipment shall also require some design and initial costs. But, for simplicity, let's assume it is 1 unit-cost equivalent.

Then
- T26's "unit cost" can be roughly estimated as £8.2/(2+8) = £820M (which is not much different from the £4.2Bn divided by 5 = £840M).
- T31's "unit cost" can be roughly estimated as £2/(1+5) = £330M.
Considering their size, capability, armament's scale, I think this number is not so bad. A T26 unit-cost being 2.5 times costy than a T31.

Operational cost: We shall note that T26 needs a crew size of "150+flight", and T31 needs "110+flight". If "flight" is 14, it is 164 vs 124. A T26 crew-size being 4/3 times larger than a T31. Hull size is also not much different, so the fuel cost shall be similar. Equipment maintenance cost shall be roughly proportional to the procurement cost (written elsewhere), so the "total" operation cost will differ a lot, but not as much as "x2.5".

These are my "personal" assessment based on public information.
Firstly, in the Bae CEO interview in the DT that I've quoted before, he said Batch 1 T26's cost about 800 million to build. That supports your calculations very well. He went on the say that he predicted a 20% decrease in that cost for Batch 2's. Which would result in about B2 being about 640 million each. But of course that would be in the original year pounds so inflation would mess that up somewhat.

I think in your note, you've deviated from your definitions of unit cost vs average cost.

T26 unit cost (the cost to build an additional ship) would start above 800m at the beginning of batch 1, decrease to below 800m at the end of batch 1, in order to give an average cost of 800m. The for batch 2, it would start about 640m and decrease to under 640m.

If my math & financial calculations are approx correct, the cost of increasing the batch 2 contract from 5 ships to 6, would be about 600m.

Secondly, you can play a lot of games on how you amortize fixed costs like research, design, infrastructure across a production run. Folks on this board end up spreading (amortizing) it across the entire run then claiming an extra ship built would carry the same amortized amount which is clearly nonsense.

Gordon Brown did this (either deliberately or through stupidity) when he announce the cancellation of T45's. He said they cost 1 billion each, clearly excessive being the impression he was meaning to give, so he was saving the country 2 billion by cancelling 2 ships. Actually they were being built at an average cost of about 650 million each, the rest of the one billion was money already spent and was being amortized by him over the 6 unit class so in reality he would only be saving 1.3 billion. Actually less than that because the cost was still decreasing. So he mislead parliament.. But not for the first or last time. The myth of the one billion pound T45's linger to this day.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

pko100 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 14:29 I don't think my comments have been refuted at all. Previous posters have confirmed my summary of GFX provision for Type 31 based on open source material.

The marginal cost of the type 31 is the price of the Babcock contract. The GFX has already been paid for. The biggest change in the cost will be when the quoted fixed price is converted into a firm price. That is the primary risk that Babcock were not keen to accept and not the GFX risk.
And I think you need to brush up on your reading comprehension :D

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

putting all wishful thinking aside I will put down £20 now that if ship 9 was to be built it would cost over 850 million in real terms by the time it hit the water

so far the 8 ships on order come to 1. 02 billion per ship and as said the first ship is not in the water

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Ron5 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 14:37...
T26 unit cost (the cost to build an additional ship) would start above 800m at the beginning of batch 1, decrease to below 800m at the end of batch 1, in order to give an average cost of 800m. The for batch 2, it would start about 640m and decrease to under 640m.

If my math & financial calculations are approx correct, the cost of increasing the batch 2 contract from 5 ships to 6, would be about 600m.
Tempest414 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 15:41 putting all wishful thinking aside I will put down £20 now that if ship 9 was to be built it would cost over 850 million in real terms by the time it hit the water

so far the 8 ships on order come to 1. 02 billion per ship and as said the first ship is not in the water
I think you both are right.

If, one hull added to the original 5-ship T26-B2 contract, I think it will not be "£4.2B+0.84B = £5.04B" but rather "£4.2B+0.6B = £4.8B". If you have any experience on production of 6-10 of "something", you can easily imagine why.

However, likely scenario of the "9th" hull will be like;
-T83 design delay >
- production procurement delay >
- one T45 decommission soon >
- order one more T26 to "save the day" of the ship yard
- and accepting "T83 number reduced to 5, in place increase the 9th high-end escort T26"
scenario.

In this case, top priority is to "save the day" to compensate T83 production delay, and therefore, there will be limited production merit, and thus we will see £1Bn figure.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by jonas »

Nice photo George. Where is the other half. :lol:


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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Tempest414 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 15:41 putting all wishful thinking aside I will put down £20 now that if ship 9 was to be built it would cost over 850 million in real terms by the time it hit the water

so far the 8 ships on order come to 1. 02 billion per ship and as said the first ship is not in the water
Gordon Brown economics.

Once again: if the amortized cost (or program cost ) of an 8 ship class is one billion each then the cost of a hypothetical 9th would not be one billion. Instead, it would be the cost of building the last of the 8 i.e. 600 or so million. Just like the cost of building a 7th Type 45 would not have been one billion but would have been less than 650 million (MoD supplied average build cost of the 6 was 650 mill as stated in an answer to a Parliamentary question).

"in real terms" - WTF does that mean?

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 02:19 I think you both are right.
No. He is spouting rubbish. I am not.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Ron5 wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 13:54
Tempest414 wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 15:41 putting all wishful thinking aside I will put down £20 now that if ship 9 was to be built it would cost over 850 million in real terms by the time it hit the water

so far the 8 ships on order come to 1. 02 billion per ship and as said the first ship is not in the water
Gordon Brown economics.

"in real terms" - WTF does that mean?
What it means you f-ckwit is you will not get ship No 9 for less than 900 million and all fucking maths in the world will not change that

And as much as I don't like Brown his economics are better than Trumps

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Sorry but I edited my reply to make it clearer for the financially impaired while you were composing your reply. Perhaps you would like to re-read mine.

If you are claiming that inflation would increase the cost, then of course it will. But that is a completely different discussion to the one the adults are having here.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by jimthelad »

And now back to the news?!?

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Ron5 wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 13:58
donald_of_tokyo wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 02:19 I think you both are right.
No. He is spouting rubbish. I am not.
God you talk some shit Ron

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Ferguson Marine to be subcontracted some of the T26 build work. Not bad.

# and I think this is surely News :D

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/ferguso ... the-storm/
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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

jimthelad wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 14:14 And now back to the news?!?
Are we not allowed to comment on said news?

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 14:27 Ferguson Marine to be subcontracted some of the T26 build work. Not bad.

# and I think this is surely News :D

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/ferguso ... the-storm/
I think it says they might get some supply chain work for the T26's. Not that they actually have.

I'm sure opinions will differ on whether this is good news or bad.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by NickC »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 11:06
In summary, I understand the following two must be compared;
- "8 T26s for "£3.7+0.26+4.2 = £8.16Bn"
- "5 T31 for £2Bn"
The last time i saw the detailed Project Performance Summary table published was in the MoD Defence Equipment Plan 2018 which showed the T 26 current cost to completion of the three ships was £4,242 million, presuming the additional £542 million was for GFE added to the £3.7 billion BAE build contract, presuming GFE includes the cost of BAE Inc 5"/62 Mk 45 guns, read the contract was placed direct by MoD. Then Nov 9th it was revealed BAE had received an increase of £233 million on their contract (plus a years slippage in delivery) so new project total ~ £4.5 billion.
Also wondered why you excluded £1 billion for the 2010 initial design contract £140 million and the 2015 contract of £859 million for demonstration phase (includes some shore-based test facilities).

So my equivalent figures show
-"8 T26 s for £1.0+£4.5+4.2 = £9.7 Bn, not known if GFE costs for Batch 2 included ?"
- "5 T31s for £2Bn"

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by tomuk »

Yes BAE have given them a fifty year exclusive contract to build all the bulbous bows on any future ships.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by Poiuytrewq »

Atmospheric!
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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by bobp »

The next one HMS Cardiff appears in the background.... Launch must be soon. :clap: :clap:

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by bobp »

T26 porn...... :crazy:

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by NickC »

NickC wrote: 20 Nov 2022, 16:55
donald_of_tokyo wrote: 19 Nov 2022, 11:06
In summary, I understand the following two must be compared;
- "8 T26s for "£3.7+0.26+4.2 = £8.16Bn"
- "5 T31 for £2Bn"
The last time i saw the detailed Project Performance Summary table published was in the MoD Defence Equipment Plan 2018 which showed the T 26 current cost to completion of the three ships was £4,242 million, presuming the additional £542 million was for GFE added to the £3.7 billion BAE build contract, presuming GFE includes the cost of BAE Inc 5"/62 Mk 45 guns, read the contract was placed direct by MoD. Then Nov 9th it was revealed BAE had received an increase of £233 million on their contract (plus a years slippage in delivery) so new project total ~ £4.5 billion.
Also wondered why you excluded £1 billion for the 2010 initial design contract £140 million and the 2015 contract of £859 million for demonstration phase (includes some shore-based test facilities).

So my equivalent figures show
-"8 T26 s for £1.0+£4.5+4.2 = £9.7 Bn, not known if GFE costs for Batch 2 included ?"
- "5 T31s for £2Bn"
The 15th November DE&S press release announcing the award of the £4.2 billion contract to BAE Systems to build the second batch of Type 26 frigates, so the GFE will be in addition and expect the total T26 project costs to hit ~£10 billion plus for the eight ships, averaging ~£1.4 billion per ship. Hopefully will be able to update actual figure for GFE when the MoD Defence Equipment Plan 2023 issued showing the current cost to completion.

https://des.mod.uk/british-shipyard-sec ... -frigates/

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by bobp »

Jdam wrote: 24 Nov 2022, 10:20
That looks like a tight squeeze hope they make it.

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Re: Type 26 Frigate (City Class) (RN) [News Only]

Post by tomuk »

bobp wrote: 24 Nov 2022, 11:48 That looks like a tight squeeze hope they make it.
Indeed it is. They have had to swing\reverse her stern back into the block hall to get the angle right :shock:

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