Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

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

What will be the result of the 'Lighter Frigate' programme?

Programme cancelled, RN down to 14 escorts
52
10%
Programme cancelled & replaced with GP T26
14
3%
A number of heavy OPVs spun as "frigates"
127
25%
An LCS-like modular ship
22
4%
A modernised Type 23
24
5%
A Type 26-lite
71
14%
Less than 5 hulls
22
4%
5 hulls
71
14%
More than 5 hulls
103
20%
 
Total votes: 506

Poiuytrewq
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Poiuytrewq »

Tempest414 wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:18 In someways HMG have to suck this up as both BAE and Babcock are in this storm due to HMG and MOD dragging there feet over Type 23 replacement
Demonstrates clearly the importance of small batches within classes and speedy build schedules.

Might be an opportunity for RN to amend the contract if four T31 and six T32 is preferred to 5 of each.

donald_of_tokyo
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:25Might be an opportunity for RN to amend the contract if four T31 and six T32 is preferred to 5 of each.
For what purpose? T32 is far away, not even the concept being determined. Five T31 build is "on track", but just lack money. If you need it fast, which is important is clear. Support T31.

And, long order list is very important for the shipyard to be able to order everything with the best timing. Ordering in small batches will just make it more expensive.

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by new guy »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:49
Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:25Might be an opportunity for RN to amend the contract if four T31 and six T32 is preferred to 5 of each.
For what purpose? T32 is far away, not even the concept being determined. Five T31 build is "on track", but just lack money. If you need it fast, which is important is clear. Support T31.

And, long order list is very important for the shipyard to be able to order everything with the best timing. Ordering in small batches will just make it more expensive.
Seems like its a matter of perception.
Ideal theoretical model would be 1 ship per year every year for a 25 year lifespan, split amongst 2 manufacturers. They know that they are going to get orders for many, many years. These batches are so small it's a per ship!

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Poiuytrewq »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:49
Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:25Might be an opportunity for RN to amend the contract if four T31 and six T32 is preferred to 5 of each.
For what purpose? ……Five T31 build is "on track", but just lack money.
Can’t agree.

The T31 programme is in trouble.

If the extra costs are purely inflationary then it’s no problem but that’s not clear at this point.

The contractor and the client are now having to enter into a DRP to resolve a dispute over an extra £100m or 8% of the contracted value. That’s without a single hull to show for it. The long lead items may have been ordered but Babcocks shareholders won’t permit the company to build Frigates at a loss. The T31 only makes sense if they are really cheap and every time the price rises the rationale for building them reduces.
T32 is far away, not even the concept being determined.
Rosyth needs to cut the steel for the T32 in 2026 or the drumbeat will slow and then stop. It isn’t very far away at all. Either a stopgap must be found or the T32 needs to be built. The RB1 replacements (if any) are the obvious answer if the T32 is not ready.

If the T32 design is ready and Babcock maintain the T31 pace RN need to increase the headcount by a large margin over the next 5 years.
If you need it fast, which is important is clear. Support T31.
RN needs the T31s but is the headcount really there to crew 6 Destroyers and 13 Frigates? We know they can’t crew them and we now know the T23s probably aren’t going to last as long as hoped. What is a T31 worth to RN if the costs keep rising exponentially? If a T31 hull and a T32 hull starts to enter the same ballpark before GFE and only so many vessels can be crewed where is the priority?

Could an OPV do what was originally envisaged for the T31 thus freeing up the crew for the T45s, T26s, T32s and CVFs?

It’s a question of limited resources and prioritising the essentials.
And, long order list is very important for the shipyard to be able to order everything with the best timing. Ordering in small batches will just make it more expensive.
No argument but it’s worth remembering that HMT is primarily concerned with in-year budgets. That’s the priority for the bean counters.

The T31 programme won’t be allowed to fail but if the T32 program is RNs ultimate priority then cutting the T31 class to 4 hulls isn’t the end of the world. If the T32 design is ready by 2026 and the funding and headcount is secured then I don’t see any problem in letting inflation eat one of the T31 hulls. The long lead items can be transferred to an export version.

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by new guy »

T31 has 54% the crew of T23. so you could probably have 9 new v 5 old crew wise.

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Poiuytrewq »

new guy wrote: 04 May 2023, 21:07 T31 has 54% the crew of T23. so you could probably have 9 new v 5 old crew wise.
How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by new guy »

Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 21:09
new guy wrote: 04 May 2023, 21:07 T31 has 54% the crew of T23. so you could probably have 9 new v 5 old crew wise.
How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?
11+6?? I don't know.
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

new guy wrote: 05 May 2023, 07:00
Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 21:09
new guy wrote: 04 May 2023, 21:07 T31 has 54% the crew of T23. so you could probably have 9 new v 5 old crew wise.
How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?
11+6?? I don't know.
12 in total. Just 12.

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

new guy wrote: 04 May 2023, 17:18 Ideal theoretical model would be 1 ship per year every year for a 25 year lifespan, split amongst 2 manufacturers. They know that they are going to get orders for many, many years. These batches are so small it's a per ship!
Cheapest is to have a single yard building all escorts. Learning curve, continuity, skill training, machine investments, all gets better.

Lack of competition? But your proposal is to order an escort every two years to BOTH yards = no competition at all.

RN must learn how to control the cost of monopoly builder. This is what all the other European nation does. Only RN clearly saying they are so much incapable in this field. Shame.
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 20:54
donald_of_tokyo wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:49
Poiuytrewq wrote: 04 May 2023, 16:25Might be an opportunity for RN to amend the contract if four T31 and six T32 is preferred to 5 of each.
For what purpose? ……Five T31 build is "on track", but just lack money.
Can’t agree.

The T31 programme is in trouble.

If the extra costs are purely inflationary then it’s no problem but that’s not clear at this point.

The contractor and the client are now having to enter into a DRP to resolve a dispute over an extra £100m or 8% of the contracted value. That’s without a single hull to show for it. The long lead items may have been ordered but Babcocks shareholders won’t permit the company to build Frigates at a loss. The T31 only makes sense if they are really cheap and every time the price rises the rationale for building them reduces.
T32 is far away, not even the concept being determined.
Rosyth needs to cut the steel for the T32 in 2026 or the drumbeat will slow and then stop. It isn’t very far away at all. Either a stopgap must be found or the T32 needs to be built. The RB1 replacements (if any) are the obvious answer if the T32 is not ready.

If the T32 design is ready and Babcock maintain the T31 pace RN need to increase the headcount by a large margin over the next 5 years.
If you need it fast, which is important is clear. Support T31.
RN needs the T31s but is the headcount really there to crew 6 Destroyers and 13 Frigates? We know they can’t crew them and we now know the T23s probably aren’t going to last as long as hoped. What is a T31 worth to RN if the costs keep rising exponentially? If a T31 hull and a T32 hull starts to enter the same ballpark before GFE and only so many vessels can be crewed where is the priority?

Could an OPV do what was originally envisaged for the T31 thus freeing up the crew for the T45s, T26s, T32s and CVFs?

It’s a question of limited resources and prioritising the essentials.
And, long order list is very important for the shipyard to be able to order everything with the best timing. Ordering in small batches will just make it more expensive.
No argument but it’s worth remembering that HMT is primarily concerned with in-year budgets. That’s the priority for the bean counters.

The T31 programme won’t be allowed to fail but if the T32 program is RNs ultimate priority then cutting the T31 class to 4 hulls isn’t the end of the world. If the T32 design is ready by 2026 and the funding and headcount is secured then I don’t see any problem in letting inflation eat one of the T31 hulls. The long lead items can be transferred to an export version.

Context is needed once again BAE went 233 million over and has no ship to show for it

Do we know that extra 100 million is all linked to the Type 31 program could some or most of it be linked to POW as a lot of extra work has been found to be needed

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by new guy »

article from UKDJ

says that costs risen by £40m for the entire class

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/type-31 ... 0-million/


So, considering that there has been 15% inflation, Worldwide pandemic, energy crisis, cost of living crisis, and the only comparative is BAE with £235m on the first ship alone, this isn't too bad.
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Caribbean »

[/quote]How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?[/quote]

[/quote] 12 in total. Just 12.[/quote]

How many hulls are in maintenance. From what I hear, existing active hulls are crammed to the gills with crew just trying to get sea time
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Caribbean wrote: 05 May 2023, 22:48
How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?
12 in total. Just 12.
How many hulls are in maintenance. From what I hear, existing active hulls are crammed to the gills with crew just trying to get sea time
But there are plenty of evidence that RN lacks crew.

If your info is correct, and all the other info is correct, I guess it means, RN has many less-trained man-power, but not enough well-trained one. Here I am NOT talking about just "trained", I am more talking about naval engineers, on which all of the information shows its shortage. RN must invest a lot to improve retention rate of such highly-skilled members.

As a side note, RN lost more than 1000 man-power between Jan 2022 and Jan 2023. In other words, all the "increase in man-power in these 2 years (good news)" was TOTALLY LOST in a single year, and now again the man-power is the same to those we saw in 2019 or so. (Looks like it is just the well-known "anti-correlation" with economy? and NOT meaning RN become more attractive.)

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Repulse »

I think the human side of the equation is often overlooked. To have an effective navy, you need motivated crew - people join to have a career, go to sea and see the world, not sit it sub standard accommodation.

This is why a numerous balanced hi/lo globally deployed fleet is critical.
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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Repulse wrote: 06 May 2023, 07:21 I think the human side of the equation is often overlooked. To have an effective navy, you need motivated crew - people join to have a career, go to sea and see the world, not sit it sub standard accommodation.

This is why a numerous balanced hi/lo globally deployed fleet is critical.
And we have a winner with half of all T-45's and T-23's in deep maintenance plus one Carrier not working people are getting fed up and leaving most high skilled people done live in anymore what the navy needs is the new ships on order as soon as possible and getting people to sea on good rotations it is clear that the RB2's are the proving ground for T-31 deployments

Edit ; this is not to be little the need for new base accommodation and

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by NickC »

The Telegraph 6th May

Costs
Since a contract to build the warships was signed with Babcock in November 2019, the MoD has agreed to pay an additional £40m to cover the impact of coronavirus shutdowns and supply chain troubles // But a subsequent call for more cash to deal with inflation has been rejected, the minister confirmed, leaving Babcock with a potential bill of £100m. // Rising costs for material and labour mean Babcock now faces a financial hit of up to £100m on the £1.25bn programme.

Steel
It has also emerged that just 4pc of the steel being used to make the five Type 31 ships will come from UK steel mills // Thin plate, of which 15,500 tonnes will be needed to build the Royal Navy vessels “is not manufactured in the UK to the required specification”

Programme
HMS Venturer, the first ship, is scheduled to be structurally complete in December. Construction began on the second, HMS Active, in January.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... racts-row/

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Poiuytrewq »

NickC wrote: 11 May 2023, 09:42 Babcock now faces a financial hit of up to £100m on the £1.25bn programme.
So far….

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by SD67 »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 06 May 2023, 02:40
Caribbean wrote: 05 May 2023, 22:48
How many T23 and T45 are currently crewed?
12 in total. Just 12.

If your info is correct, and all the other info is correct, I guess it means, RN has many less-trained man-power, but not enough well-trained one. Here I am NOT talking about just "trained", I am more talking about naval engineers,
The problem is if you can take out "RN" and substitute "The UK Economy"

At risk of OTT rant - this problem has been building for a couple of decades. We're not producing enough technically qualified people, STEM education in schools is appalling there are too many fake universities churning out unemployable media studies / gender diversity graduates and engineering is generally undervalued.

I know a brilliant young fellow with a first class Science degree from Cambridge - currently working as a Management Consultant because the pay is so much better

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Poiuytrewq wrote: 11 May 2023, 09:57
NickC wrote: 11 May 2023, 09:42 Babcock now faces a financial hit of up to £100m on the £1.25bn programme.
So far….
And again we have to ask how is this effecting BAE and Type 26 as they will be facing all of the same problems could we see the type 26 program costing 10 billion in the end due to inflation across the program and a slow build rate

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

Also if Babcocks can't buy the steel it needs from the UK nor can BAE

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by NickC »

Tempest414 wrote: 11 May 2023, 12:06
Poiuytrewq wrote: 11 May 2023, 09:57
NickC wrote: 11 May 2023, 09:42 Babcock now faces a financial hit of up to £100m on the £1.25bn programme.
So far….
And again we have to ask how is this effecting BAE and Type 26 as they will be facing all of the same problems could we see the type 26 program costing 10 billion in the end due to inflation across the program and a slow build rate
Mar 25th, 2010 the initial four year £127 million Assessment Phase design contract was placed with BAE Systems to develop the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, Think Defence reported outrun £173 million.
April 1st, 2015 BAE awarded the £859 million T26 Demonstration Phase contract.
July 2nd, 2017 £3.7 billion pound contract signed with BAE for the three Batch 1 frigates.
Nov.22nd, 2022 Ben Wallace said the initial operating date of the frigate has pushed back from Oct 2027 to Oct 2028 at a cost of £233m.
Nov 15th, 2022 BAE awarded £4.2 billion contract to BAE Systems to build the five second batch frigates.
Total £9,165 million and then if you add in the unspecified GFE costs which include the main guns and ESM etc at a guessimated £100 million per ship? we are already a near £10 billion.

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

NickC wrote: 11 May 2023, 13:30
Tempest414 wrote: 11 May 2023, 12:06 And again we have to ask how is this effecting BAE and Type 26 as they will be facing all of the same problems could we see the type 26 program costing 10 billion in the end due to inflation across the program and a slow build rate
Mar 25th, 2010 the initial four year £127 million Assessment Phase design contract was placed with BAE Systems to develop the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, Think Defence reported outrun £173 million.
April 1st, 2015 BAE awarded the £859 million T26 Demonstration Phase contract.
July 2nd, 2017 £3.7 billion pound contract signed with BAE for the three Batch 1 frigates.
Small question. When someone asked what is included in the ”£3.7 billion”, the authority said, everything. I understand it does NOT include the "£859 million T26 Demonstration Phase", but (at least at that moment) I understood it includes the 127mm gun system.
Nov.22nd, 2022 Ben Wallace said the initial operating date of the frigate has pushed back from Oct 2027 to Oct 2028 at a cost of £233m.
Nov 15th, 2022 BAE awarded £4.2 billion contract to BAE Systems to build the five second batch frigates.
Total £9,165 million and then if you add in the unspecified GFE costs which include the main guns and ESM etc at a guessimated £100 million per ship? we are already a near £10 billion.
Also, I'm not sure what "GFE" is there for the T26s.

Main gun, I think is within the contract, not GFE. Artisan, CAMM, SeaCeptor datalink, not GFE. (for the last 5 hulls, it could be re-using those from T23?).

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by NickC »

donald_of_tokyo wrote: 11 May 2023, 13:50
NickC wrote: 11 May 2023, 13:30
Mar 25th, 2010 the initial four year £127 million Assessment Phase design contract was placed with BAE Systems to develop the Type 26 Global Combat Ship, Think Defence reported outrun £173 million.
April 1st, 2015 BAE awarded the £859 million T26 Demonstration Phase contract.
July 2nd, 2017 £3.7 billion pound contract signed with BAE for the three Batch 1 frigates.
Small question. When someone asked what is included in the ”£3.7 billion”, the authority said, everything. I understand it does NOT include the "£859 million T26 Demonstration Phase", but (at least at that moment) I understood it includes the 127mm gun system.
Nov.22nd, 2022 Ben Wallace said the initial operating date of the frigate has pushed back from Oct 2027 to Oct 2028 at a cost of £233m.
Nov 15th, 2022 BAE awarded £4.2 billion contract to BAE Systems to build the five second batch frigates.
Total £9,165 million and then if you add in the unspecified GFE costs which include the main guns and ESM etc at a guessimated £100 million per ship? we are already a near £10 billion.
Also, I'm not sure what "GFE" is there for the T26s.

Main gun, I think is within the contract, not GFE. Artisan, CAMM, SeaCeptor datalink, not GFE. (for the last 5 hulls, it could be re-using those from T23?).
GFE murky waters, why saying Mk 45 5 inch main gun GFE was the contract was placed direct by MOD on BAE Inc

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news ... 6-frigates

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Tempest414 »

And there is another thing about Type 26 Batch 2 it will cost 840 million per ship and will get hand me down Radar , CAMM system , and TAS from the T-23 ASW's if this is not GFE what is and what will this kit be worth and is this to be added to the 840 million

But the question is how has inflation affected the T-26 program and is BAE being told to suck up any costs

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Re: Type 31 Frigate (Inspiration Class) [News Only]

Post by Ron5 »

Tempest414 wrote: 11 May 2023, 16:37 And there is another thing about Type 26 Batch 2 it will cost 840 million per ship and will get hand me down Radar , CAMM system , and TAS from the T-23 ASW's if this is not GFE what is and what will this kit be worth and is this to be added to the 840 million

But the question is how has inflation affected the T-26 program and is BAE being told to suck up any costs
Bae is on a cost plus contract. Which means "suck up any costs" is meaningless.

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