UK Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

all I can say is God Save The Queen:
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There has been predictable union and Scottish Nationalist fury at the revelation there could be 800 job losses at BAE Systems on Clyde. At a time when Scottish unemployment is rising and the SNP are using every opportunity to push for another independence vote, frigate construction becomes ever more politically sensitive.

Three Batch II River class OPVs are currently building on the Clyde bridging the gap between the completion of aircraft carrier work and the start of Type 26 construction. These OPVs are welcome but are essentially expensive job creation projects and are definitely not central to the RN’s surface fleet plans (whatever the UKDCDC

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).

Unfortunately additional further delays to the start of Type 26 construction leave the Glasgow workforce under-utilised. Reducing the programme to 8 ships from the promised 13 does not help and a major shipyard investment in a

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will be curtailed. Although the Type 26 design has been shortlisted for Australia’s Future Frigate program, effectively the 2015 SDSR admitted the cost of a Type 26 had put it out of reach of most potential foreign customers.

Lack of timely government funding is part of the issue, but BAES and MoD failure to control the cost of the Type 26 is a bigger problem. Plenty of Scottish politicians will be shouting about how they have been betrayed by Tories in London but like most defence procurement issues, the story is more complex than that. It should also be remembered that the lion’s share of warship construction in the last 30 years has been done in Scotland, sometimes to the detriment of English yards.

Somewhat under the radar, there is a Treasury initiative to implement a National Shipbuilding Strategy. The NSS is being led by the very respected industrialist Sir John Parker, one of the ‘grown ups’, independent of the Whitehall madhouse and possessing real warship building management experience. His remit is to provide strategic direction for the industry as a whole. The questions surrounding the construction of the Type 26 and 31 will inevitably occupy much of his time. His agenda may also involve the parlous state of the UK steel industry, a key supplier to shipbuilding and Government desire to rebuild a ‘northern [England] powerhouse’ based on manufacturing. When George Osbourne

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it was a feeble plan to build a single new warship every 2 years (which would actually reduce the fleet further). There is clearly now a recognition the RN needs faster delivery.

RN frustration over the Type 26 programme has led to the Type 31 – a requirement for an affordable, exportable, frigate. The design is at an embryonic stage but it will reportedly be around 3,000 tons and priced around £3-400M, rather similar in fact to a Type 23. It is hoped construction will be done using mainly English facilities that may include Babcock (Appledore & Devonport), Cammel Laird, (Birkenhead) and A&P (Tyne and Falmouth). The plan is to build the Type 31 concurrently with Type 26s being constructed on the Clyde. The Type 31 obviously presents a major challenge to design a credible warship so quickly and then manage construction using yards with little or no complex warship experience. (Remember the

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has taken more than 20 years, £millions spent and no steel yet cut!)

Cynics will say Type 31 will be doomed to repeat the cycle of past failures and we will just end up with a tiny number of expensive “Type 36”. An alternative view is the RN has already achieved what had seemed impossible, breaking the stranglehold of the BAES monopoly and thinking differently. Something radical had to be done to stop the downward spiral of fewer and fewer, ever-more expensive vessels. The RN just needs some frigates fast, but even more than usual is caught in political, economic and industrial crossfire.

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Naval Today said:

Great Britain is looking to sell its 2014-decommissioned light aircraft carrier for scrap.

The Ministry of Defence has issued a notice of the potential sale of the HMS Illustrious “for recycling only”.

Illustrious was commissioned into the Royal Navy in December 1977 and has clocked in 32 years of service for the Navy.

Ministry of Defence initially hoped to preserve HMS Illustrious and invited bids from private companies, charities and trusts to secure her future under a condition of sale that HMS Illustrious must remain in the UK.

However, due to the scale of the undertaking, all preservation projects were dropped and the ship is now being sold for scrap.

The departure of Illustrious has left the Royal Navy without an aircraft carrier until the first of two Queen Elizabeth carriers enters service in 2018.

Illustrious has been replaced as the nation’s helicopter carrier by HMS Ocean which underwent a £65m refit.

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Obi Wan Russell said:

Invincible was broken up in Turkey back in 2010. Ark Royal followed a few years later. Illustrious is the only one left, slowly decaying in a corner of Portsmouth Dockyard. I predicted this would happen quite a while back, the Government never intended to preserve her, they just said so at the time to deflect public disquiet about her being paid off early (before the QECs were ready). Back in 1978 the then Government (also Tory) deflected public disquiet about the old Ark Royal being scrapped and not preserved by announcing the third Invincible class CVS would be named Ark Royal. Slippery customers... top to bottom: Invincible, Ark Royal, Illustrious View attachment 27542 View attachment 27543 View attachment 27544
...Oh and HMS Ocean will be discarded in 2018 at the grand old age of 20 (!) so her crew can be reallocated to HMS Prince of Wales.

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Obi Wan Russell said:

...Of course the HMS Invincible referred to in my previous post is, for the benefit of any Argentine members here, obviously the second Invincible built in record time of only a few weeks at a US Shipyard in total secrecy back in 1982 to replace the one sunk by the Argentine Air Force sometime in May, and rushed south to join the Task Force.

This explains why she could stay on station after the war for several months until relieved by her newly completed sister ship HMS Illustrious (both were obviously new ships with no wear and tear on them), as you can see below.

I feel sorry for the American shipyard workers who not only had to build a replacement Invincible from scratch in little over a month, but also the guys down in Galveston Texas who had to practically rebuild HMS Hermes from the keel up (according to Argentine sources) to repair the damage inflict by repeated A-4 Skyhawk and Super Etendard/Exocet attacks, but also had to find ways to fake the rust patterns on her hull so no one would be able to tell where the repairs were. These repairs were so good it explains how she went on to be the longest serving aircraft carrier in the world (1959-2016). Hats off to those valiant and talented shipyard workers, who also did such a good job of keeping it secret for so long...View attachment 27552View attachment 27553

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