Britain’s Future Frigates: Type 26 & 27 Global Combat Ships
May 22, 2012 13:33 EDT
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Britain’s “Future Surface Combatant” program is slated to replace the existing fleet of Type 22 Broadsword Class and Type 23 Duke Class frigates with 2 new ship classes. Outside attention often focuses on big-ticket ships like aircraft carriers, submarines, and advanced destroyers – but the frigate is the real backbone of most modern navies.
Lord Nelson loved his HMS Victory and her fellow first-rate ships of the line, but he asked the admiralty for more cruisers because he knew their versatile value as the “eyes of the fleet.” Modern multi-role frigates that can engage threats on the water, under water, and in the air fill that same role today, protecting other navy ships or undertaking independent action away from their task group. The Type 26 multi-role frigate will have to fill that niche – but first, its requirements and design must be defined.
Britain’s Future Surface Combatants
HMS Northumberland
Of Britain’s 30 frigates built – 14 Type 22s and 16 Type 23s – 17 (4 Type 22s, 13 Type 23s) still serve in the Royal Navy, and some of the Type 23s have received modern refits to keep them going a bit longer. All remain outclassed by more modern designs. Another 10 frigates of these types have been sold abroad to Brazil, Chile, and Romania, and 3 Type 22s have been deliberately scrapped or sunk. The 2010 SDSR decided that the rest of the Type 22s will join their fellows abroad, or in the scrapyard, leaving just the Type 23 Duke Class. Fortunately, the Type 23s have been doing a lot of sailing in less strenuous environments than the treacherous North Atlantic seas they were designed for. That has helped them to last longer, but no ship lasts forever, and replacements are needed.
Type 26 frigates are actually the 1st of 2 classes of ships to be built under the Royal Navy’s Future Surface Combatant program, also known as Global Combat Ships. The first ships of the Type 26 class are due to enter service in the early 2020s, and by the 2030s around half of front line Royal Navy personnel are expected to operate on a either a Type 26 or the 2nd FSC variant.
At present, there is no real design or equipment set for the Type 26, though DESi 2009 did feature some initial models that included an aft “mission bay” for swappable payloads. BAE’s original working baseline reportedly involved a 141m, 6,850t ship, but reductions in target costs led them to publish figures of 145m but just 5,500t. Current plans state a top speed of 26 knots, with 60 days endurance and have a range of 7,000 miles/ 11,000 km) at normal steaming speed of 15 knots/ 28 kmh. The crew would be just 130, with room for 36 embarked troops.
Armament is expected to include the standard BAE 127mm gun, and the new MBDA/Thales CAMM (Common Anti-air Modular Missile) for short range air defense, to replace the current Seawolf system. CAMM/FLAADS-M benefits from carrying an active radar seeker, reducing the need to rely on the ship’s radar illuminators for targeting during saturation attacks.
Little is certain beyond that. Rumored design options for customers include a choice of gas turbine engines for maximum speed, or a slower but more efficient all-diesel design; as well as optional ship equipment fit-outs focused on either anti-submarine warfare (ASW) or air defense.
Key frigate design criteria include multi-role versatility, flexibility in adapting to future needs, affordability in both construction and through-life support costs, and exportability. In reality, these requirements represent a set of key trade-offs. Some can be complementary, such as cost and exportability. Other pairings usually come at each other’s expense, such as the desire for high-end multi-role capability within a small ship footprint, versus the desire to keep initial purchase costs low. Initial reports indicate an imagined cost of about GBP 400 million per ship, but the Royal Navy is no better than the American Navy at shipbuilding cost estimates.
The forthcoming Assessment Phase is designed to make many of these trade-offs, and the program was timed so it can take the 2010 Strategic Defence Review into account.
Both British FSC variants will also be developed with an eye to export orders, in hopes of to spreading development costs over more vessels, getting more benefit from the manufacturing learning curve, reducing costs per ship thanks to volume orders, and sustaining the UK’s naval shipbuilding industry. So far, countries that have been reported as expressing some level of interest have included Australia, Brazil, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Turkey.
Talks do not a deal make, however, and Britain will have a formidable set of established competitors to contend with.
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While the Americans have more or less abandoned this field, the Franco-Italian FREMM program offers a fully modern design, using the same MBDA PAAMS air defense missiles and DCNS SYLVER vertical launch systems as Britain’s Type 45 air-defense destroyers. Meanwhile, variants of France’s Lafayette Class stealth frigate design remain popular around the world.
The German-Dutch F124 air defense frigates offer stealth and advanced air defense via active array radars, while using the ubiquitous American Mk.41 vertical launch system for their missiles. Lower down the scale, ThyssenKrupp Marine’s globally popular MEKO Class family of ships provides a budget alternative. So does Schelde’s modular Sigma Class, which can be built as anything from an Offshore Patrol Vessel to a full-size frigate.
Beyond the standard competitors, and countries like Russia with their own set of naval clients, China has recently begun exporting frigates. They will soon be joined by South Korea’s very capable naval shipbuilding industry, which has demonstrated success in fielding modern domestic warships, and has a very strong commercial shipbuilding base to draw from.
Contracts & Key Events
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“The Defense Ministry last month sent a letter informing their British counterparts that Turkey was “no longer interested” in BAE Systems’ offer, [said] an official familiar with the tender…. “BAE has already started the [Type 26] project. It was late to join. Our needs would have increased the cost. Or we would have had to review our requirements in accordance with the British Navy, but our requirements are different. BAE had also asked for a ‘license fee.’ The partnership offer would have become a model in which Turkey was financing BAE’s project,” the source told the Daily News.”
The question is whether the remaining bidder, Lockheed Martin, can do any better. Turkey reportedly wants to take a frigate design, add Aselsan’s Multifunctional Phased Array Radar project (CAFRAD) to Lockheed’s AN/SPY-1 to create what would essentially be a new radar, and use Havelsan’s Genesis combat system from Turkey’s FFG-7 upgrade project instead of Lockheed Martin’s Aegis. Then they want all of this equipment to work with Raytheon’s SM-3 long-range ballistic missile defense missile, assuming that the USA agrees to sell that to them. Making all of these changes is a major development contract in itself. Tying them together so they work properly, and then testing them fully, is another expensive project. Integrating them with Turkey’s ship design is the 3rd project, and could also prove to be rather expensive if required fixes from the previous projects are too far beyond initial ship specifications for space, weight, or power. Time will tell if this is another example of Turkey’s wish list being too big for its budget, if negotiations will lead to compromises concerning the radar, combat system, and/or missiles; or if Turkey will choose to back off and re-think its program, giving BAE an opening again.
May 17/12: Alba gu brath – but not shipbuilding. The Scottish National Party’s independence bid gets a setback, as procurement minister Peter Luff and the Prime Minister’s office tell union leaders that an independent Scotland won’t get any future warship contracts. Since Scotstoun, Govan and Rosyth only deal with military orders, and aren’t working on any export orders, that would be it. Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions’ regional secretary, Kenny Jordan, estimates that up to 16,000 jobs are at risk in the Scottish defense industry and its local supply chain.
This is a matter of regulation as well as preference. Even if Britain changed its mind, and wanted to outsource shipbuilding work beyond its borders, EU article 346 would force them to bid that work at least across Europe. Those Scottish jobs are currently protected, because there’s an exemption that allows strategic defense projects to be kept in-country. Leaving the country would place Scotland beyond that exemption.
A Scottish decision to buy into the Type 26 program for its own navy could create a way out of the bind, by allowing negotiated work-sharing offsets. That would still be a far smaller share of work on the Type 26, and skills decay could complicate even that plan. If there’s much delay between independence and serious ship orders, the layoffs and exodus of skilled workers could leave the Scottish shipbuilding industry struggling to execute even a reduced role. Defence Management | The Scotsman.
April 10/12: QinetiQ touts BAE’s use of its Paramarine advanced marine design software for the Type 26’s early stage design and structural development, as they work to model various configurations and estimate costs.
That may have something to do with the fact that UK MoD picked Paramarine as its chosen “stability software” some time ago, and uses it for certification. That pushed BAE to use it for the new Astute Class fast attack submarines, Type 45 air defense destroyers, and Britain’s CVF aircraft carrier programs, before they began using it for the Type 26.
Sept 13/11: MBDA touts recent milestones in its Future Local Area Air Defence System (FLAADS) program, whose CAMM missile will equip Type 26 and Type 23 frigates at sea (FLAADS-M), and also replace the Rapier missile system on land (FLAADS-L). Read “I Think I CAMM: Britain’s Versatile Air Defense Missile” for full coverage.
FLAADS’ Command and Control system currently involves >75% re-use of Sea Viper software from the Type 45 destroyer, and the Platform Data Link is undergoing trials at MBDA. The CAMM missile’s “soft vertical launch” concept has worked in trials, including a successful ejection and turnover trial at Bedfordshire on May 20/11. Finally, MBDA touts “significant progress” with the CAMM radar seeker in air carry trials.
Sept 5/11: UK magazine The Engineer discusses the process underway to define the Type 26 and its systems. Brian Johnson of BAE surface Ships says that “the requirement specifies eight ships capable of ASW and five ships equipped for more general duties,” with the first few British ships receiving systems from the current fleet of Type 23s, as a way to lower costs and risks. The timeline involved means that some of this “legacy equipment” hasn’t even been installed on the Type 23s yet, during their planned refits and upgrades.
Right now, about 200 engineers and other personnel are working on capability tradeoffs and fine-tuning design, in anticipation of a Capability Decision Point scheduled for November 2011.
Aug 11/11: Could India be interested in the Type 26? Their current and planned frigate projects are all Russian designs, but India’s Project 17-A, and Britain’s budget squeeze, might create an opening. Pitches to Brazil and India are showing a common theme: invitations to be part of the ship’s design phase.
“BAE Systems has described to Business Standard how Whitehall envisages the designing and building of the GCS. The countries that eventually form the consortium would join heads to frame broadly common specifications for the warship. Presently, the GCS is planned as a flexi-role frigate. This means each vessel could be optimised for any one of the three traditional frigate roles: anti-submarine, air defence or general-purpose. To cater for these different roles and the different requirements of participating countries, the basic GCS design would have 80 per cent commonality in design and components, with 20 per cent remaining flexible.”
See: India’s Business Standard | Think Defence.
March 6/11: Jay Paxton, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay in Canada’s current Conservative Party minority government, is quoted as saying that:
“Canada will not be pursuing collaboration with the United Kingdom on our new surface combatant fleet.”
This comes after a long set of political questions and industry lobbying by Canada’s shipbuilders, triggered by British admissions that talks were taking place. Soon after this announcement, the government fell on a no-confidence motion, triggering an election that gave the Conservative Party a Parliamentary majority. That could give the government the freedom to re-consider. Or, it could simply set their earlier position in stone. CTV News | Defence IQ | Ottawa Citizen.
Feb 6/11: MercoPress refers to Brazilian and British media reports that a GBP 2.9 billion deal (about 7.85 billion Reals, or $4.68 billion) may be about to buy 6 Offshore Patrol Vessels at GBP 60-80 million each, and 5-6 Type 26 frigates at GB 300-400 million each. While the new Rousseff administration is reviewing both the F-X2 fighter purchase and naval plans, the paper cites Brazil’s growing deepwater oil production as a compelling driver for the Marinha do Brazil. MercoPress adds that:
“The articles mention that according to the agreement with BAE Systems and following on Brazilian policy of ‘technology transfer’ the first patrol and frigate units would be built in the UK and the rest in Brazilian yards…. Developed countries are most aware of defence dynamics in Brazil since the country’s long term policy is to increase defence expenditure from the current 1.5% of GDP to 2% of GDP by 2030. Since the country’s economy is forecasted to grow a sustained 5% in the coming decades, defence investments will also expand strongly. With a nominal Brazilian GDP of 1.57 trillion US dollars, – IMF figures – if defence expenditure was now 2.2% of GDP, it would represent 34 billion USD.”
See also UPI.
Jan 31/11: U.K. Defence Minister Gerald Howarth responds to Parliamentary questions by saying:
“I am delighted to say that we are in close discussion with the Canadians [regarding the Type 26]. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has just returned from an extremely profitable visit to Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. All those countries have expressed interest in joining the United Kingdom in a collaborative programme that would have the benefit of bringing together not only members of the Commonwealth but some of our key allies, while also driving down costs for the Royal Navy.”
Both Canada and Australia have plans for a “future frigate” competition in their 20-year defense procurement strategies, and BAE can expect strong competition on both fronts. Canada may be a better bet than Australia, where Spain’s Navantia has established a very strong foothold with its current Hobart Class destroyer and Canberra Class LHD programs. UK Hansard transcripts | Defense News.
Nov 29/10: Rumors surface that the UK government is looking to sharply slash target costs for the Type 26 frigates, from GBP 500 million to GBP 250-350 million ($400 – 550 million), in order to field a large enough Royal Navy fleet.
If the project is properly managed, and British shipyards can be cost-competitive, global precedents suggest that this is still enough to field a capable multi-role frigate. The question is what capabilities get removed, or become options that the frigates are fitted “for, but not with.” The latter approach has been popular in Britain, but it has resulted in expensive ships that lack key capabilities – such as the lack of anti-ship missiles on the Navy’s billion-pound Type 45 destroyers. The Scotsman | Reuters
Oct 26/10: BAE Systems submits a detailed proposal to the Brazilian Navy for an 11-ship fleet renewal package that include Type 26 frigates, but goes beyond. They are certain to face competition from shipbuilders like France’s DCNS (FREMM/ Gowind), and possibly other competitors like Spain’s Navantia (F100), Royal Dutch Schelde (Sigma), and even South Korea’s Daewoo.
In addition to having Brazil join the Global Combat Ship (Type 26/27) program at the design stage, BAE’s proposal would supply a modified Wave Class fleet tanker and a variant of BAE’s River Class Ocean Patrol Vessel that’s similar to ships being built under technology transfer in Thailand. All ships would be built in Brazil, and BAE Systems Surface Ships division Managing Director, Alan Johnston says that:
“We are in discussions regarding the naval proposal with a number of potential industry partners in Brazil, including shipyards and combat systems developers…. and will provide further details in due course.”
See: BAE Systems | Southern Daily Echo.
Sept 14/10: Britain and Brazil sign a Defence Cooperation Agreement, which includes an “assured warship procurement package” of BAE Systems’ Type 26/GCS frigates and its 90m blue-water Ocean Patrol Vessels. If Brazil joins early, they can even influence the Type 26/27’s design. BAE Systems’ Managing Director for the West, Dean McCumiskey:
“This [package] is based on proven and versatile ship designs and includes an invitation to become an international partner in our new Global Combat Ship programme. If BAE Systems is selected to support Brazil’s ambitious naval re-equipment programme, the ships we develop will be built at a partner shipyard in Brazil, with maximum content sourced from the wider Brazilian industry.”
The opportunity to provide maintenance etc. for the ships’ 20-30 year lifespan might be even more significant than the order itself. BAE can expect competition from DCNS’ FREMM frigates first and foremost, as well as other contenders like the Dutch Sigma family, Korea’s shipbuilders, et. al. The fact that all of Brazil’s current frigates are British designs (6 Niteroi Class, 3 Type 22) may work in BAE’s favor. UK MoD | BAE Systems | Andover Advertiser | Financial Times |Reuters.
March 25/10: The UK Ministry of Defence signs a 4-year, GBP 127 million contract with BAE Systems, to conduct the Type 26’s Assessment Phase. A team led by BAE Systems Surface Ships, working with the MOD, will consider requirements and design proposals for the new multi-role frigates. An 80 strong joint MOD and BAE Systems team has already been established out of Bristol and this will rise to 300 over the next 4 years.
Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope:
“These programme announcements are welcome news for the Royal Navy. You simply cannot have an effective Navy without capable frigates, and the Type 26 combat ship will form the future backbone of the Royal Navy’s surface combatant force, alongside the new Type 45 destroyers. These ships will be highly versatile, able to operate across the full spectrum of operations, from war-fighting to disaster relief.”
See: UK MoD | BAE Systems | BBC
Additional Readings
- Project Gutenberg – Some Principles of Naval Strategy. Sir Julian Corbett’s classic masterpiece.
- Information Dissemination – May 10th, 2019: Missing Nelsons Cruisers. For those who might think that the principles of Nelson’s time are no longer relevant today.
The GCS
- BAE Systems – Global Combat Ship
- Royal Navy – The Future Navy [PDF]. Long-term vision.
- UK MoD Defence Equipment & Support – Naval Design Partnering Team
- Information Dissemination (Sept 22/09) – Future Surface Combatant at DSEi 2009
Other Background
- Royal Navy – Type 23 Frigates
- Royal Navy – Type 22 Frigates
News & Views
- The Engineer (Sept 5/11) – Designing the Type 26 Frigate
- RUSI (October 2010) – A Global Role for the Global Combat Ship? [PDF]
- The Faster Times (Oct 4-27/10) – BRIC Military Modernization and the New Global Defense Balance. (Part 1 | Part 2).
- RUSI (October 2007) – The Shape of the Future Surface Combatant [PDF]
tag: t26, ukfrigates
