All six Type 45s will have gone through PIP by 2028 at a total cost of £189m, paid for from the Navy command budget. HMS Dauntless has completed her Power Improvement Project (PIP) and is working up towards sea trials. Gardener confirmed our report that HMS Diamond suffered a failure of one of her gas turbines which had to be replaced. Sources say she is likely to leave the dockyard in early 2022.ĭespite the problems with HMS Diamond, overall the ships on the CSG21 deployment have proved reliable, hitting an availability target in excess of 90%. HMS Vanguard’s major refit and refuelling has over-run by more than a year. It should be noted however, that HMS Triumph’s refit in Devonport is well behind schedule. RN submarine availability has very slightly improved, this has been achieved mainly better provision of spares to speed up alongside maintenance. The first Type 26, HMS Glasgow will replace the oldest towed array-equipped Type 23, HMS Westminster, and Vice Admiral Gardener is confident the Type 26s would replace the remaining ASW vessels on a one for one basis. A future expectation of 80% availability was mentioned, although this is hard to believe and there was no detail about exactly what states of readiness this includes. Despite the loss of HMS Monmouth and Montrose, by 2024 overall destroyer/frigate days at sea numbers will increase.

Availability on the upĬurrently, 8 out of 12 Type 23s and 3 out of 6 Type 45s are available for operations. In more positive news it was confirmed that the Type 31 frigates are being fitted “for but not with” (FFBNW) Mk41 VLS which would allow the hitting power of these relatively lightly armed ships to be substantially increased in future. In the wake of the 2010 SDSR, there were simply no funds and the problem was repeatedly kicked down the road. The underlying reason the RN is in this awkward position was the failure to plan properly for a Harpoon replacement at least 10 years ago.

Although the RN has never fired an anti-ship missile from a warship in anger, the ability to sink enemy ships is an absolutely core function for any bluewater navy and the Integrated Review explicitly stated that peer conflict is increasingly likely. To compound the inability to kill ships, the Defence Procurement Minister, Jeremy Quin implied that integration of SPEAR-3 on F-35 has slipped by another 4 years at will not achieve FOC until 2028.Ī big risk is being taken here, another capability holiday that undermines deterrence, working on an assumption that adversaries will not start any wars in the next 10 years or allies will bale us out. The FCASW is still in the concept phase and may not deliver a viable anti-ship or land-attack missile, hypersonic or otherwise until early the 2030s. The RN is clearly betting big on the FCASW project, although US options are always being “looked at”.

With several manufacturers ready to offer solutions, this would appear to be over-stating a modest integration task and the addition of weapon canisters to a few frigates. The original request for proposals from industry called for missile deliveries between 2023-4. The “sticking plaster” approach of spending £250M for 5 sets of missiles to equip just 3 ships is hard to justify and surprisingly he suggested it could be 2027 before ISSGW could have been fitted. The navy is more interested in hypersonic missiles with much longer range. It was clear from the words of the outgoing First Sea Lord that the RN has almost certainly decided not to purchase an Interim Surface to Surface Guided Weapon (I-SSGW) to replace the already obsolete Harpoon Block 1C which will go out of service in 2023.

Here we summarise the key issues that were discussed. On 2nd November 2021, the House of Commons Defence Select Committee held a session covering a wide range of issues relevant to the current and future state of the Royal Navy.

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