Delivering the Royal Navy’s future surface fleet

The British Royal Navy is in the middle of a significant programme of fleet renewal. Two major projects are currently underway that will ultimately see the commissioning of eight Type 26 anti-submarine warfare and five Type 31 general purpose frigates. Together, they will replace over two thirds of the navy’s major surface combatants. Responsible for ensuring the delivery of these new warships to time and budget is the Naval Ships Delivery Group, currently headed by Mark Beverstock. ESD recently spoke with him about the challenges involved in securing the success of an endeavour that has huge importance for both the future Royal Navy and the revitalisation of the British naval construction sector.

Delivering capability

The Naval Ships Delivery Group (NSDG) forms part of the Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) organisation; a procurement arm of the UK Ministry of Defence headquartered at Abbey Wood near Bristol. The group’s responsibility is to work on behalf of the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) – the officer at Navy Command tasked with delivering the overall Type 26 and Type 31 programmes to full operating capability – to get the ships that form the core part of these projects to vessel acceptance stage. In the words of Mark Beverstock, “The SRO provides me with a budget and a requirement, and I have to deliver that capability to the cost and timescale specified”.

While the overall structure of DE&S is being redesigned for more speed, efficiency and “operational excellence”, the NSDG currently has two separate teams dedicated to the management and oversight of the Type 26 and Type 31 programmes. Each team works with the assigned prime contractor for the relevant programme; BAE Systems in the case of the Type 26 and Babcock International for the Type 31. According to Beverstock, “We expect industry to be the ones who bring in all the various supply chain partners. NSDG’s role is to manage the contract and to manage the risks to delivery that are inherent in the construction process”. Each team is comprised of a range of experts in areas such as engineering, systems and commercial specialists so as to encompass all the functions needed to manage these risks.

Achieving this objective can be easier said than done. A widely-reported case-in-point related to construction of the Royal Navy’s Batch 2 ‘River’ class offshore patrol vessels (OPVs). The lead ship, HMS Forth, was handed over in 2018 with significant defects that were only identified after delivery, leading to the ship being handed back to the shipbuilder for remedial work. Whilst Beverstock was open that mistakes were made in the supervision of the early stages of that programme, he pointed to the value of the lessons learned from the experience, “There was a belief at the time that you could take a light-touch approach to oversight and that proved to be a mistake. What that told us was that we need to keep a presence on shipbuilding at the waterfront and, by the time the final OPV was delivered, the list of defects was reduced to a single sheet of A4 paper. We have now carried those lessons forwards into the Type 26 programme.”

Type 26 acquisition

Overseeing the programme for the Type 26 ‘City’ class frigates’ construction currently forms a major part of the NSDG’s activities. A GBP 3.7 billion (EUR 4.3 billion) contract for three of the new warships was placed in July 2017 and was followed by a GBP 4.2 billion (EUR 4.9 billion) order for a further five vessels in November 2022. Both awards were let to BAE Systems on a single-source, non-competitive basis. Collectively, the eight warships will replace the Royal Navy’s existing anti-submarine configured Type 23 ‘Duke’ class frigates on a numerical like-for-like basis from the latter half of the current decade onwards. The ships are being built in BAE Systems’ Govan and Scotstoun shipyards in Glasgow. Variants of the design will also be built by Australia and Canada to meet their own future surface warship requirements.

Implementation of the Type 26 programme has not been entirely plain sailing. Delivery of the lead ship is expected in 2026 prior to declaration of initial operating capability in 2028; around 12 months later than first planned. An early problem related to a considerable delay to the delivery of the gearbox for the first ship of the class, the future HMS Glasgow. This was a long-lead item ordered from David Brown Santasalo after an international competition run by BAE Systems as far back as 2013 for installation at an early stage in the frigate’s construction. Interestingly, Beverstock cites the NSDG’s collaboration with industry to mitigate the consequences of this challenge as a good example of a successful partnership: “There is no question that the gearbox was late but the extent of the delay that this caused has been somewhat misreported. We only lost a small amount of time in the programme’s critical path as we were able to work proactively with industry to restructure the ship’s build sequence so as to allow its installation at a later date.” This involved cutting an opening in the ship’s hull to slide the gearbox into the relevant compartment.

Beverstock is also keen to stress that there is no problem with the quality of the gearbox that was ultimately delivered. Indeed, he points to the overall strategy adopted for the system’s procurement as another example of benefits that have been gained from previous experience. It is no secret that a number of international warship procurement programmes have been badly impacted by the emergence of gearbox problems after initial ship deliveries. Keeping in mind this experience, as well as the criticality of the achievement of stringent acoustic requirements to stealthy anti-submarine operation, for the first time ever in a Royal Navy programme a shore-based test rig was built to ensure the gearbox met its design parameters. Ironically, according to Beverstock, “The vast majority of the challenges of delivering the gearbox were actually with the test rig and not with the gearbox. However, through completing this process we now know that that gearbox is fully functioning, de-risking an important programme component that would only previously have been tested when we took the first ship down the river on sea trials”. As of December 2023, the gearbox for Cardiff, the second ship of the class, had been installed in line with the original build sequence whilst that for the third ship was in the course of performance testing.

Beverstock added, “We have done similar things to de-risk other elements of the Type 26 programme. The ships feature an innovative mission bay and we have built a full representative load test and handling facility to ensure it operates as intended. Another example is the use of GE’s land-based electrical integrated test facility to put the electrical propulsion and distribution system that is being installed in the class through its paces. In this way the Ministry of Defence is learning lessons from past programmes to de-risk our ability to deliver future warships as quickly and effectively as we can.”

A disruptive approach

A further example of the Ministry of Defence’s desire to improve the performance of future warship construction is provided by the Type 31 frigate project, which Beverstock describes as, “a deliberately disruptive programme to bring competition to the British warship procurement market”. A more than GBP 1.25 billion (EUR 1.5 billion) contract – exclusive of certain government furnished equipment – for five ships was awarded by DE&S to Babcock International in November 2019 after a competitive procurement process. The agreement anticipates all five frigates being delivered by 2028 to replace those Type 23 frigates used to conduct general-purpose missions. The ships are being built in a new ship hall at Babcock’s Rosyth facility near Edinburgh.

Beverstock explained, “Type 31 procurement was based on setting a very competitive price point and asking industry to come back with the best capabilities they could provide within this budget. Equally, we also asked for an extremely competitive build programme. Our ambition, by the end of the programme, is to be able to build a frigate from first cutting steel to delivery in less than three years.” So far, he was happy that the front end of the programme “has pretty much stuck to time, to cost and to quality” despite the fact that most of the infrastructure required at Rosyth to undertake the project had to be assembled in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In spite of the very real progress that has been achieved with the Type 31 programme, the project has not been without its complications. Babcock has entered a dispute resolution process with the Ministry of Defence over the impact of macroeconomic changes – likely the impact of high inflation –since the contract was first agreed, and has taken a GBP 100 million (EUR 115 million) provision to cover the likely loss if these excess costs cannot be recouped. However, relationships between the Ministry of Defence and Babcock remain strong, with Beverstock emphasising that “We are working with Babcock to make the programme the success that it needs to be to ensure that we have a competitive shipbuilding industry”.

The design’s success in export markets – Indonesia and Poland are already building variants of the ‘Arrowhead 140’ frigate from which the Type 31 is derived under licence – is evidence of the potential market to be tapped. Nevertheless, Beverstock was realistic that future hurdles lie ahead, “We set a really ambitious target for Type 31 completion and I am pretty sure we are going to face some challenges as we enter the difficult integration stage. But even if we get close to the ambitions we have set for ourselves in building these ships, it’s going to be a really remarkable programme”.

Future aspirations

The achievements of the Royal Navy’s frigate programmes are in line with the tenets of Britain’s National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSbS), which aims to drive a revitalisation of the shipbuilding sector. Beverstock stated, “Our aim is to put our shipyards into the top quartile of performance in warship building internationally.”

The resurgence in shipbuilding activity is, however, bringing difficulties of its own making. In Beverstock’s words, “The biggest challenge we face in both shipyards is making sure industry can resource them to the right level. We are recapitalising the navy through the Type 26, Type 31 and Fleet Solid Support Ship programmes and what is almost a resurgence in shipbuilding is leading to significant capital investment to make the yards more competitive. However, fundamentally we are still constrained by the workforce we are able to get hold of.” A short-term answer to this problem is to outsource block construction to other shipyards, including A&P Tyne and Cammell Laird for the Type 26 programme, to maintain the production schedule. In the longer term, a major drive in industrial apprentice programmes is intended to put industry on a firmer footing.

Although the British naval shipbuilding sector has undoubtedly seen considerable success in recent years, the speed of delivery of current construction programmes has not been without its critics. Whilst much of this criticism is seemingly based on limited knowledge of the shipbuilding process and an inability to make effective time and cost comparisons with international programmes, it inevitably detracts from the sector’s real achievements. Beverstock asserted, “We are happy to be compared with international shipbuilding norms if done on a like-for-like basis.” He added, “If you take a long-term view on where we have come from and what we have done, then we have come a long way in meeting some really ambitious targets”.

A good example of the pace of development is set by progress achieved at BAE Systems since the start of the contract for the second batch of Type 26 frigates in November 2022. This gave the green light for the modernisation of the group’s shipyard at Govan. Beverstock pointed out that since then, “BAE Systems have got all the permissions needed for the new shipbuilding hall, awarded the contract for construction of the building, completed much of the initial assembly work and are on track to finish work so as to allow the third ship [editor’s note: the hall was intended to facilitate the completion of the fourth and subsequent frigates] to be consolidated within the new structure. That is a fantastic success story on delivering infrastructure in a country which has a poor reputation for completing infrastructure in a timely manner”.

Beverstock also noted the level of political support the naval construction sector has gained, including the focus placed on implementing the NSbS and real push being given to securing export orders. The political importance of the frigate programmes is undeniable given that the six ships already under construction – four Type 26 frigates on the Clyde and two Type 31 frigates at Rosyth – support 6,500 long-term, highly-skilled jobs across the UK-wide supply chain. This will also doubtless ensure the work of the NSDG remains a matter of ongoing scrutiny. Beverstock was under no doubt as to what is expected, “We maintain a laser-like focus on managing both frigate programmes to achieve their delivery on time and to budget”.

Conrad Waters is Editor of Seaforth World Naval Review, Joint Editor of Maritime Defence Monitor and a regular contributor to other Mittler Report publications.