UK Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

now noticed the article

BAE and Cammell Laird join forces to bid for 'budget' frigates contract
18 October 2017
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right away saying

"BAE Systems is seeking to defend its virtual monopoly on Royal Navy shipbuilding by teaming up with the commercial player Cammell Laird to bid to construct new "budget" frigates."
 
Wednesday at 9:27 PM
now noticed the article

BAE and Cammell Laird join forces to bid for 'budget' frigates contract
18 October 2017
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right away saying

"BAE Systems is seeking to defend its virtual monopoly on Royal Navy shipbuilding by teaming up with the commercial player Cammell Laird to bid to construct new "budget" frigates."
kinda related (dated October 20):
Type 31e Frigate build ‘opportunity’ for Ferguson Marine shipyard on the Clyde
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Michael Fallon has visited the Ferguson Marine shipyard at Port Glasgow where he remarked upon the opportunity for the Clyde yard to build the new frigates.

Industry has been invited to provide high level plans to build an initial order of five ships at a maximum average price of £250 million per ship.

The Defence Secretary has committed to visiting all of the UK’s major shipyards in the run-up to industry bringing forward its solutions for the Type 31e Frigate.

With the Government saying they are committed to building the Type 31e in the UK, Fallon indicated during his visit to the yard that Ferguson has the opportunity to compete for this latest programme to build ships for the Royal Navy.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said:

“With our cutting-edge Type 26 frigates already being built on the Clyde, I know Scottish skilled engineers will relish the chance to compete to build a brand new class of warships for the growing Royal Navy. We want to make the most of the renaissance in UK shipbuilding, delivering the latest ships that will help protect our nation and our interests across the world.”

Just so we’re clear on one of the points raised in the speech, the Royal Navy isn’t growing,
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.

This comes after the owners of the other yards on the Clyde, BAE, decided not to bid for assembly of the new frigates.

As we
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, BAE Systems has announced a partnership with Cammell Laird, who would ‘Prime, build and assemble’ the vessels at their Merseyside facility while the Clyde will focus on the Type 26 Frigates.

If the bid is successful, Cammell Laird would be main contractor with BAE providing design and combat systems.

BAE themselves say that shipbuilding capacity on the Clyde will be full until the mid 2030s while the Ministry of Defence want the first of the new Type 31 Frigates in service by 2023.

The MoD is hoping to reduce its reliance on BAE and cut the costs of procurement by spreading shipbuilding across civil and naval yards.

To this end, the government are implementing the results of an independent report into the National Shipbuilding Strategy by Sir John Parker which recommended that the Type 31 Frigate build be spread across the UK, with blocks and components being constructed in yards in both Scotland and England.

The National Shipbuilding Strategy is intended to be a “radical, fundamental re-appraisal of how we undertake the shipbuilding enterprise in the UK, intending to place UK naval shipbuilding on a sustainable long term footing”.

BAE themselves signalled their own reluctance to bid for the Type 31 Frigate as prime contractor due to concerns of a “race to the bottom” on price. Speaking to The Herald
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, BAE managing director Iain Stevenson said:

“We do want to be involved in Type 31. But we have questions. Does it have a budget? What are the timescales. We have not got solid facts. Type 31 could be a race to the bottom.

If it is a front price contract people might bid for it to win and it and it might put them out of business. We would not, because we are BAE Systems.”

In a press release signalling a their intention not to bid to build the vessels BAE say:

“BAE Systems is focused on the manufacture and delivery of the two QE Class carriers, the five River Class Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) and the first three City class Type 26 warships, as well as continuing to develop and upgrade combat management systems on all Royal Navy ships. Taking account our current and future workload, including Type 26, our shipbuilding capacity on the Clyde will be full until the mid 2030s.”
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Cost of Type 45 Destroyer fix revealed

The cost of fixing the propulsion issues on the Type 45 Destroyer fleet has been revealed.

In 2015, the Ministry of Defence acknowledged that the vessels propulsion system, specifically, the Northrup Grumman intercooler was experiencing reliability issues, previously reported as nothing more than “teething troubles”.

A staggered refit was also announced, which will involve cutting into the ships’ hulls and fitting additional diesel generation capacity, this has become known as Project Napier.

According to the Royal Institute of Naval Architects:

“Project Napier was established in 2014 with two core work strands. The first of these, known as the Equipment Improvement Plan (EIP), is continuing efforts to enhance system reliability and to meet the original design intent in the near term. The second component of Project Napier is a longer term Power Improvement Plan (PIP), intended to improve overall system resilience by adding upgraded diesel generators to provide the electrical generation capacity required to meet the overwhelming majority of propulsion and ship power requirements without reliance on WR-21.”

Project Napier will cost £280 million.

The reliability issues with the intercooler lead to occasional near-complete power generation failures, temporarily disabling not only propulsion, but power generation for weapons, navigational systems, and other purposes, leaving the ships vulnerable to “total electric failure”.

HMS Daring’s engines failed in the mid-Atlantic in 2010 and had to be repaired in Canada, with further repairs for engine failure in 2012 in Bahrain after it encountered propulsion problems while on patrol off the coast of Kuwait.
...
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Wednesday at 9:27 PM
now noticed the article

BAE and Cammell Laird join forces to bid for 'budget' frigates contract
18 October 2017
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


right away saying

"BAE Systems is seeking to defend its virtual monopoly on Royal Navy shipbuilding by teaming up with the commercial player Cammell Laird to bid to construct new "budget" frigates."
related is the blog post
British industry manoeuvring on the Royal Navy’s Type 31e frigate programme
October 24, 2017
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In response to the MoD’s invitation, industry across the UK is now working on a variety of proposals to win the Royal Navy’s Type 31e frigate design and build contract. If the project succeeds in its goal of achieving export orders, the winning consortium could see a sustained flow of construction work and competition is intensifying.

Enter “Leander”
On 18th October Cammell Laird shipbuilders announced they had formed a partnership with BAE Systems to bid for the Type 31e contract. CL would assemble the ships at their Birkenhead yard while BAES will provide the technical expertise required for design and systems integration. Focussing firmly on the local and domestic economic benefits, John Syvret, CL Chief Executive said “We will offer a UK warship design, a UK combat system, a UK build and a supply chain with high UK content, we will be working with BAE Systems and A&P to deliver certainty, speed and agility on this nationally important project.”

The rather crude ‘Avenger’ design that was hastily produced by BAES in 2016 has been dispensed with. The ‘Cutlass’ concept, a stretched version of the Khareef corvettes built for Oman (2009-2013) has been refined and re-named as ‘Leander’ as the basis for the joint bid. So far BAES have declined to make public any details of the concept, other than some simple CGIs (main image above).

The choice of name is a smart move, echoing past British warship design success. 26 Leander class frigates were built for the RN in the 1960s and 70s, they were highly regarded and won considerable export orders. There remains much affection and nostalgia in navy circles for the Leanders (named after characters in Greek mythology).

BAES were initially only semi-interested the Type 31 and even described the project as “a race to the bottom”. They now appear to be taking a potential threat to their warship building monopoly rather more seriously, recently describing it as “an exciting and important programme”. A successful Type 31 bid by Babcock and BMT could open a way for real competition in a sector that BAES have all to themselves. Part of the motivation for the Type 31 was to diversify the RN’s supplier base, making it less reliant on what is perceived as BAES gold-plated offerings and ballooning prices.

There is also a political desire to revive English warship building potential as an insurance policy against Scottish independence. Scottish Nationalists and Unions on the Clyde are highly vocal about how they were “betrayed” by promises of 13 type 26 frigates which have now been reduced to 8. In a narrow sense, they have a point, but workers on the Clyde still have the most secure shipbuilding jobs in the UK and the approximately £6Bn, 20-year, Type 26 project is the richest shipbuilding contract in Europe. It should also be remembered the Portsmouth construction yard was closed by BAES to consolidate work on the Clyde.

A successful partnership with Cammell Laird would be strategically beneficial to BAES by keeping Babcock out of the project. Type 31 could also offer continuity of work for BAES ship design teams, whose workload will to decline as the Type 26 construction gets into its stride. When HMS Prince of Wales is completed, there will be a large pool of skilled workers who will transfer from Rosyth back to the Clyde. If the Type 26 does not provide enough work for them all, the Type 31 could offer another option.

The Type 31 is likely to offer the winning bidder a much lower profit margin than the lucrative Type 26. In modern warship construction the main expense, and therefore profit, is usually in installation and integration of the electronics weapons and sensor fit. This allows BAES a slice of whatever profit there maybe without the problem of building more ships concurrently with Type 26s that will fully occupy their Clyde yards into the 2030s

Despite the revival of commercial ship construction at Cammell Laird and their experience building the RRS Sir David Attenborough, they do not have sufficient in-house expertise needed to design and build complex warships. Their partnership with BAES gives them access to the most experienced naval architecture talent in the country. CL also plan to partner with A&P (Tyne and Falmouth) who would build some of the blocks which would then be shipped to Birkenhead for assembly.

Other contenders
A request for information (RFI) to support Type 31e market testing was released to industry by the MoD on 11 September, with a deadline of 16th October for responses. The MOD says it is now considering a whopping 20 different proposals to build Type 31e. This level of interest is an encouraging sign that UK industry is very excited by the project and looking at a variety of creative approaches.

Although each company had already developed their own concept, at DSEI in September 2017, Babcock and BMT announced they had formed a strategic partnership to bid for the Type 31e project. The BMT Venator-110 design was widely perceived as the leading candidate but Venator has been dispensed with and BMT are now focusing on developing the
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with Babcock. The new CL/BAES partnership suddenly offers them much more formidable competition. Although Babcock has more recent small warship construction than CL, BAES are a corporate giant with enormous resources and experience in the sector. Despite BAES’ formidable strength, when the MoD chooses a contractor, other contenders may have the advantage over them by simply not being BAES.

It would be ironic if the Babcock Appledore yard is left out of the Type 31 programme as they are the only UK facility that has won a warship export order in recent times. The 4 OPVs that have been constructed for the Irish Navy are a low profile success story that deserves to be continued. For workers at Appledore in particular, a successful BMT/Babcock bid for the Type 31e is critical as they will need work when the final Irish OPV is completed.

It will also be interesting to see if smaller bidders such as
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can find a construction partner or gain enough traction to compete with the Babcock and BAES big boys.

In our next article, we will look in more detail at the price point of the Type 31e and whether it is adequate for the Royal Navy’s requirements.
 
Brazil, Chile eye potential second-hand acquisitions from UK 24 October 2017
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Key Points
  • Brazil and Chile have quietly been given notice of the potential availability of RN frigates and amphibious ships
  • Brazil sees a second-hand Type 23 acquisition as an opportunity to modernise its surface force
The navies of Brazil and Chile are assessing the potential acquisition of UK Royal Navy (RN) frigates and amphibious ships in the event that they become available for sale in the near term, military sources in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago have told Jane's .

According to official in both countries, UK representatives have discreetly advised that a number of Type 23 frigates and the two landing platform dock (LPD) ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark may become available as a result of budget-driven options currently being considered that would cut the RN frontline.

...
... the rest is behind paywall at Jane's
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anyway it's time again for Apr 1, 2016
all I can say is God Save The Queen ...
 
Defence Committee
Wednesday 25 October 2017 Meeting started at 2.33pm, ended 4.57pm
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now I was watching for about ten minutes, around 15:35 - 15:45, at one point it may become interesting to listen to
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again
DM_NF7JW4AApQqi.jpg
 
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