An interesting article was published recently in the Indian Edition of Business Standard that describes how the UK was seeking partnership with India for the design and build of the Type 26 Global Combat Ship
To quote some of the more interesting sections of the article;
Business Standard has learnt that a cash-strapped UK government has approached New Delhi to jointly design and build a next-generation frigate, designated the Global Combat Ship (GCS). While the UK had originally planned to build this alone (then designated the Type 26 frigate), shrinking defence budgets have forced it to seek international partners. And, India, along with other countries, including Brazil, has been invited into a consortium to design and build the GCS.
The UK is trying build a JSF type global warship building consortia that will edge out the other European competitors, recognising that the it needs to get back into the business of exporting warships as a means of reducing costs.
Senior Indian MoD officials say, off the record, that no decision is imminent on the British offer. But they admit the offer is attractive, since it would provide a learning opportunity for one of India’s big new private sector shipyards to gain experience in building frigates
India has little experience of building such complex vessels.
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. Last year, the Type 26 frigate survived the ruthless spending cuts imposed in Britain’s Strategic Defence and Security Review. But now, with Whitehall having concluded it cannot go it alone, the partnership of countries like India is essential.
So where does this leave the UK shipbuilding industry?
Is this simply a sharing of intellectual property to lower costs or is it something more integrated, perhaps we might partner with India to build the basic building blocks and ship them to the UK for assembly and fit out.
Who knows what this will lead to but it will be interesting to see it unfold.
i would suggest the common design (this 80% or so) would be shared amongst partners, with each building their own (got to protect those british shipyards + voters erm jobs i mean etc) and to their own spec (such as the uk having 50/50 asw and general purpose, assuming type 45 for air defence). any further sales to non-original partners would have to be thought about too if it proved successful.
personally i think this is a good way forward, otherwise as we have seen with type 45 you get half what you planned / wanted at twice the price, eg. we could have bought or even built our own version of the arleigh burke for i believe 60% type 45 cost? so say getting 9 instead of 6 (i know government brains don’t think like that, we’d have got 6 and the saved cash gone on looter training … erm social programs!). anything that gets our forces the equipment and numbers of said equipment they need has to be investigated, and in a reasonable time-scale too. it really annoys me when politican types go on about how much more capable a modern vessel is, 1 replaces 2 easily etc. – but ships, more so than any other unit, can only be in one place (sea?) at a time, need regularly service / refits that take them completely out, and if lost or even damaged (as was seen in the falklands) that’s it, so you need a strategic reserve.
could be a great thing for british ship-building all told, we might finally have an exportable design!
“Is this simply a sharing of intellectual property to lower costs or is it something more integrated, perhaps we might partner with India to build the basic building blocks and ship them to the UK for assembly and fit out.”
The only way its really going to save money is if we design them, India builds the easy stuff and we build the hard stuff.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100002310/what-the-ipod-tells-us-about-britains-economic-future/
I’ve probably posted this before, but its damned well important.
A $300 iPod has $4 of assembly cost. It has $80 of Design cost.
The T45 has a construction cost of £650mn.
Designing the T45 was worth $2100mn
I dont even suggest we hand over all of the production.
We can keep all of the valuable stuff. India couldnt build an AESA even we gave them the designs.
What could possibly be wrong with us designing a ship, India assembling it for £50mn, BAE fitting it out for £100mn and selling it overseas for £300mn.
There are many combination’s I would suspect we design most of it, build our own ships (all with a bunch of Indians watching after all they’ve not built these things) Then later on India builds their own, perhaps with some parts built in the uk (like weapons systems) While in the future they take a more active part in design of upgrades or go down their own path for such things.
This could be very interesting!
If for the RN vessels 80% of the kit will come from the T23s, building the hulls in India would make them very ‘cheap’ indeed… In my view though the replacement program is too important to risk in such a way (MHPC maybe…).
I really, really dont get it. Why do we continue to look for the most expensive way possible to subsidize BAe shareholders ?
Get MOD(N)(Bath) to do a direct government to government deal with Denmark for the design rights to the Absalon. If your really interested in jobs then build them in UK yards. If you want as many as them as you can afford put the build out to tender, and get the hulls built in Poland, Romania, Malaysia, wherever…… (you can fit the sensitive electronics / weapons systems in the UK).
Or go commercial, buy FREMM’s and again do the deal to build them in UK yards.
If we are not concerned about BAe profits, then as I have advocated a billion times before, go back to the C1 / C2 split and build a second batch of T45 as the C1 high end ocean going ASW specialist, levering the hell out of the investment made in the design and production facilities.
This whole bollocks around lets create a new design, and partner with Brazil and India in order to gain more exports than those nasty French / Italian / German ship builders is crazy – it neither serves defence of the realm nor industry (as a whole) in my opinion.
i believe it is considered a ‘strategic’ industry which requires that the design skills are maintained, a lesson hard learnt in the early astute days.
it is the whole basis of the ship-building merger and its lead item; the CVF’s.
if you want to debate the value of keeping ship building/design in the UK then fair enough, but as long as the DIS conclusions remain relevant to government policy expect to see many more decisions like this, as the gov’t struggles to retain skills whilst failing to order the number of hulls the studies it conducted demanded it must.
i think this would be a good idea. The build process for jsf is actually quite a gd one. It could be that the yards around to world build a specific section/sections with a single design authority BAE. Youre initial final assembly would be in UK with perhaps another one in the far east should the demand be such.
Mark
In effect, that happens already.
Take CVF
The water processing plant comes from Sweden, the Point Defence guns come from America, final assembly happens in the UK.
It would make far more sense for the steel to be cut in India and the final fitting out to happen in the UK.
DomJ
You should be looking more at fully contented section being built in india or another country not just the bits that go into a section. Instead of yards around the uk building them its around the world.
If you cut all the steel in the india and fit it out afterwards is that not a backward step.
I certainly see no evidence indian companies have the expertise or capability to build a warship such as this fully themselves bits of it yes maybe.
What Jed said.
(Ignore this bit as it is padding because “What Jed said.” is too short.)
We built the type 45 because we couldn’t agree on the specs for a common air defence ship with our partners, Italy and France. And the Horizon was in turn the outcome of the previous failed joint programme.
I wonder whether sharing the design of the T26 will ultimately produce an exportable ship, but one which the MoD will turn it’s nose up at.
Will we end up paying BAe to build our own new ship, after subsidising BAe to build their export model first?
Further to my previous comment. Jed was suggesting a T45 variant as the ocean going ASW specialist.
The reasons why the T45 is so big and Horizon was abandoned were largely because we wanted an ocean roving ship. On the other hand, India’s primary perceived threat is it’s next door neighbour.
What is the extra cost of paying BAe to design India’s next warship, and deciding it’s 1000t shy of what we want, before paying BAe to design the T45 sized ASW ship that we could have started with? Two less T26 hulls? More than two perhaps?
Brian – Exactly, and Exactly !!!
As an historical note Indian took Leander and stretched it and stretched it.
(That is just a note. I am not saying anything about what Brian said.)
Brian, I would say that India’s primary strategic thinking is more about China than Pakistan
T45 is maturing now, have a look at this from Ultra on the electro optical turrets that have appeared above the bridge
http://www.ultra-ccs.com/downloads/videoplay.php?ID=21
indias long term naval requirements are to knock the spit out china between africa and japan
Haven’t the T26 design concepts been shrinking though? Maybe ok for India fighting the Pakistanis and Chinese in their neck of the woods, but we’ll want a nice big and stable hull in the rough South Atlantic when we retake the Falklands again.
(congratulations to elizzar for getting the Falkland Islands into the first comment of this thread, one day I hope to achieve that myself)
“The reasons why the T45 is so big and Horizon was abandoned were largely because we wanted an ocean roving ship. On the other hand, India’s primary perceived threat is it’s next door neighbour.”
I’d disagree with that, pakistan is an irritation to 21st century india, and it certainly won’t guide its warship design.
India see’s the indian ocean as its back yard, and that is a lot of water!
The type 26 has gone down to about 5500tn which isn’t small and about the largest frigate the rn has had. With a crew complement of 130. I see no reason why this won’t be a capable deep ocean ship.
Both EODs on the bridge in a similar arrangement to Sea Archer on T22?
The video shows one daringly placed aft on the hanger……….
I agree with Jed.
@TD
Did you also read that the Type 45′s are not ready for polar operations?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8692295/Britain-woefully-unprepared-for-Arctic-warfare.html
Why would they be ready for polar operations? We’ve not operated in the polar region for decades, and if we had put that capability in, then the DT would be acussing the MOD of gold plating its solutions, and retired officers would be hauled out to say how outrageous it was that we were preparing T45 for a conflict that would never happen, and we could have used this money to save SHAR and keep the Falklands British…
Resources. Both poles have lots and lots of potential mineral wealth. And food too in the form of Krill.
The Arctic is certainly due to see a lot more attention, partly because the summer ice cover is gradually receding (in a back and forth sort of way) making much more of the region accessible and turning the famous old North-West Passage into a commercial reality, and (linked to this) the mineral wealth under the ocean will also become much more accessible (and valuable as other sources run out).
Russia has already placed a large claim on much of the area, which has been rejected by other interested nations (mainly USA and Canada).
Canada is facing the need to shift its strategic focus to the north, which among other things has raised a requirement for patrol ships capable of dealing with moderate ice levels. I assume (he said hopefully) that the MoD is examining any implications for the UK and its equipment.
India has a strategic interest in the Indian Ocean and in the sea lanes from the Arabian Sea to the Malacca Straits, and so needs a fleet with reach. However, India also has thousands of miles of coast, an interest in a much more local chunk of continental shelf and problems with the neighbours, and so needs a fleet to protect those interests too.
While we know the RN wants to reach from the UK to the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, it’s not entirely clear what the Indian T26 is for. India is already involved in a long-term programme at home, building 6000t multi-role frigates. India may not want a too similar frigate built with the uk.
Hi TW,
Well said “Russia has already placed a large claim on much of the area, which has been rejected by other interested nations (mainly USA and Canada).” as Russia and Norway have already settled between them.
The sensitivity about Svalbard (someone mentioned) was the guiding thought in the fighter selection by Norway (range to cover the gap).
Hi BB & DJ,
RE “India has a strategic interest in the Indian Ocean and in the sea lanes from the Arabian Sea to the Malacca Straits, and so needs a fleet with reach. ” Very true, and has been reflected in the joint exercises with the USN, well into the second decade by now (i.e. started in the era when all major weapon purchases by India were still from Russia).
But so does China (just like the EU). Being the work house of the world, with a huge input of imported raw materials – what took Japan into the WW2? – and relatively low value-add by a huge pool of labour (before re-exporting, by sea again, but now into more varied directions as is the case with the incoming inputs), China’s interest is wholly legitimate.
But as pointed out by several commentators India sees China as the strategic competitor (rather than Pakistan), and China’s legitimate efforts are seen by India as an attempt at strategic encirclement. Further, China is leaving nothing to chance (e.g. the longevity of the current Burma regime or Sri Lanka going back to normality and again having other friends, too, not just China).
So, five naval bases under construction in the mentioned Ocean area: Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and two undisclosed locations on the African side, which in my books are the mouth of the Rufiji River in Tanzania and the latest addition, the new pariah state without friends: Eritrea.
Indian counter: basing out of Vietnam to detect the Chinese nuclear subs leaving the Hainan base (same reason for all of the USN Seawolf subs having been moved to the Pacific).
[All of the above just a more diplomatic translation of what DJ said.]
If a nation is going for three carriers and building a nuclear sub, how can anyone say they would not have an operating need for something like T26? We know the domestic designs tend to be ” a bit” late. Like the domestic carrier started to rust before it got launched.
I’m nearly sure that dauntless was on cold weather trials in the high artic last winter. I haven’t read of there being any problems with that, one problem they did face was they couldn’t quite get temperatures low enough to get to all of the test points and I wonder if the telegraph are using that for the basis of the story.
The artic will be important but considering the regular Exercises in Norway and south Atlantic we have a some knowledge of operating there
Hi Mark,
I found the animation in this link by TD http://www.ultra-ccs.com/downloads/videoplay.php?ID=21
great in many respects. All the optics that take over from radar detection had wind screen vipers on them. I would, for sure, test the availability in conditions
- minus 25 (Celcius)
- wind bringing in sleet (unlikely) horizontally, or rather thick snow
But the best bit, in my mind, were the angles from above the T45. Taking away the “redundant” tracking radar in the back (not redundant in the AAW role, sure) would give you “as much ship” as in a separate frigate, of course counting in all the parts that are there now, further aft and below the radar
- so, I am converted to having a second run of T45s
- at what number, hard to say, as the planned mix of 1 of them for every 2 frigates, of any description, on its own sounds about right
“could be a great thing for british ship-building all told, we might finally have an exportable design!”
If that was the point, why not go for a Commonwealth cooperative design or a MEKO ship?
Hi S O,
RE “why not go for a Commonwealth cooperative design” as far as I understand, that was tried
- went well with Canada at first (their Halifax Class is only coming out from an 18 mth refurb, which is more like a rebuild) and just that one deal would have facilitated a nice, long and smooth production run (as theirs will last for a good while now)
- ran into ship building protectionism (incl. unionism and pork barrelling as Canada is quite a fragile federation, after all, where only some have oil)
- Oz fully committed with Canberra Class and new AAW ships that make T45s look cheap, it doesn’t leave much besides India (and Brazil)?
I hope i am being overly pessimistic over this shared design.
Our frigate package was going to consist of a number of the ASW variant T26 and a number of the GP design (I forget what the numbers were the last time I looked). Should we be thinking of the AAW variant rather than the GP ship now that the T45 is as rare as it is?
———
Hi, ArmChairCivvy.
I’m not saying that India does not have an operational need for something like T26; rather that with their project 17 multi-role frigate, they already have something like T26.
The P17 is a long term programme that will still be turning out ships for several years yet. Upgrades to the design are also continuing with the 17A.
The questions are, is that ship too close to what we want the T26 to be? India may want their version of the T26 to look a whole lot different.
If T26 does end up filling a similar role, they may still buy want it if they don’t have the capacity to build all the ships they want at home; so are they meeting their targets?
Hi BB,
Agreed “If T26 does end up filling a similar role, they may still buy want it if they don’t have the capacity to build all the ships they want at home; so are they meeting their targets?”
- they have been hiring Russian subs and just got a top-notch surface ship on the same basis (and as a gap filler), so that prospect may not be too far off
Thanks Brian Black, not sure if a compliment or not re: the falklands! i guess it’s the one proper naval example we really have, but i’d rather emphasise the fact we need more hulls if we continue to have these far flung commitments as it takes a fair old while for a ship to traverse 10,000 miles … same applies to submarines of course. as such, anything which might (might!) get us a couple more ships from those clammy treasury paws has to be explored. i don’t, for instance, understand why we don’t have more ships similar to the batch 2 river class (maybe further stretched for slightly heavier weapons fit + more helicopter operations, and slightly faster) for our various patrol and protection roles (fisheries, drugs etc).
For RN arctic = SSN, surface ships operating in North Atlantic north of 60 degs does not equate to requiring ice strengthening.
Canada is not appropriately manned, equipped or organised to protect its arctic coast – just spend five mins on CASR site to get the just.
RN could do quite well with its 6 existing T45, 8 x B2 T45 fitted with existing T2087 towed arrays for open ocean ASW (but retaining SAMSON and Sea Viper to supplement T45) plus a cheap and cheerfull GP frigate which could be based on A salon, FREMM or some other existing design, say 12 or 14 of them.
Add another 6 of TD’s 4000 tonne civvy OSV derived “forward presence” ships (operated by the RFA) and everything is hunky dory again, BUTwho has similarbrequirements and who would want to partner with us on designing and building such vessels? WHOCARES!
Stop throwing good money after bad in constantly re-inventing the wheel and build “good enough” (not gold plated) variants of existing hulls in UK yards under commercial licence or direct Govt to Govt IPR deals.
Well I have advocated getting India involved along with Brazil in T26 I do see some potential pitfalls. Inevitably with this government any deal we do will be to our detriment. i.e. chuck us a few quid and we will give you all the designs. We may end up making India and Brazil competitors in the very small global frigate market. A market that we could potentially dominate if we got things right. I appreciate that the T26 program is very important to the RN and must produce a capable design in numbers to but have we become so inept as a nation that we cannot even consider designing a frigate (once the simplest of task for us) on our own. At the end of the day if Brazil and India want a high end vessel there are few places they can go. With our without their cooperation we are likely to get a decent number of orders from them. Especially if we allow them to supply components and we are prepared to sell them the full missile and radar kit to go along with them.
I accept we are all bewildered at the performance of both the MOD and BAE over the past decade at delivering big ticket items. However if we do not maintain some aspiration to be a world beater then really what’s the point.
While we may feel brining international partners onboard can help get us more hulls in the water for the same price it may not. International cooperation has been difficult in the past with NATO allies like Germany who looked to cut their contribution to Euro fighter but keep ther work sahre. India is not exactly well know for delivering projects on time or budget as this article mentions
http://www.defencenow.com/news/261/india%E2%80%99s_indigenous_warship_programmes_plagued_by_constant_cost_and_time_overruns.html
We should also note that dealing with the likes of India and Brazil on such a complex project will likley be difficult. They may well sense our desperation and seek to back us in a corner once construction starts ordering barley any vessels while seeking to get much of the work on RN vessels for themselves and access to all the technoligy. I feel it is emensley unliklye that either nation will have much to offer in terms of manufacturing capability that we would feel up to scratch to use in an RN vessel. We might say steel however producing very high grade steel alloys as used in a warship is still an area the UK excells in and the likes of India finds it very difficutl to do.
And I thought BAe and the MOD were bad
http://www.defencenow.com/news/112/cag_report_exposes_pitfalls_in_naval_warship_projects_and_staterun_shipyards.html
Hi Martin,
I thought the idea with Brazil,is that after agreeing fairly common base-line design which each country would then customise them, BAE would go in and build up the capacity of their ship yards and related industries so that will develop the skills and increasingly use their own home grown kit. As far as I was aware there is no plan on work share, if anything the Government and BAE are hoping that the first few hulls for Brazil (and presumably India) would be built in the UK, while BAE brings the respective yards up to scratch, thereby reducing the unit cost to the UK.
Hi Tubby,
This was also my understanding of the barzil deal. However nothing is signed at the moment. As we look at a potentially larger contract we may get sucked into some JSF or Horizon style program. Unfortunatley the RN and the MOD are desperate. Lets be honnest even in the best of times these guys have shown themselves in capable of delivering big ticket items. Now factor in the same muppets trying to deal with a hugely complicated project involving the likes of India and we can see the potential. As I was saying by giving this technoligy to Brazil and India we will simply be making future competitors in the frigate market not to mention cutting out the two largest customers from the market.
Jed, I think the majority here now believe of a second batch of ASW T45′s is the right way to go. These plus the existing T45s would give a sound 14 – 16 first rate warships.
The T26 should be a cheap long range light frigate / OPV, built to commercial plus standards in as large enough numbers as can be afforded. This is the type of vessel that would be exportable and could be built in India or wherever… In fact building the hull cheap and fitting it out in the UK is very attractive indeed. Could cover that MHPC role also…
Building a batch of these with ice hardened hulls would give us better polar coverage. In fact aren’t Canada already looking for vessels like these…?
High Repulse while we would all like to see a second batch of T45 with proper armament it ain’t going to happen . The danger of making T26 a more general purpose and lighter design is we end up loosing the land attacj capability. In effect we end up building a smaller fleet of 300 million pound T23′s.
Hi Repulse,
The Icelandic CG ship, built to spec in a Chilean (naval?) yard came in at about $37m and fits both your description (slightly lengthened, but still ice hardened) and TD’s OPV.
There was nothing much to fit afterwards as it is very lightly armed, but gives you the ball park vs. the UK design contract which was given a brief to bring the cost from half a bn to something like £300+m.
MHPC is still in the requirements consolidation phase, so the two could be crossed-over, and enough funding squeezed out for the second batch of T45s?
I think the Danish Thetis is a better bet for an ice strengthened frigate.
And if the latter quality is seen as a primary driver the NoCGV Svalbard would be worth a look.
Thanks x, for the Thetis ref.
- good to know there are some ice strengthened warships built in the “West”
- 80 cm of ice is no mean feat; when it goes to 100, an MBT might be encountered!
How about the cost? That is why I picked the particular ref (to get some measure of the benefit of off-shoring the more basic work). There is no mention of the latest refit cost here http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/hms-northumberland/,
but the previous one (7 yrs before) was of the same order as the hull and commercial navigation fitting out for my example
- I am very much for refurbs and life-extensions, as they will help to get the balance between types of hulls right when the investment budget is the effective constraint; also, I am for all measures that preserve the total of hull numbers at a level that affords some flexibility in operations (and maintenance/ refits)
@Martin, I thought the land attack option for the T26 was aspirational at best? The SSNs probably have as much capability as we will require.
@ACC, if there was a second T45 batch I would expect we would be looking at something
100 – 200mn per vessel, most likely the bottom end of that.
@X, with the requirement to patrol Greenland the Danish are good at considering artic conditions. I believe the Holland class is also strengthened.
@Brian Black
“The reasons why the T45 is so big and Horizon was abandoned were largely because we wanted an ocean roving ship.”
If the T26-design would deliver a innovative flexible ship family ranging between 2k ts and 7k ts, this would be no problem. As the design goal is to replicate 20th century equipment, this will not happen.
In general, we should focus on design services and the real value-for-money-equipment. Too bad the current sonar fit is french-owned, most radars are italian-owned.
In the meantime we provide the british defence hedge fund BAE with considerable money for not needing to get competitive in the world market.
Some things to think about:
- why is no one here enquestioning the whole AAW/ASW/GP-agenda the RN is driving?
- how the hell did the Phoenix Think Tank manage to get on Microsofts list of unsafe malware-delivering-websites?
While I agree that additional type 45s would have been ideal and turning them into a burke type vessel with towed sonar ect would be a great capability thats expensive a type 45 cost about 590m if you ignore development costs (most of that cost is sampson and the engines) or about the same as a FREMM warship french ones cost around 700m euro. If we buy another 8 of them what do we do to fill out numbers.
While I like TDs idea of fwd deployed groups and heavier task groups at home I think the number of ships he assigned to that concept if far short of whats needed. And I dont think the same type of ship can operate in all areas
Type 26 is supposed to be around 300m a ship which suggests something along the line of the US LCS sea frame concept with module add ons and a reduced crew component down to 130 crew each.
I do think we are now past the point to doing another production run of type 45 with only really the last one fitting out. What we can do is harness a lot of the new tech that went into the type 45 in a cheaper hull the type 26. We must not make the mistake of stopping building it like we did with type 23. I would hope a similar module/interface approach can be taken for integrating capabilities onto type 26 and the MHPC then we can have a type 26 carrying say 3 capabilities and the mhpc maybe 1. Allowing flexibility across both classes.
As for operations in the artic im not sure how much further we go in equipping and training the surface fleet for these areas above what we do already. Aircraft MPA anyone and ssn’s are more useful I guess in monitoring the ice.
Further on these:
@ACC, if there was a second T45 batch I would expect we would be looking at something
100 – 200mn per vessel, most likely the bottom end of that
- I wish; now wasn’t the £600m per vessel without the programme cost that would have made them a bn a piece (our friends from Oz are now looking at the same dilemma, over a batch of three, where the hulls came in cheap
- so, even making the weapons systems more “simple” but maintaining the Sampson + the VLS in the front (maybe differently apportioned between uses) would probably shave off max. 100 mill (put inflation into that, rather than adding on top of the 500 mill; which was the T26 figure, roughly)
@X, with the requirement to patrol Greenland the Danish are good at considering artic conditions. I believe the Holland class is also strengthened.
- I don’t think so (?). They used commercial grade steel for the hulls, but the added volume, for the same cost, makes the ship at least as resistant to hits as would have been the case (otherwise)