Is it accurate to just say it is the cost of the carriers for both was 6.2 billion pounds, I'm not sure of the lifetime costs for these vessels ,the Dreadnaught class is 7.75 billion I,m citing wiki here which cites other bodies which suggests these boats will take a large percentage of the U.K defence budget dwarfing the carrier costs
The programme is managed by a new
Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA), established on 3 April 2017 within MOD's
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation.
BAE Systems and
Rolls Royce are the programme's Tier One industrial partners.
[22]
In 2011, the programme's Initial Gate report estimated costs at £25 billion. In 2015, the programme was estimated to cost £31 billion including estimated future defence inflation, design, testing and construction of the US-UK Common Missile Compartment and modernisation of shipyard facilities in Barrow, with £10 billion of additional contingency set aside. In March 2023, £2 billion of the contingency fund had been accessed to reprofile spending and bring construction forward.
[22] These costs do not include the related
Trident missile renewal, new infrastructure projects at the re-nationalised
Atomic Weapons Establishment, and new nuclear fuel production facilities at Rolls-Royce.
[22]
Once in service, annual in-service costs are expected to be approximately 6% of the defence budget (about £3 billion).
[22]
Studies by the
Nuclear Information Service and the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have suggested that the MOD cost presentation is under-estimating replacement programme costs. Including all related costs, including new infrastructure investment and decommissioning costs, and 30 years of in-service costs, they estimate a cost in the region of £172 to £205 billion.
[22] Crispin Blunt, Chair of the
Foreign Affairs Select Committee, estimated in July 2016 that the renewed deterrent lifetime cost would be £179 billion.
[23]
A January 2018, the
National Audit Office expressed concern about the programme's spending profile, including that it was "unaffordable in the early years of the project" within the MOD allocated budget.
[22][24] Subsequently the MOD moved £300 million into the Dreadnought programme from elsewhere, and later the
2018 budget added £1 billion to the defence budget, 40% of which went to the Dreadnought programme. The
2020 Spending Review allocated an extra £16.5 billion to the defence budget over 2020 to 2025, in part to "continue the renewal of the UK's nuclear deterrent".
[22]
