The Royal Navy Discussions and Updates

[ProM]

I fear Swerve is right. I disagree slightly in that a modern corvette could be cheaper to run than even a reduced capability frigate, so much so that they would soon save the build cost. But the MoD won't stump up the money now and the politicians don't believe we need more hulls.


Right or wrong (and personally I believe it is on balance right) it is the price we have paid for QEC.

 

[1805]

But T26 numbers will be cut anyway, does anyone really think there will be 1 for 1 replacement over a 15 year period? The record has been that the treasury get's it's way when the Admirals overspend. Heavy OPV/light frigates could help keep the RN in budget, be very useful in maintaining the RN's footprint and actually help to secure a workable number of T26s.

 

[RobWilliams]

Don't get me wrong i love the Type 26 Frigate and am determined to see the navy have them but i think our priority is to increase hull numbers and reduce costs.

That's the issue i have with the idea, as said previously the cuts to the escorts have been made without any plans for introducing anything extra and as such any more builds along the lines of a corvette would reduce T26 numbers to a degree.

Whilst the idea of having extra hulls in the water in the form of corvettes is great, we simply don't have the budget for it at this present moment and our current RN shows this.

If the Treasury deems it neccesary to cut a few T26s to balance the budget then i don't see it allocating money for corvettes. I just don't see them doing it.

 

[the concerned]

If the uk government had any spare cash for things like corvettes which it don't it would actually be better spent on providing the t-45's with the nessecary weapons fit to do the job at hand like Tomahawks/storm shadows or even reinstating the 2 T-45's that we dropped and give them a serious ABM capability. you have to remember in the event of a serious conflict frigates would be called apon to do the escort duties again for resupply convoy's and wading around in the rough seas of the atlantic is something a corvette is not capable of.

 

[StobieWan]

If you look at a reasonably well specified OPV like a Navantia BAM or the Holland class, they're all in excess of £100m - that's for something with a gun at the pointy end, a helipad at the back and some decent sea legs. The Holland has a pretty useful radar for it's class, but they're also £150m.

As soon as you start adding in some sort of local area defence, you're into £200 million for a small ship with no survivability in a shooting war and limited space and weight reserve to upgrade.

For the RN, corvette, bad idea, plain and simple, they're competing for funds with more capable high end escorts which we are badly short of. More OPV's might be nice for the anti drugs/anti piracy stuff but we've got 4 Type 22's tied up alongside that are bought and paid for.

Spend a tiny bit of money stripping out the SeaWolf mount, directors and some other systems, park a 1b on the bow and you'd have a reduced cost option for running Type 22 on for another decade as a large patrol ship. Not going to happen however.

 

[kev 99]

For the RN, corvette, bad idea, plain and simple, they're competing for funds with more capable high end escorts which we are badly short of. More OPV's might be nice for the anti drugs/anti piracy stuff but we've got 4 Type 22's tied up alongside that are bought and paid for.

Spend a tiny bit of money stripping out the SeaWolf mount, directors and some other systems, park a 1b on the bow and you'd have a reduced cost option for running Type 22 on for another decade as a large patrol ship. Not going to happen however.

The Type 22s have gas turbines and I suspect they may be too labour intensive and too costly to run as an OPV.

Nice idea though, it's pretty similar to what the USN are using a lot of it's Perrys for now.

 

[StobieWan]

The Type 22s have gas turbines and I suspect they may be too labour intensive and too costly to run as an OPV.

Nice idea though, it's pretty similar to what the USN are using a lot of it's Perrys for now.

They've big crews for sure - you can trim a few out by ditching the seawolf and probably the ASW but I think you'd still be running three times the crew of an OPV but then again, we'd already have 'em. Assuming 50--60 million a pop for a cheapish OPV you'd get, what, 10-12 years running out of a type 22 before the costs crossed over? Bags of room for an embarked counter drugs/piracy force, hangar, boats...

Not going to happen but more likely than building a eight class run of OPVs anytime soon,


Ian

 

[1805]

They've big crews for sure - you can trim a few out by ditching the seawolf and probably the ASW but I think you'd still be running three times the crew of an OPV but then again, we'd already have 'em. Assuming 50--60 million a pop for a cheapish OPV you'd get, what, 10-12 years running out of a type 22 before the costs crossed over? Bags of room for an embarked counter drugs/piracy force, hangar, boats...

Not going to happen but more likely than building a eight class run of OPVs anytime soon,


Ian

Not sure this idea is very soundly thought through. The crew of a batch 3 T22 is c250, I doubt you would cut that down much more than by a 1/3, for comparison a BAM is c35 plus mission staff. The fuel/spares v jobs created from new construction. The RN could do with 18-24 (drip feed over 30 years), so the design and production cost should be much lower than either BAM or Holland. This is also a popular type/size for an export opportunity, so a great one for the RN to use its leverage for the UK's competitive advantage.

This has been discussed at length before but it would be possible to provide a very useful ship by bolt on kit. The helicopter being the most important example.

 

[ProM]

They've big crews for sure - you can trim a few out by ditching the seawolf and probably the ASW but I think you'd still be running three times the crew of an OPV but then again, we'd already have 'em. Assuming 50--60 million a pop for a cheapish OPV you'd get, what, 10-12 years running out of a type 22 before the costs crossed over? Bags of room for an embarked counter drugs/piracy force, hangar, boats...

On your own figures more like 2.5 years.

Through life costs almost always outweigh capital costs

 

[gf0012-aust]

As far as I am aware they havent built *new* E2/C2 airframes in quite a few years, unless there will be new airframes for the E-2D.

aren't they zeroed frames?

 

[StobieWan]

On your own figures more like 2.5 years.

Through life costs almost always outweigh capital costs

Yeah - I was mis-remembering the running cost on a Type 22 - just had the chance to dig around the the running costs for the class of four were £130 million per annum so that's a fair chunk of change. Cumberland's last year of service was £16m which is a sharp drop, and I suspect some of those numbers for the total cost are accountancy things and not actual expense in keeping them at sea.

Ah well, hazards of thinking aloud

I can see why it's so hard to even give the damn things away with that cost in mind.

Ian

 

[StevoJH]

aren't they zeroed frames?

Not sure, but if they are remanufactured airframes there is still the availability of airframes to consider before any UK order could be considered, since the USN will have to fulfill its requirements before releasing any.

 

[swerve]

Yeah - I was mis-remembering the running cost on a Type 22 - just had the chance to dig around the the running costs for the class of four were £130 million per annum so that's a fair chunk of change. Cumberland's last year of service was £16m which is a sharp drop, and I suspect some of those numbers for the total cost are accountancy things and not actual expense in keeping them at sea.

Ah well, hazards of thinking aloud

I can see why it's so hard to even give the damn things away with that cost in mind.

Ian

British military cost accounting conventions (imposed by the NAO, I think) make it impossible to tell what the actual running cost is. Some of the 'running' cost is actually capital cost apportioned over the lifetime of the ship.

 

[exPrivate]

Getting ready for Syria? Remembering Suez?
French Aircraft Carrier Charles de Gaulle deploys in the Mediterranean

 

[PeterCrisp]

How does the fact that in a couple of years the UK might not be at war with anyone for a change effect funding for the Royal Navy? Does the extra money spent fighting as opposed to just peace time exercises come from an outside budget or is it part of the overall mod budget so they will be able to spend money on equipment rather than ammunition and keeping people supplied in the desert which can't be cheap.
Will there be any peace dividend and if so can we look at funding now as some sort of low point where after this things should start looking up?

This may be an odd question for here but do you think the BBC or Discovery channel will do a documentary about building the carriers as the BBC programs about the Astute and Rolls-Royce were pretty good if a bit overly simplistic.

 

[Systems Adict]

How does the fact that in a couple of years the UK might not be at war with anyone for a change effect funding for the Royal Navy?

I believe that it SHOULD NOT affect the budget in any way.

If we start talking about cutting the budget, BECAUSE we're NOT at war, you have to answer THIS question :

HOW could we afford to REPLACE ageing ships with new, state of the art ones ??

The straight answer is, you can't !

Easy thing to do is ALWAYS have a budget for NEW equipment, as you'll never know when you'll need it !

This may be an odd question for here but do you think the BBC or Discovery channel will do a documentary about building the carriers as the BBC programs about the Astute and Rolls-Royce were pretty good if a bit overly simplistic.

Reading between the lines (or looking at the end credits), I'm pretty sure that a private company did all the leg work on the 'Building the ultimate' type programs that made up the series, as it was systematically filmed over a 3 year period.

As a regular visitor to some of the sites across the UK, I can't say I've seen, or heard anything about anyone coming in to film the manufacture of the carriers.

However, that's not to say that there won't be something organised....

SA

 

[ProM]

British military cost accounting conventions (imposed by the NAO, I think) make it impossible to tell what the actual running cost is. Some of the 'running' cost is actually capital cost apportioned over the lifetime of the ship.

I was ignoring that. Just take the crew - say 150 more than OPV for the sake of easy numbers. Multiply that by 3 (usual multiplier to allow for all shore support, crew on leave, training et al), and then by (say) £45k to allow for pay, pension and insurance and you come up with £20m a year. So 2.5 to 3 years of that and you have used up all the saving of the cost of an OPV. And we haven't allowed for higher fuel and spares costs yet


Peter, in the past,conflicts have to be paid for out of the normal budget. Now they are usually funded separately, so the end of the Afghan conflict will not leave more for normal operations. It will however leave a mess of UORs (Urgent Operation Requirements) for which capital has been expended and no allowance made for through-life costs if we want to keep them.

If the BBC do not make a documentary on the making of the carriers then it would be a travesty, and I think unlikely

 

[gf0012-aust]

Peter, in the past,conflicts have to be paid for out of the normal budget. Now they are usually funded separately, so the end of the Afghan conflict will not leave more for normal operations. It will however leave a mess of UORs (Urgent Operation Requirements) for which capital has been expended and no allowance made for through-life costs if we want to keep them.

UK and Aust are similar in this respect.

sustainment of operations is identified as an operations cost and comes out of that financial bucket.

its part of the vision to move towards more detailed accounting and separate daily, procurement and operations into discrete buckets.

I would imagine though that the UK like Oz has seen its ops costs blow out and is seeking to wind them back.

 

[PeterCrisp]

I was kind of hoping that they would try and keep the budget the same and divert the money into upgrades for things we have that are in service or about to be but not at full capability. The Carriers for example could both become operational (maybe one as a helicopter carrier at first) and the Typhoon could do with some upgrades.

 

[RobWilliams]

I was kind of hoping that they would try and keep the budget the same and divert the money into upgrades for things we have that are in service or about to be but not at full capability. The Carriers for example could both become operational (maybe one as a helicopter carrier at first) and the Typhoon could do with some upgrades.

It wouldn't be justifiable to the public to sustain it, and i'd completely agree with the public on this one. After we pull out of Afghan i'd like to see some savings being done on that front and not keep spending the same amount especially in the current financial climate.

All the current major projects have been/are being budgeted for so i see no point in spending more to add more tricks that aren't particularly neccesary, the only thing i'd like to see some money being put into in a few years time is developing a replacement SSBN (but AFAIK Vanguard class will go on until the late 2020s so even thats not neccesary), maybe some more F35s perhaps.

AFAIK both carriers are becoming operational (one deployed, one in port) and indeed IIRC HMS Queen Elizabeth will act as a LPH when she first comes into service.

The upgrades for Typhoon are already being planned for but I won't go into it, have a flick through this link to see a bit more

MoD balances books first time in four decades, Defence Secretary to announce - Telegraph