The planned Type 26 frigate is designed to play crucial roles, but the project has been delayed indefinitely. Photograph: Ministry of Defence
Posted on 07/20/2016 10:32:36 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
A new fleet of frigates, described as “global combat ships” designed to play crucial roles, has been delayed indefinitely, the Ministry of Defence has said in testy exchanges with MPs over huge financial and technical problems facing the navy’s surface vessels.
Delays in building the Type 26 frigates – a project promised by David Cameron before the 2014 Scottish independence referendum – is threatening shipbuilding jobs on the Clyde in Scotland.
The project’s problems come on top of serious mechanical failures in the navy’s new fleet of Type 45 destroyers. Key tasks of the navy’s frigates and destroyers include protecting two new large aircraft carriers now being assembled in Rosyth as well as Trident nuclear weapons submarines approaching and leaving their base on the Clyde.
“I can’t give you a time or a date,” Tony Douglas, the MoD’s top official responsible for military equipment, said on Wednesday after he was asked by MPs on the Commons defence committee when the frigate design would be approved. “It could be next year.” Harriett Baldwin, a new junior defence minister, told the MPs: “We do not know yet.”
Douglas added later that the MoD was “now in the heart of negotiations” with BAE Systems, designer and manufacturer of the frigates.
The number of planned new frigates has already been cut from 13 to eight, though the MoD has the option to build five smaller and cheaper general-purpose vessels. One of the problems is how to make the frigates as quiet as possible to make it harder for them to be detected by Russian submarines.
Scotland’s
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The planned Type 26 frigate is designed to play crucial roles, but the project has been delayed indefinitely. Photograph: Ministry of Defence
sounds like pork—English version...
They are not a serious global power anymore—they need to get over it.
The ride at the top of the tower in rough seas has got to be a real puker!
English version of LCS lol
what would they be needing ships for anyway... not like they are a Naval power or something
Nice ship. If only we had co-developed these with the UK instead of explanding the Little Crappy Ship program by calling them frigates.
Look at the specs of those ships. They are closer to the FREMM.
I think you’re right it’s a clone of one
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