Shipbucket

she isn't a commissioned warship

Well it was an ideal opportunity to reviving the city names.

Interesting to chart how these names have adorned cruisers, then destroyers now frigates as the fleet has shrunk.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Not just that but how over time frigates and destroyers have grown to be the size of cruisers. Here's hoping we get a new Birmingham...

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AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

Maybe the RN should 'sell' naming rights to the ships?

I miss the good old names like HMS Devastation... you know you are F*** when...

I like Geographic names it ties the country to the navy better in my opinion

So any thoughts on the proposed 31e's?

Depends entirely on how much capability they can crowbar into 250 million, and if the other shipyards are as big a ripoff merchant as BAES is.

Plus their plan to buy a bunch of ships with the intention of selling them onto other navies and then order a second batch for the RN seems a little sketchy.

Overall it could either end up as one of the worst budget driven designs in recent memory or a set of capable second line frigates that can be adapted to a variety of roles. With this being the MoD, my money is on the former.

Well to be fair, Babcock's P60's for the INS were kept very tight at 60 million, I'd be interested in seeing the Arrowhead as it develops.

As for the plan for selling them off, wasn't that the original plan for the 23's, with them planned to be sold at around 18 years and replaced, until politics got involved and they are being stretched out.

Think BAe is out of it, with it being between BMT and Babcock, given the MOD seems to be heading to another major "blackhole" in the budget (as reported in the Times), and the price tag of the 26's I don't think they have a choice about trying something different, and if they follow the pattern of the 26's in pulling the hardware out of the 23's, shouldn't that mean you get the Artisan and Sea Ceptor systems without much cost?

The T23s were at the point of design expected to spend basically their entire lives towing sonar arrays across the GIUK gap, and as such were expected to be utterly shagged after 20 or so years.

The Reds however proved to not be up to the task and pussed out early, leaving the T23s with plenty of hull life when operating under more laid back "colonial" conditions.


As to what the T31s will eventually look like, i imagine that in a futile attempt to keep down costs they will end up using as many systems ripped from the outgoing T23s as possible, so Artisan radar, 30mm Close in guns, a number of CAMM-N. The savings will probably come from deleting any "new" equipment the GP T26s would have had in favour of reconditioning more of the T23s fit.

Like taking the existing Mk8 4.5 inch gun over the 5 inch, not fitting any sort of CIWS, etc, etc

if anything these are the sort of ships that would benefit the most from the "Fitted for but not with" idea, instead of spending money gold plating them, efforts should be made to provide space for mission equipment to be added at a later date with a focus towards subsuming tasks not normally under taken by the RN's major warships.

kinda like an LCS without the stupidity that is trying to go 40 knots, attempting to change missions sets in 24 hours, or having crews of 50 officers and enlisted.