Feature: UK naval shipbuilding rides the bow wave

The first two Type 26 frigates (HMS Cardiff is pictured here) were consolidated on a hard-standing open to the elements. (Richard Scott/Navypix)

The UK surface warship building landscape has witnessed dramatic change since 2015. At the start of that year delivery of complex surface warships was entrusted to BAE Systems Naval Ships under a 15-year Terms of Business Agreement (ToBA) signed with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in July 2009.

The ToBA framework gave BAE Systems exclusivity on specified naval programmes while underwriting the maintenance of key industrial capabilities. It also required the company to deliver efficiency improvements in exchange for MoD commitments to fund rationalisation and sustainment of capability in the sector.

A corollary of this was an agreement, signed in 2013, to restructure and rationalise BAE Systems' Naval Ships business to match future capacity requirements. This move, reflecting a significant fall in work following the peak of activity on the Type 45 destroyer and Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier programmes, resulted in the 2014 closure of the company's Portsmouth shipbuilding operation – built only 10 years before – and consolidation around facilities at Govan and Scotstoun on the River Clyde in Glasgow.

The plan then was that a new class of 13 Type 26 frigates would be built on the Clyde to replace ageing Type 23s one-for-one. However, the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, presented to parliament in November 2015, changed all that: the Type 26 programme was pared back to eight multimission frigates optimised for force anti-submarine warfare, and a new programme established to procure a class of five cheaper general purpose frigates, designated Type 31, to replace general purpose Type 23s.