The UK's Type 31e Frigate programme has suddenly been suspended.
The official claim is a lack of "compliant bids"; there were only
two, one from BAe Systems (currently out of political favour after not
even pretending to try to stay within budget, and making major errors
in the design and construction of the Type 45) with Cammell Laird
based on the Omani Khareef class corvette, the other from Babcock
and BMT based on the Danish Ivar Huitfeldt class.
Neither had any real hope of meeting the "hard" cost limit of £250
million per ship (the _Khareef_s cost something like £100m each, seven
to ten years ago, but without the capabilities that the Royal Navy
wanted; the _Ivar Huitfeldt_s cost the Danes £246m each at about the
same time, and reused a load of hardware from older ships), but that's
never stopped the MoD before. I suspect rather that this is a simple
way to save money while blaming someone else; the news was buried
until Parliament had recessed for the summer. The Navy needs ships,
but doesn't seem to have any particular enthusiasm for this one, which
sits awkwardly between the front-line combatants it claims to replace
and the OPVs (and even the OPVs cost rather more than this one's meant
to).
Given the chaos created by other recent governmental decisions, I
suspect this project will be quietly forgotten and the Navy will
shrink again.
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