Babcock has achieved a major moment in the delivery of the Royal Navy’s Type 31, Inspiration-class programme, as two key milestones – the Steel Cut for HMS Bulldog and the Rollout of HMS Active –took place at its Rosyth facility in Scotland.

The UK Royal Navy’s (RN’s) Type 31 Inspiration-class frigate programme took a further significant step forward on 24 February with the roll-out of the second ship, the future HMS Active, at Babcock’s shipyard in Rosyth, Scotland.

Another step was taken in Rosyth on the same day, with steel cut on ship four, Bulldog.

Five Inspiration-class frigates are being built. Lead ship Venturer was launched in June 2025, and is undergoing outfitting. Active’s roll-out is part of the process of preparing it for launch. The keel for ship three, Formidable, was laid in December, and build work is underway. Following Bulldog’s steel cutting, materials for that ship will begin going into the build hall. According to reports, keel laying for ship five Campbeltown could occur in 2026 too.

“On the metrics we normally judge ourselves by, in terms of the delivery, today marks a significant milestone in the life of the programme,” Sir Nick Hine, Babcock Marine’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), told Naval News, on 24 February. “We only signed a contract at the back end of 2019, and here we are cutting steel on ship four. We only cut steel on ship one four years ago. So, we’ve cut steel on four platforms in four years.”

“We’ve always been clear we’ll deliver all five ships within a 10-year window – from programme award to five ships delivered, within 10 years,” said Hine. “We are still promising to do that.”

The Type 31s are general-purpose frigates, designed to deploy across the globe supporting tasks across the operational spectrum, bringing surface-to-surface missile and air-defence capability at the higher end; then interception and intelligence-gathering tasks; plus maritime security, counter-smuggling, and disaster relief support capacity at the lower end. The five ships, together with the RN’s eight Type 26 City-class anti-submarine warfare frigates, are replacing the navy’s in-service Type 23 frigates.

The Arrowhead 140 design (on which Type 31 is based) has also been selected as Indonesia’s and Poland’s respective future frigates, and is in the conversation for other international programmes.

In a Babcock statement, Vice Admiral Steve Moorhouse, the RN’s Fleet Commander, said “These milestones reflect the momentum, ambition, and national commitment behind the regeneration of our future frigate force.”

“The Type 31 Inspiration class represents a major step forward in modernising our fleet. These are capable and adaptable ships, designed to give the RN the flexibility it needs in a fast-changing strategic environment,” Vice Adm Moorhouse added. “Their combat systems and modular design will allow upgrades throughout their life, ensuring they can meet both today’s threats and those we cannot yet see.”

David Lockwood, Babcock International Group’s CEO, said passing the milestones demonstrated the development of the company’s shipbuilding facility, plus its design and build processes. The company’s statement also underlined the importance of a modular construction approach, the increasing pace across the programme, and the build and supply-chain lessons learned from each ship being fed back into subsequent ships to enhance build planning and delivery. Here, it highlighted reduced integration time through increased compartment and system outfitting in the manufacturing bays, prior to main block integration in the build hall.

Alongside meeting a range of task requirements across the operational spectrum at a time of increasing strategic tensions and resultant growing naval operational output requirements, the Type 31s will be arriving at a time when the RN is changing how it meets the threats it faces.

The UK’s latest strategic defence review (SDR), published in June, heralded a strategic shift for the RN to being a ‘hybrid navy’, integrating crewed and uncrewed platforms to provide greater mass, lethality, and flexibility in tackling these threats.

Type 31 provides the capability the RN needs as a general-purpose frigate. However, said Hine, “What we’re trying to do is help the navy [transition] to this ‘hybrid navy’ concept.”

Here, the Type 31’s general-purpose role (compared to the dedicated anti-submarine and anti-air warfare mission requirements the RN’s incoming Type 26 frigate and in-service Type 45 destroyer deliver, respectively) plus its large, flexible spaces and modular mission approach lend it to being relevant to taking on the role of a command platform within dispersed, disaggregated operational constructs, Hine explained.

To deliver a ‘hybrid navy’, “Type 31 seems to be the perfect platform,” said Hine. Central here in Babcock’s thinking, he explained, is the company’s new ARMOR FORCE (autonomous and remote maritime operational response force) concept. Using Type 31 as a command platform deploying and operating uncrewed vessels including from embarked, modular containers means, Hine added, “capability can be delivered in a different way”.

The flexibility of modular concepts broadly, plus Type 31’s own specific modularity, means the ships are set to be adaptable to the accelerating pace of change. Here, Hine explained, the pace of geopolitical and technological change make modularity even more important in terms of accelerating the speed of capability delivery, and delivering capability that can be more easily disaggregated and dispersed.

Hine noted that future concept focus on disaggregating and dispersing forces within a ‘system of systems’ approach also makes the Type 31/Arrowhead design concept applicable to future RN surface force requirements beyond the Inspiration-class frigates.

The RN’s Future Air Dominance System (FADS) programme is outlined around combining maritime integrated air and missile defence and strike (M-IAMDS) capability integrated with an associated Type 83 destroyer as the host platform.

“I think we could be the answer to FADS, because FADS is a system, not necessarily a ship, and therefore you quite quickly get to an ARMOR FORCE conversation,” said Hine.

The post UK Type 31 Programme Rolls On with Roll-Out of Ship Two appeared first on Naval News.

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