UK to Announce £1 Bln Framework to Support Royal Navy’s Warship Fleet

The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) will announce a £1 billion framework to support Royal Navy’s fleet of warships which includes combat management systems, fleet-wide communications and aircraft landing aids, through to spares, repairs and maintenance.

The model will maintain both brand new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers as well as existing warships and will also incorporate future ships such as Type 26 and Type 31e, the MoD said in a statement Tuesday.

The new arrangement will bring together separate support agreements for individual ship types under a single, more efficient and more manageable model. Worth around £1 billion, it is set to improve the performance of service providers by having them adopt a common approach across all classes of complex warships.

The move aims to boost the performance and speed of all support, no matter what the ship, as well as making savings in equipment costs with the model providing a one-stop-shop for services required.

The model will establish a support system across the surface fleet, from the largest ships of the Royal Navy, the nation’s new aircraft carriers, to the new Type 26 frigates being built on the Clyde and through to the likes of Minehunters and Royal Marine Amphibious Ships.

The suite of contracts will support over a thousand jobs in the UK, including at BAE Systems and Babcock in Portsmouth, Bristol, Devonport and on the Clyde, as well as Thales in Crawley and AGI Ltd in Poole.

The model will draw on the strong partnerships across UK Defence and world-leading skills to supply Royal Navy Engineering Technicians with the services and tools they need to keep the entire surface fleet effective at home and abroad, often far from home and in very challenging environments, and enhance the Royal Navy’s mission to protect the UK’s interests around the world.

10 of the 16 agreements, worth £794 million, included in the model have already been signed, with the others set to follow in the coming months.