BARROW AND BIRKENHEAD HAVE A KEY ROLE TO PLAY IN THE UK’s FUTURE WARSHIP PROGRAMMES

Barrow shipyard has a key role in helping the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) deliver an ambitious programme for building new warships, submarines and ‘warlike’ ships over the next 10 years. The 5,000 (2010) skilled warship designers and builders currently located at the Barrow in Furness shipyard are an essential part of this future skills base required to deliver the Future Warship Programme of the Royal Navy.

At Birkenhead, Cammell-Laird is focused on RFA fleet ship maintenance and repair and shipbuilding.

The UK Warship Building Programme 2010-2020

The Ministry of Defence in its Defence Industrial Strategy 2005 announced a £14billion ambitious warship, submarine and Royal Fleet Auxiliary shipbuilding programme involving construction of around 30 ships.

The naval surface warship programmes up to 2020 will involve the following  submarine and ship types:

8 Nuclear powered attack submarines  - “Astute” class

4 Vanguard class submarine replacements -the  ‘successor' submarines 

A new Maritime Underwater Future Capability requirement (MUFC) to replace Astute submarines

20 Future Surface Combatant Type 26 warships

6 Type 45 Destroyers, to offer air defence for the fleet

2 Future Aircraft Carriers project is to cost around £5 billion.

8 -12 ‘MARS’ (Military Afloat, Reach and Sustainability) ships, costing up to £2 billion including 1 Joint Casualty Treatment Ship

The UK Government has yet to decide how, when, and where several  of the above-mentioned ships will be constructed and who will build them.

The trade unions believe they should all be constructed in UK shipyards to retain the UK’s world class expertise in naval shipbuilding.

Sourcing some parts of the programme, such as the MARS ships overseas, despite a long standing UK Government policy commitment to have all warship and ‘warlike’ ship hulls built in the UK, would only lead to the UK losing highly skilled jobs, redundancies and other nations hosting the technology lead in some types of naval shipbuilding.

The 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy proposed a partnership with industry to sustain the UK’s naval shipbuilding industrial base'.

The Submarine Enterprise Collaborative Agreement is seen as a means of delivering the submarine element.

‘Gaps’ in naval design and production work need to be avoided.This can be achieved by maintaining steady drumbeats of work for UK shipyards.

The Ministry of Defence have acknowledged that the proposed naval ship building programmes will require a dramatic increase in the number of ship designers, and skilled workforce in Britain’s shipyards. This requirement was quantified by Rand Europe as far back as 2002 and again in 2005.