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New UK tankers


Slater

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1 hour ago, Slater said:

Any idea why no British yard submitted a bid for these?

 

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/a-year-late-uk-receives-first-carrier-support-ship

 

None of the UK yards had the capacity to build them due to work on the carriers. It is a UK design (BMT Aegir) and being built by Daewoo they'll be built in half the time and substantially lower cost anyway.  I *think* I read that they can launch a hull in about six months after laying down.

 

Both the UK and Norway are doing this with this class of tanker, and both countries will bring the ships home to finish fitting out - presumably all the electronics and whatever armament is fitted will be included in that

 

Shane

(Edit: Wikipedia explains all this and matches reasonably well with what I know from various defence and naval forums so is probably accurate enough)

Edited by Shane
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No orders no yards - difficult to blame BAE Systems for the lack of orders from UK government.  The total UK naval requirement simply isn't big enough to justify all the previously-existing yards, let alone to spread the orders about so all of them could have been kept viable.  Given the erratic timescale of such orders, there may be difficulty in keeping even whatever's left going at a viable even workload.

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I had the "joy" of being involved in this bid. There was interest from one UK yard but they were offering a conversion and the MOD decided to change the rules wanting new only leaving two Korean yards who got into a price war. DSME/BMT won. But all has not been plain sailing if you pardon the pun. Tidespring is a year late and still needs to undergo UK customisation at A&P in Falmouth. I can't say too much at the risk of getting  in to trouble. 

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  • 3 months later...
On 18/01/2017 at 10:52 AM, Slater said:

Any idea why no British yard submitted a bid for these?

 

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/a-year-late-uk-receives-first-carrier-support-ship

 

By the late 1970's the game was up for our commercial shipyards.

Chronic under investment, this lead to the yards being simply un able to build what was required, union issues as pre all British industry of the time and government indifference,

We won the war, but the continentals won the peace and that is the long & the short of it.

 

Warship's are a different thing to build.   Fleet oilers are essentially Merchant ships with bells on.

Bear in mind that a current generation Large Containership is bigger than a US Navy carrier.

The last British built ship I had the pleasure of commanding was built in 1987.  But was fundamentally a 1970's ship built later.

The other company ship's now are all Dutch build.

The difference between 1987 Appledore & Ferguson's build and 1990 De Merwede build is about 25 years in terms of use of space and amenities.

 

Sad but true.

 

 

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On 18/01/2017 at 22:26, Paul E said:

...the MOD decided to change the rules...

Quelle surprise.  I've been involved in work on the receiving end of that particular game as well.  It's not a new thing; HMG/ the WD (War Dept - a much more accurate name IHMO) was also prone to playing SBs with manufacturers.  Nevil Shute (yes the novelist; aka Nevil Shute Norway, worked on R100 with Barnes-Wallis and was one of the main founders of Airspeed) is fairly scathing in his autobigraphy (Slide Rule1) about the way the WD and it's various constituent agencies like the Air Ministry mucked around with aircraft manufacturers in the 1930s/

 

1 - If you haven't read it I recommend that you do.  Good insight into the both the R100 and R101 likewise on the tribulations of setting up and running an aircraft building business.

Edited by TheLurker
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  • 1 month later...
On 4/29/2017 at 6:41 PM, At Sea said:

 

By the late 1970's the game was up for our commercial shipyards.

Chronic under investment, this lead to the yards being simply un able to build what was required, union issues as pre all British industry of the time and government indifference,

We won the war, but the continentals won the peace and that is the long & the short of it.

 

Warship's are a different thing to build.   Fleet oilers are essentially Merchant ships with bells on.

Bear in mind that a current generation Large Containership is bigger than a US Navy carrier.

The last British built ship I had the pleasure of commanding was built in 1987.  But was fundamentally a 1970's ship built later.

The other company ship's now are all Dutch build.

The difference between 1987 Appledore & Ferguson's build and 1990 De Merwede build is about 25 years in terms of use of space and amenities.

 

Sad but true.

 

 

Not just unions mate management have also got to take a fair proportion of the blame too

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8 minutes ago, junglierating said:

Not just unions mate management have also got to take a fair proportion of the blame too

In the ship building industry its anyone involved or was. MoD keep changing requirements, Governments can't make their minds up then realise they need something else, the old union demarcation in the 60s/70s pushed up delays and costs, then the strikes. Potential customers walked and stayed away...I knew an RN Commander who was on the Ministry team during a Type 42 build. The whole time he was there he saw one bloke spent all day with a drawing sat on a box smoking, he just moved around the ship with his drawing,box and roll ups. Didn't do a stroke and he said quite a few were "at it" and got away with doing nothing because they were over manned. The original hangar design couldn't take chopper . The original elevators design on Invincible couldn't take a Sea Harrier it was due to carry.

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1 hour ago, junglierating said:

Oi we is british they are lifts not elevators :think: Think you is getting your aeroplanes and gash barges mixed up lol:frantic:

 

No idea what they're called on boats (oh dear! You're really going to go at me now !).. Didn't matter though, you did !

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