Type 31e programme suspended.

[Head in the clouds.]

Well, I was wondering how long it would take. Now I know.

Linky: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/type-31e-frigate-programme-suspended/

 

[Seahawk]

Well, this was a story of "Ooh, we haven't got enough money.  Tell us, contractors, how much frigate do we get for the inadequate sums we do have?".  Predictably the answer has come back: "Not very much."   

[Head in the clouds.]

When one considers that one F35 costs in the region of £80-100 million each, getting a CREDIBLE warship for £250 million seem rather short on reality and high on optimism.

I feel the contenders will come in line only to see costs rise which will surprise no one but the civil servant in charge.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Working in design engineering as a day job, it never fails to amaze me how people assume a design must be free. Using "off the shelf parts" is all well and good, and does reduce procurement cost and engineering uncertainty (i.e. will it actually work, won't it actually work and even if it does how will it work because I need to know now to design around that) but a full multidiscipline engineering team still has to pull everything together into a coherent system design package integrating all those "off the shelf" parts, proving by calculation that everything will perform safely as a complete vessel and will perform to the specifications given. There are implicit requirements in amongst all that which are obvious to design engineers but not so to others, such as the need for philosophy documentation describing in detail how things are intended to be used and what the strategies are for addressing design conditions later. All of this comes together into an overall "Basis of Design". None of this is cheap. Once you have spent money on all of this and know how many engines of what technology type and fuel they use that you need to achieve the power demands you predict for however long you envisage, the team then needs to generate thousands of detailed drawings to show the ship yard workers exactly what to make. This will be highly tangible clanky stuff like bits of steel but on a warship even electrical and instrumentation cable routings are carefully considered and designed to have diverse routings such that foreseeable damage to one area doesn't wipe out everything.

 

You could easily spend multi-millions producing all the paperwork to describe how a ship is supposed to work and how to build it before you've laid a single keel plate. For comparison, my industry is oil & gas. A new-build platform can easily cost £1billion to design and build. They always use off-the-shelf parts for anything that works such as pumps and compressors - they're all selected from catalogues with minimal extra supplier engineering necessary to provide final tuning and documentation etc. Typically a general rule of thumb is 1/3 of the cost is engineering, 1/3 procurement of equipment and materials and 1/3 construction.

 

Now if the initial order is for 20 or 30 warships you can spread that design cost across many. If you're only getting a commitment for 5 ships then there's only so far that "off the shelf parts" gets you in reducing the unit price because the engineering cost is 100% necessary and there whether you build 1 or 100 of them.

[Head in the clouds.]

Fascinating Jamie. I hope you did not think I was having a stab at the builders/designers at, more the fools that have no understanding of what you have just said and feel that changing one's mind or the parameters mid flight is no more than a signature on a authorisation form.

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Definitely not! I am agreeing with you both! The simple arithmetic dictates that £250million doesn't buy a lot of newly designed warship. The MOD's master plan of adding cheapness by using non-bespoke stuff takes a wedge off costs but can't really tangibly change the estimates. What it can do is give more confidence that the first estimates will be achievable or close to.

 

The trouble with new/bespoke kit is that nobody has already done it and therefore nobody is really sure how much it will cost in the end. If you spend your budget and it's not working then what choice do you have but to try again? That's how costs get out of control - well, that and people changing their minds about what the product is supposed to do at the specification level after you've already designed and developed documentation and drawings for a product to do something else!

[pigsty]

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 10:27 AM, Head in the clouds. said:

I feel the contenders will come in line only to see costs rise which will surprise no one but the civil servant in charge.

Believe me, the civil servant won't be surprised at all.  Silly criteria like this always come from the Minister, usually against hundreds of pages of advice telling him why he's wrong.  The options generally boild down to "Minister, you can have it cheaply or you can have it done properly" and the answer is always "Give me both."  (Not, you'll note, "Could I have both?")

 

But on off-the-shelf, wasn't at least one design supposed to be derived from someone else's ship?

[Head in the clouds.]

6 minutes ago, pigsty said:

But on off-the-shelf, wasn't at least one design supposed to be derived from someone else's ship?

Probably the North Sea ferry running out of Hull🤔

 

That is what you get for £250 million ( or there abouts)

[junglierating]

On 7/26/2018 at 10:27 AM, Head in the clouds. said:

When one considers that one F35 costs in the region of £80-100 million each, getting a CREDIBLE warship for £250 million seem rather short on reality and high on optimism.

I feel the contenders will come in line only to see costs rise which will surprise no one but the civil servant in charge.

Right mate not sure what experience you have of the civil service but like any organisation you get verybad and very good and some inbetween ive met them all so maybe you have had a bad experience 

[Head in the clouds.]

9 hours ago, junglierating said:

what experience you have

To be fair, none that comes to mind, I am trying to fathom how these processes work, it can be very hard to understand the chemistry between various organisations when working on complicated military contracts. 

As you also say, there are good, bad and indifferent in all workplaces, that I do know and I am not tarring all civil servants  with the same brush so sorry if that was the impression I was giving, it is frustrating that after all these years of procurement for the military nothing seems to have changed much since the frantic days of the 50's- 60's.

As Einstein once said " Two things are infinite; the  Universe and human stupidity, but I am not sure about the Universe".

Jamie's post above was very enlightening.

Gary

[junglierating]

Once upon a time the UK used to have its own designers who could design or validate industry designs....but it all (mostly) went out to market forces which is arguebly cheaper or not.

Trouble is we are skint and there is no money forthcoming...so you make cuts and ultimately loose capability.

I like the idea of a second class of frigate but 5 is just not economic frankly you might as weĺl get a couple of extra 26s.

There is no structure to the RN atm and as far as I can work out there appears to be nobody able to put that in to words ....the RAF excel at PR....just look at the range of new kit...trouble is with smaller a/c fleet we seem to have a relience on US kit....thats expensive.

Its going to take an almighty cock up to make govt.or public work out the shortfalls....but someone will be quite unreasonably be hung out to dry....it wont be the govt fault.

Lets face it in the last election Defence was not in the publics top ten.

Still could be worse we could be Germany or france😕

[Head in the clouds.]

33 minutes ago, junglierating said:

we are skint

Probably a fact most countries are skint, it is not always what you have it is more about what you do with what you have. Why would someone change their mind mid point, waste £800 million on putting catapults into our carriers only to not do so, lets not forget the billions spent on Nimrod MRA4 to the point of service entry for it to be chopped into pellets and as you say, ordering such small numbers can never keep costs down.

Everyone knows of the scale of economy, the more you order the less you pay. Why does this not seem to apply to the Government?

I know the arguments regarding all these issues but it my mind it seems that someone is not doing due diligence or not listening, hence this massive waste of money that is much needed across the board.

I have absolute unwavering faith in our industry to design and provide exceptional equipment but this cannot be done without a coherent procurement policy that is not tampered with by every man and his dog, it takes 15-20 years from conception to service of a modern complex weapon system and so a stable policy is needed to stop this haemorrhaging of money.

It probably took around 6-7 years to design and build a Hawker Hunter, it is now 3 time this which leaves it open longer  to all manner of change, political, financial and social and that is often before it is even tested.

33 minutes ago, junglierating said:

Lets face it in the last election Defence was not in the publics top ten.

Yet again, I am perplexed at this. Defence spending, both direct and indirect generates massive sums of money and generally improves our life's,

Most jobs are high end, high skill jobs, then there is the export potential, the local economy benefit from factories, bases and suppliers is often understated and how much military born tech ends up in our cars, homes and life in general?

 

Like teacher kept telling me...' can do better'

 

I am trying really hard here not to go all 'political'

 

Out of curiosity, what is happening in France, I am aware of the defence issues in Germany ( what is their excuse then, they are not skint?)

 

Cheers

Gary

[junglierating]

I think germany has understandably NFI ....France has similar snags to us.

As for the hunter thing....not much to it an airframe and an engine.....technology  is a bit more complex ...still im sure it was cutting edge back in the day Gary🙄

 

[Head in the clouds.]

Just came across this article and it sums up much of what we are saying.

Interestingly about a third of the way into the article is a paragraph about fleet size......mmmm!

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-future-of-british-shipbuilding-marching-towards-a-steady-drumbeat/

 

I thinks he talks sense IMHO.😀,

[junglierating]

Hmm indeed gary