The BAE Type 26 Global Combat Ship is expected to replace Type 23 frigates such as HMS Winchester, shown here. The Royal Australian Navy has placed a $26 billion order for nine ships, and Canada is considering it as well.
At the end of June, the Royal Australian Navy announced it had selected a version of the British Type 26 “Global Combat Ship” as its next frigate. Canada also is considering the Type 26 for its new frigate. The Australian purchase is the first major sale of a standard British warship design for decades, the last great success being the Leander-class frigate. (The U.S. Navy will not consider the Type 26 for the “future frigate” [FFG(X)] because it is not yet in service, a program requirement.) In the Royal Navy, the Type 26 will replace the 13 existing Duke-class Type 23s. The new ship is much larger, nearly as large as ships that some navies still call destroyers.
For more than a century, frigates were considered the backbone of any sailing navy. Smaller than the great 60- to 120-gun “ships of the line” that led fleet actions, frigates often cruised independently. The six authorized by Congress in 1794 marked the beginning of the post–Revolutionary War U.S. Navy, but the term fell out of use as ironclads and steam power displaced sail power. Not until World War II was the word revived. The retirement of the USS Simpson (FFG-56) in September 2015 leaves the USS Constitution as the Navy’s only frigate in commission. (Until the Simpson’s retirement, she and the Constitution were the last two ships on the active list to have sunk enemy vessels in action.)
Starting in World War II, frigates became antisubmarine escort ships, intended to be more capable than corvettes (another term revived from the age of sail) but less sophisticated than the anti-air-capable sloops (also a resurrected name). Cold War frigates generally retained the antisubmarine mission, although the U.S. Oliver Hazard Perry class was designed with antiair capability as well. At the end of the Cold War, NATO members discarded most of their frigates because the specialized escort role no longer seemed relevant. No rival sea power appeared to be on the horizon, and the value of convoys against extremely quiet nuclear-powered submarines had come into question.
Without a specialized antisubmarine role, the frigate essentially becomes just another multipurpose surface warship—one size down from a destroyer, hence less expensive and suitable for purchase in greater numbers. That is not to be despised, but it raises the question of just what lower cost means and requires. At present, one of the most expensive components of a U.S. destroyer is the Aegis combat system. Any new frigate must have effective antiair weapons to defend itself and others against missile attacks.
Designers have benefited from enormous advances in computer power over the past quarter century. Type 26 incorporates one approach to taking advantage of that. Instead of Aegis’s four fixed arrays, the ship uses a fast-turning Artisan radar that constantly scans elevation. Fast turning reduces effective radar range, because the radar cannot stare in any one direction for very long, limiting the energy output on a target. As long as it can detect an incoming target, however, it can update the target’s position frequently to create a tactical picture. But that picture is more limited than one generated by an actively scanned array such as the Aegis uses. Violent missile maneuvers can limit the accuracy of the tactical picture generated by a rotating radar as well as how close a defensive missile can get before it relies on its own seeker.
The Type 26 will employ the Sea Ceptor missile, derived from the advanced short-range air-to-air missile (ASRAAM). ASRAAM relied on infrared guidance, but Sea Ceptor has a radar seeker, data link, and larger motor. It is vertically launched, and the ship can update tracking until the homing seeker activates. The missile also can be used to attack ships, although its warhead is small.
BAE makes Sea Ceptor, and in cooperation with the European missile company MBDA it has developed an extended range version using a booster. The Sea Ceptor was conceived to replace Sea Wolf, a point-defense missile with a very short range. It can be quad-packed in a standard Mk 41 modular launcher.
The Type 26 is part of a considerable departure in Royal Navy ship procurement. Before about 1990, ships almost always were designed by the Royal Navy, which received staff requirements and negotiated with other departments to determine the appropriate combinations of weapons and sensors. This process became more and more difficult as sensors and weapons came to represent an ever-greater share of the cost and complexity of warships. The perception seems to have grown within the British government that something different was needed. The Type 23 frigate was the last major design for which the navy’s Ships Department was responsible.
BAE, formerly British Aerospace, became the design agent for the Ministry of Defence. It produces most British weapon systems, and it has a considerable share in U.S. weapon production. For example, BAE owns the company that produces the standard U.S. Navy 5-in./62-cal. Mk 45 Mod 4 gun. It may be that the adoption of this weapon for the Type 26 reflects the company’s familiarity with its own product line. It is certainly an advantage in selling the ship to the Royal Australian Navy, which already uses the same gun.
BAE also produces the Artisan radar and the Sea Ceptor missile. Using its own systems probably makes integrating them into a new ship easier. In some sense, BAE is now doing what the Royal Navy formerly did for itself when it designed its ships to use weapons it also designed—except that BAE also develops the integrated combat systems, something the Royal Navy could not quite do for itself.
The counterargument is that BAE lacks the Royal Navy’s lengthy ship-design experience. In effect, the choice has been made that it is more difficult to make sensors and weapons work together effectively than to design a satisfactory hull. Much the same argument has been made in the United States. That was the logic of giving contractors complete control over the design of the two alternative versions of the littoral combat ship (LCS).
Maintaining and training a fleet requires standardization, and here the British have the better argument. They use standardized systems and weapons, most of which have been developed by BAE. (The weapons not developed by BAE are not new and have been standard for some time.)
The LCS case is more difficult; the U.S. contractors that developed the two versions of the ship employed their own radars and combat control systems. The original idea was to buy only one variant, but that did not happen. At this point, no mass conversion of one type’s sensors and systems to the other’s—to solve the logistical and training problem—can be expected.
Something similar may haunt the U.S. frigate program. The U.S. Navy has tried to solve it by specifying a Lockheed Martin combat system, and by trying to convince the Australians, the British, and the Canadians to buy systems compatible with it, so that the four navies can work together effectively.
Dr. Friedman is the author of The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems, available from the Naval Institute Press.