Clues to the UK’s frigate of the future

Richard Scott

Tuesday, 8 September, 2009

Visitors to DSEi have been given a first glimpse of some of the innovative design features that could shape the Royal Navy’s next generation of frigates.

A model unveiled at the show by BVT Surface Fleet has provided an initial indication of the key characteristics of the C1 variant of the Future Surface Combatant (FSC), intended to begin replacing the RN’s current Type 22 Batch 3 and Type 23 frigates from around 2020. And while officials caution that the model represents only an “early visualisation” of the C1 design concept, it nevertheless highlights some of the key attributes of flexibility, modularity and open architecture desired by the FSC programme.

Initial concept design work for the C1 variant of FSC has been completed by the Naval Design Partnership (NDP), a ‘rainbow’ team of naval architects and engineering specialists bringing together Ministry of Defence personnel and industry resource drawn from BVT Surface Fleet, Babcock Marine, BAE Systems, QinetiQ and Thales. The result is a baseline monohull platform, displacing in the region of 6,000 tonnes, equipped for anti-submarine warfare, naval fires, special forces support and possibly precision land attack.

One novel characteristic of the model displayed at DSEi is the stern ramp and aft payload bay area. This concept of a mission bay is intended to afford the ship the flexibility to embark different payloads, such as a towed array sonar, torpedo countermeasures, special forces boats or unmanned vehicles.

Above, the design boasts a large flight deck offering the scope to embark a number of different helicopter types up to Chinook size.

The adjacent hangar area provides dedicated space for a maritime unmanned aerial vehicle.
BVT, designated as whole ship lead contractor and systems integrator, will take over the design lead from the NDP in the programme’s assessment phase, due to start in early 2010. This will see continued refinement of the C1 design against a series of cost/capability trades.