Two Carriers - Two Years On
It was on 3 July 2008 when Baroness Taylor, then Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, signed contracts with industry to build the two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
Now just two years later, manufacture is well underway with work taking place at six UK shipyards – Babcock at Appledore and Rosyth, BAES Surface Ships (BAES-SS) at Govan, Portsmouth and A&P Tyne and Cammell Laird at Birkenhead.
It is anticipated that work on the ships will create or sustain between 7,000 and 8,000 jobs at the Tier 1 shipyards in Glasgow, Rosyth, Portsmouth and Devon, with another 2-3,000 jobs in the supply chain.
Many major milestones have been achieved in the last two years, including start of construction at Appledore in late 2008, first cutting of steel, placement of more than 100 material and services sub-contracts worth £1.2 billion, delivery of large equipment items such as propellers, diesel generators and anchors, construction of the dock at Rosyth where the ships will finally be assembled, and subsequent delivery of blocks as they are completed. Today, more than 1.2 million components fill the warehouse for distribution during the build phase.
This is good news. Cammell Laird started their involvement started their involvement this week - see
here.
The nationwide programme to build the Royal Navy’s new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers has passed another milestone as construction on the first ship, the Queen Elizabeth, began on the Mersey today.
Minister for International Security Strategy Gerald Howarth started the crane that laid the first of the steel plates for the ship’s giant flight deck.
Birkenhead company Cammell Laird is the final shipyard in the programme to begin construction, and will build two of the sections that will make up the ship’s flight deck. Together they will weigh in at 7,500 tonnes – more than a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer. The work is worth £44 million to Cammell Laird and will provide a significant number of jobs in the area, boosting the local economy.
As he toured the yard, the Minister met some of the 1,200 strong workforce involved in the project - including some of the 72 apprentices. He said:
“Aircraft Carriers represent a national asset for the UK. Power and versatility make them a formidable warfighting tool, and able to fulfil a wide range of requirements in an increasingly diverse and changing global Defence landscape. The workers I have met here today are rightly proud to be a part of it, and it’s particularly exciting to see so many young apprentices learning their trade on such a prestigious project.”
The Aircraft Carrier Alliance now has a website:
Aircraft Carrier Alliance
I would point out that CVF work is helping our industrial capabilities, maintaining and developing skills and keeping facilities alive. This has wider economic benefits for Britain as a whole. In my part of the world, the shipyard at Appledore has been saved by the actions of what was then DML (now Babcock). Working on CVF work has kept the yard going, and helped build and and retain key skills. Now they have an
export order, two patrol vessels for the Irish Navy.
Without the actions to keep the yard going, and the generation and regeneration of skills and capabilities, would they have got the Irish order? If not, would the work have gone to another UK yard? I think not. I am sure that there are many other examples.
One more thing: Converteam UK is
developing a catapault system in case F35B gets axed.