For once actually, it appears that people are a little keener to put some pressure on BAES.
There are a couple of reasons for this - the T26 design is not yet ready to go to contract (despite three years and £150M spent in the assessment phase) and the price is apparently a little rich for some peoples taste. That said (despite 1SLs quip) there is nothing out there that actually meets the requirement and that includes FREMM.
The first issue is probably the more serious and had directly led to the order for the batch 2 River class, which the RN doesn't really have a requirement for, but are needed under the TOBA to provide work for BAES production engineering and steel trades (steel on the PoW is nearing completion). The choice of ship was entirely based on the absolute minimium design work required ('cos they're all desperately gyrating in circles to fix T26) before starting to cut steel.
Word on da street has it that they're struggling to solve the "issues" because no-one really appears to be in charge and that BAES are reluctant to commit more effort until there is more money. While it is perfectly acceptable to wonder what the 300 people in Filton and Scotstoun have been doing over the last three years, it would also appear that some of the MoD/RN types involved might not be helping either. So there is something of an impasse which will need to be overcome before the ship can go forward to contract.
On the price - there appear to be two issues. The ship has been about the same size as a T45 for a couple of years at least. The primary drivers of this are the accommodation standard and damage control provision, with secondary effects from the modular mission bay and the Wokka capable flightdeck and some impact from the Mk41 VLS and the gun. However, the very fact that the ship is larger than the T23 it is to replace has brought out the usual cabal of VSO and CS who are absolutely convinced that they can cost a ship purely on its displacement and that it cannot possibly be right for it to be so much bigger than a T23. They are of course delusional, as T23 was designed to a very different set of standards compared to those in use now, which would not pass muster in a new design safety case among others.
The other issue is that MoD is incapable of producing a should-cost estimate with which to support negotiation with BAES. This is particularly important in that the capital cost of a large chunk of the combat system equipment should not fall on the T26 project itself (as mentioned in an upthread post, its cross-decking from upgraded T23). That means that the ship cost is even more dependent on manhours than previous ships. Just as a stake in the ground, the mid to late T23 were being built (using 1990s practices) for between 2 and 2.5M manhours apiece. Size is not directly proportional to work content, which would indicate that you should be able to get a T26 with manhour content at ~ 3M or so. Put your manpower cost (inc overhead) against that and you can see whereabouts that price should end up. Steel is cheap btw - the steel for each ship should cost no more than £7M, with (say) 700000 of your 3 million manhours to fabricate it.
This one is going to run and run - a game of chicken writ large.
One other thing - there are about eight "western" warship building yards left. Plus a couple of wilder options in Korea and Japan. Further consolidation is not going to lead to a bright new future and affordable ships (despite what Mr Rand may think) - it will actually lead inexorably to the same end-state as the european aircraft industry. We may need to start realising that there are costs involved in contraction of an industry as well.
Last edited by Not_a_boffin; 17th Nov 2014 at 10:22.