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Production has begun on HMS Venturer, the first of the UK’s five new Type 31 frigates. Named after the World War 2 submarine which made history by torpedoing a U-boat while both were submerged, the £1.25billion vessels are designed to change roles to catch the enemy off guard. Equipment such as underwater mine-hunting drones, air defence missiles, and disaster relief stores will be transported by the ships in specially built containers.
After each mission, the kit can be swapped out, meaning adversaries will never be sure exactly what each Type 31 is capable of.
They will be built at Rosyth dockyard in Scotland.
Speaking after the first batch of steel was cut on Thursday, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “Equipped with the innovative technologies at the forefront of the Royal Navy’s future vision, the entire Type 31 fleet will be fitted with a range of capabilities allowing it to undertake a variety of operations at sea.”
Dubbed Persistent Operational Deployment Systems (pods), the Navy says modular containers will make warships “plug and play” in the future.
They say it will be the “Swiss Army knife of the future” due to its “flexible and modular design”.
According to plans, the pods will be compatible with each other to allow the ship’s capabilities to quickly be changed.
But they will not be an integral part of the ship – it can still carry out missions without being customised.
The frigates will undertake a variety of roles on operations, including interception and disruption of illegal activity at sea, intelligence gathering and providing humanitarian support.
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It comes after the Royal Navy was warned it is at risk of being “crippled’ after workers threatened industrial strikes at a nuclear submarine base in Clyde, Scotland.
The contractors hired to maintain weapons systems on Trident submarines have voted for industrial action to be taken, which one union warned will put the UK’s nuclear defence on the brink.
Unite the Union, the largest trade union in the UK, has said that 90 percent of specialist staff it represents at the Coulport armaments base on Loch Long have backed industrial strikes if bosses do not meet their pay demands.
The depot by the Firth of Clyde is the storage and loading facility for nuclear warheads which are put onto submarines based at nearby Faslane.
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