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UK Minister for Defence Procurement Maria Eagle has officially confirmed that the Royal Navy’s next-generation surface combatant, the Type 83, has progressed to the concept phase, but major questions remain.
The United Kingdom, like Australia, is in the midst of one of the largest and most comprehensive expansion and recapitalisation of its armed forces in history and certainly its most consequential “peacetime” rearmament effort since the late-1930s.
As an island nation and traditional naval power, the Royal Navy is now a former shadow of its former glory, with a well-documented decline in the Royal Navy’s fleet and its capability and the number of vessels it deploy both close to home and further abroad to secure the UK’s global interests at any given time.
Once the dominant and unrivalled power on the world’s oceans, the Royal Navy – much like the Royal Australian Navy – has evolved into a specialised fighting force, shaped primarily for the post-Cold War era of stability underwritten by the United States.
In the three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Royal Navy has largely operated as a compact, highly specialised force, relying on a limited number of high-impact platforms both above and below the waves.
Highlighting this, William Freer and Dr Emma Salisbury, in an analysis piece for the Council on Geostrategy, called for the United Kingdom to place greater emphasis on responding to the constantly evolving global and regional balance of power and the increasing naval capability of peer competitors like Russia and China, coupled with the increased capability of emerging powers and non-traditional, asymmetric challenges.
At the core of the Royal Navy’s response to these challenges currently is the small fleet of Type 45 Daring Class guided missile destroyers, which themselves are scheduled to be replaced beginning in the late-2030s.
The rapid development of global naval capabilities, in particular those of the Russian Navy and the People’s Liberation Army Navy have prompted the Royal Navy, like the US and Royal Australian Navy, to begin planning their next-generation of surface combatants, with the replacement for the Type 45, the Type 83 a linchpin for the future combat capability of the Royal Navy.
While it had been largely quiet for a while, the program has recently progressed, with UK Minister for Defence Procurement Maria Eagle confirming that the program was advancing to the concept phase in a response to the UK Parliament.
Minister Eagle, responding to a question from Mark Francois MP, said, “The Type 83 destroyer will be the core of the Future Air Dominance System (FADS) program, which has commenced its concept phase. FADS will replace the UK’s present Maritime Air Defence Capability vested in the Type 45 Destroyer Program.”
However, little remains known about what the Type 83 will end up being, beyond what the UK Ministry of Defence described as, “A transformative multi-domain program that will provide integrated air and missile defence against the toughest of threats in the air domain, and strike against the hardest of targets in air, land and maritime domains.”
What we do know, however, is that the ship will be a behemoth, with an approximate displacement of at least 12,000 tonnes, placing it in the same league as the US Navy’s troubled Zumwalt Class destroyers and the PLAN’s Type 055 Renhai Class guided missile cruisers, one of which recently circumnavigated the Australian landmass.
In terms of weapons capacity, long-standing artwork indicates two banks of at least 64 Lockheed Martin manufactured Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS) missile cells, for a total magazine of 128 VLS cells, as well the standard BAE Systems Mk 45 five-inch naval gun two Phalanx Close in Weapons Systems, two 30 or 40mm guns, and two additional unidentified close in weapons systems.
Equally interesting is the continued use of Australia’s own CEAFAR 2 or a derivative radar system into the main mast and secondary mast, aft over the main hangar, raising interesting questions about the role the AUKUS agreement will play in shaping the development and delivery of a joint radar system, combat management system and combat system interface.
With the Australian government already recognising that our own Navy will need to grow in both mass and capability, supported by the ongoing and bipartisan commitment to the continuous naval shipbuilding capability in-country, Australia needs to get moving on what its own Hobart Class replacements will not only look like, but also be capable of delivering to the RAN.
