Explaining this change, Minister Fallon said that the UK wants to promote competition in the field of warship production among domestic shipbuilding companies, in order to develop the warship building industry to serve export activities to the world.
Mr. Fallon also said that in the past 40 years, the UK has not exported new warships, but in the future, this country aims to export warships. The UK government is also considering amending the processes and setting prices to promote competition among shipbuilding companies.
In this strategy, the UK Ministry of Defense also announced a ceiling for building 5 new warships at a price of no more than 250 million pounds per ship. This is considered a lower price than the price of building a corvette – a small, mobile warship equipped with light weapons, usually smaller than a frigate, which foreign shipbuilders have often offered at 375 million pounds per ship in the past 10 years. Although the Ministry of Defense and the Royal Navy do not consider the export of warships as their core task, they believe that the production of warships must always be linked to the international market.
The UK plans to build 19 frigates and destroyers, considering them the core force of the Royal Navy fleet. The first 31e-class frigate is expected to enter service in 2023, and the UK assesses that this type of ship will most likely serve export purposes. Currently, the UK Ministry of Defense has signed a contract to build 8 new 26-class frigates with BAE Group, at a price of 3.7 billion pounds for the first 3 ships.
BAE Systems is one of the world’s leading arms manufacturing corporations in terms of technology, with a scale of producing the most advanced weapons in the world. With its intellectual potential and strong financial backing, BAE Systems is present in most high-tech military fields, such as the production of fighter aircraft, civil aircraft, drones, high-tech defense electronics, anti-submarine weapons (ASW), C3I electronic command system equipment, missiles, space attack and defense systems, nuclear submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers./.
Source: vietnamplus.vn
