UK Carrier project gets green light

The British government gave approval for an alliance of five shipbuilders to press ahead with designing the biggest warships ever built in the UK. The Aircraft Carrier Alliance consortium would also now include Britain’s largest shipbuilder, VT Group, and Scottish Babcock International. The alliance had hitherto comprised defense giant BAE, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of U.S. defense company Halliburton, French defense electronics group Thales and the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

The consortium will carry out 60% of a contract worth £3.5 billion ($6.20 billion) to build two replacements for the Royal Navy’s HMS Invincible, Ark Royal and Illustrious aircraft carriers and is to progress to the point where manufacturing an now begin. The shipyards involved are BAE Systems at Govan in Glasgow and Barrow in northern England, VT Group in Portsmouth and Babcock in Rosyth in Scotland. The latter yard will also carry out the final assembly of both carriers.

The remaining 40% of the contract would be put out to tender and the MoD was to spend some £300 million to develop the design of the ships to the point at which manufacturing can begin. This latest decision means the firms can now embark upon detailed design of the 60,000-ton carriers.