Type 31 Frigate

Britain's cheap, fast-build frigate — the Type 31, or Inspiration-class — is a 5,700-tonne general-purpose warship designed to a deliberately fixed price (around £250 million a hull) on a proven Danish hull design. It commissions lightly armed for its size, but with the volume, power and growth margin to be up-gunned later. It is the Royal Navy's bet that more hulls and flexibility beat fewer, gold-plated ships — the affordable counterweight to the high-end Type 26.

Overview

The Type 31 (General Purpose Frigate / GPFF, named the Inspiration-class) is a multi-mission frigate built by Babcock International at Rosyth, based on the Arrowhead 140 design — itself derived from the Danish Iver Huitfeldt-class hull (an OMT design). Its founding principle is affordability and pace: a fixed-price, low-risk, exportable warship to grow Royal Navy hull numbers after decades of a shrinking fleet. As commissioned it carries a relatively light armament — a 57mm Bofors gun, two 40mm Bofors guns and the Sea Ceptor (CAMM) air-defence system — which has drawn criticism, but the design's real selling point is its large reserves of space, weight and power for future weapons and sensors. It is the "fitted for but not with" frigate: cheap and quick now, upgradeable later.

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