The Royal Navy has chosen South Korean firm Daewoo for a £452m deal to build four new fuel tankers. The 37,000-tonne Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability (MARS) tankers will allow the Royal Navy to refuel at sea. UK firms took part in the tender, but the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said none made a final bid to take part.
Shadow Defence secretary Jim Murphy said the move was “more bad news for British industry” while the GMB union said it was angered by the decision. Keith Hazlewood, GMB national secretary, said: “Once again UK taxpayers’ money is being spent abroad on ships which are vital for the Royal Navy to defend our shores. “A proactive UK government could have put a consortium together to build these tankers in the UK.”
Despite being built in Korea, the UK has won £150m of associated contracts to assist the project. These include £90m on UK contracts for equipment, systems, design and support services. There will be a further £60m investment in the UK to be spent on customising the ships for the Royal Navy, trials and specialist engineering help.
I wonder if they will be built to Merchant Navy specs, same as HMNZS Endeavour – if so, could be trouble. Endeavour only has one screw which is bad news for RAS’s. Frank, the pic above didn’t come out.
Am I reading correctly, when I joined the Navy, ships have always been able to fuel at sea, so what has changed, did they stop fueling at sea at some stage? What has happened to all the RFA’s; have they all been driven up on a Indian beach for scrapping?
No, they’re actually driven up on the beach at Goa!
Trivia === Goa is India’s richest state with a GDP per capita two and a half times that of the country as a whole.
The same happened to,both the email and this website. Did a refresh and it appeared on the website only.
Saw a very interesting doco on ships being scrapped at Goa – that’s probably why Goa is India’s richest state. For those of you who haven’t read Our History – Integrated Comms Systems – Goa is where HMNZS Southland ended up.