Navy’s newest warships to have engines replaced after cutouts

Six £1bn Type-45 destroyers will undergo major refit after power failures

THE Royal Navy’s most modern warships are to have holes cut in their sides in order to fit new engines after a series of breakdowns.

Six Type-45 destroyers will have to undergo the overhaul expected to run to tens of millions of pounds after a series of power failures and concerns they could have shutdowns during operations.

The staggered refit, which will begin in 2019, will put added pressure on the fleet, which many Naval commanders say is already overstretched.

The decision to overhaul the ships, which cost £1 billion each, has been taken only seven years after the first vessel was commissioned.

The Ministry of Defence’s admission that they need major work follows years of efforts to dismiss the problems as “teething trouble”.

A former First Sea Lord said the disclosure was extremely worrying.

Lord West of Spithead said: “Clearly, there is a major fault here. Initially people were saying these are teething problems and you always have teething problems with new ships. It is quite clear it is more than teething problems now.

“You don’t expect suddenly to lose all power when you are steaming along normally.”

The 8,000-ton air defence destroyers, with a crew of 190, are designed to shield the rest of the fleet from air or missile attack. They will play a vital role in defending Britain’s new aircraft carriers when completed.

But their innovative power and propulsion system, under which the same gas turbines drive the ships’ shafts and the rest of its systems, has struggled with cutouts.

In 2014, HMS Dauntless cut short an exercise and had to return to port after losing power.

Her sister ship, HMS Daring, needed emergency repairs in Bahrain in 2012 while deployed to the Gulf. Reports said the ship encountered propulsion problems while on patrol off the coast of Kuwait.

In 2009, HMS Daring also lost power in the Atlantic after a visit to New York and had to be fixed in Canada.

Richard Scott, a naval consultant at IHS Jane’s, said: “What’s happened latterly very much acknowledges that after a period of six or seven years, the power system is still very fragile.”

Type-45s have worked alongside the US Navy in the Gulf for the past year, protecting their aircraft carriers while they launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Isil). “The concern is that we have some kind of mechanical breakdown, which would be very embarrassing operationally and also in terms of the Navy’s standing with its closest ally,” Mr Scott said.

A spokesman for the MoD said the vessels were “hugely capable ships and have consistently made a difference to our safety and security”.

She said: “In our defence review last year we committed to improving the Type45s’ power and propulsion system through a series of machinery upgrades during planned maintenance, which will ensure increased availability and resilience over the life of the ships.”