UK warship HMS Cardiff begins float-off process

HMS Cardiff, the second of eight Type 26 City Class frigates BAE Systems is building for the UK’s Royal Navy, has entered the water for the first time.

It was moved from a slipway in Glasgow’s Govan shipyard and towed to a deep-water location in the West of Scotland. Once it has been acclimatised to the water over a number of hours, the frigate will be taken to BAE Systems’ Scotstoun shipyard where it will be further outfitted before it moves to the testing and commissioning stages.

The float-off process has been described by BAE Systems as a more modern, efficient and low-risk way for a ship to enter the water, compared to the previous dynamic launches where ships were slid down a slipway into the water. The float-off process was used for the first-of-class, HMS Glasgow, in November 2022 as well as five Offshore Patrol Vessels, also built by BAE Systems in Glasgow.

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Of the other three Type 26 vessels under construction, HMS Glasgow is undergoing the outfit of its combat and mission systems at Scotstoun, and HMS Belfast and HMS Birmingham are still under construction at Govan.

The addition of a new frigate to the Royal Navy will be welcome when it comes, as the fleet has a significant number of ships currently under repair, negatively impacting its operational capabilities.

The BAE Systems-built ship flies in the face of current UK Ministry of Defence anxiety over not only naval readiness, but also a £22 billion (US$28.9 billion) defence budget shortfall, and an ongoing Strategic Defence Review that will see the Ministry’s commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP over time at odds with the stringencies likely to be imposed by that budgetary black hole.

David Shepherd, Type 26 programme director at BAE Systems, said: “The Type 26 has awesome and world-leading capability and we’re looking forward to installing HMS Cardiff’s complex systems and bringing her to life.”