

The Royal Navy’s fleet of six £1bn destroyers is breaking down because the ships’ engines cannot cope with the warm waters of the Gulf, defence chiefs have admitted.

They also told the Commons defence committee on Tuesday that the Type 45 destroyers’ Rolls-Royce WR-21 gas turbines are unable to operate in extreme temperatures and will be fitted with diesel generators.

Rolls-Royce executives said engines installed in the Type 45 destroyers had been built as specified – but that the conditions in the Middle East were not “in line with these specs”.

Earlier a Whitehall source told Scotland’s Daily Record: “We can’t have warships that cannot operate if the water is warmer than it is in Portsmouth harbour.”

The problem with the engines, which the Ministry of Defence initially dismissed as “teething problems”, first became clear when HMS Daring lost power in the mid-Atlantic in 2010 and had to be repaired in Canada.

The ship, built by BAE Systems, needed repairing again in Bahrain in 2012 after another engine failure. The first warning signs emerged in 2009 when the Commons defence committee warned that “persistent overoptimism and underestimation of the technical challenges combined with inappropriate commercial arrangements” would lead to rising costs.



The navy wanted 12 ships but ended up with six. The Type 45 has an integrated electric propulsion system that powers everything on board. The ships are vulnerable to “total electric failures”, according to one naval officer in an email. That leaves the ships without propulsion or weapons systems.

Gen (now Lord) David Richards, the former chief of defence staff, repeatedly questioned the relevance of expensive kit procured by successive governments. “We have £1bn destroyers trying to sort out pirates in a little dhow with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] costing $50, with an outboard motor [costing] $100,” he said.

The cost of preparing the destroyers, expected to amount to tens of millions of pounds will increase pressure on the defence budget and may be one of the reasons for delays in the construction of Type 26 frigates on the Clyde.

Delaying the Type 26 frigate programme will mean the UK fleet would be “grossly inadequate” for the tasks ahead, Lord West told the defence committee.

The Labour peer and former first sea lord said the Tory government was being “economical with the actualité” when it said the frigates are being held up by design changes when “the reality is there is not enough money in the MoD”.

A Unite convener told the committee that the union expects construction to be delayed until early 2018, leaving the Clyde shipyards overstaffed for at least two years.

John Hudson, managing director at BAE Systems, said: “We are in detailed negotiations with the MoD as to the build programme for the Type 26.

“Until those discussions are complete I am not in a position to be able to advise what the cut steel date might be for the Type 26 programme.”

An MOD Spokesperson said: “The Type 45 was designed for world-wide operations, from Sub-Arctic to extreme tropical environments, and continues to operate effectively in the Gulf and the South Atlantic all year round.”