Type 31 Frigate: Delivering a warship design solution to address navies’ personnel challenges

Navies around the globe have been facing ongoing challenges in generating and retaining enough trained and experienced personnel to operate their warships. With data available confirming a decline in personnel over 20 years, the Royal Navy and the Irish Naval Service are among many who are experiencing this drop in recruits and difficulty in retention – despite a significant concern against an uncertain global situation and the constant requirement to provide warships at sea.

The Type 31 General Purpose Frigate represents an optimal solution that has been designed by Babcock to tackle this issue, reducing the number of personnel needed whilst delivering operational capability and ensuring both the safety and retention of those on board. A state-of-the-art warship, we’ve engineered the Type 31 frigate to meet the challenges of the future maritime environment, with digital transformation right at the heart of its delivery.

This whitepaper, published at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) Warships 2024 conference, explores the design features observed in developing the lean crewing solution in the Type 31 frigate, giving insight into how design effort and the adoption of modern technology generated a complement solution that was considered the minimum viable size for the versatile combat operations of a globally deployable General Purpose Frigate that is in build today.