The Common Support Model (CSM) will provide a framework for comprehensive support across the Royal Navy’s fleet of warships for decades to come in one new overarching arrangement.

The model will maintain the likes of both brand new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers, as well as all existing warships and will be able to incorporate future ships such as the Type 26 and Type 31e.

The new arrangement will bring together separate support agreements for individual ship types under a single, more efficient and more manageable model. Worth around £1 billion, it is set to improve the performance of service providers by having them adopt a common approach across all classes of complex warships.

The move aims to boost the performance and speed of all support, no matter what the ship, as well as making savings in equipment costs with the model providing a one-stop-shop for services required.

The model will establish a support system across the surface fleet, from the largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy, the nation’s new aircraft carriers, to the new Type 26 frigates being built on the Clyde and through to the likes of Minehunters and Royal Marine Amphibious Ships. It covers everything from combat management systems, fleet-wide communications and aircraft landing aids, through to spares, repairs and maintenance.

The suite of contracts will support over a thousand jobs in the UK, including at BAE Systems and Babcock in Portsmouth, Bristol, Devonport and on the Clyde, as well as Thales in Crawley and AGI Ltd in Poole.

The model will draw on the strong partnerships across UK Defence and world-leading skills to supply Royal Navy Engineering Technicians with the services and tools they need to keep the entire surface fleet effective at home and abroad, often far from home and in very challenging environments, and enhance the Royal Navy’s mission to protect the UK’s interests around the world.

10 of the 16 agreements, worth £794 million, included in the model have already been signed, with the others set to follow in the coming months.

Sir Simon Bollom, Chief of Materiel (Ships) for Defence Equipment and Support, the MOD’s procurement organisation, said:

Our surface fleet is made up of some the most advanced and capable fighting ships in the world. HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s newest and most advanced Aircraft Carrier, will join the fleet soon and the Common Support Model will provide a framework that will deliver effective support to the Royal Navy’s warship fleet at home and around the globe.

The innovative, ambitious and far-reaching Common Support Model, which will drive efficiencies and greater availability, has been made possible by the enduring and strong relationships which exist between the Ministry of Defence, the Royal Navy, and our industry partners.

Notes to Editors:

The first ten contracts to be signed under the Common Support Model are:

• Four contracts worth £320 million for Marine Systems Support Partner (MSSP) with Babcock, which will pay for spares, repairs and technical services for the Royal Navy’s Type 45 Destroyers and the new Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers.

• A £200 million contract for the Joint Support Solution 2 with BAE Systems to support combat management systems, tactical networks and shared infrastructures aboard 38 Royal Navy platforms including Type 23 Frigates, Type 45 Destroyers, QEC Carriers, Landing Platform/Dock (LPD) and Landing Platform Helicopter (LPH) ships and Mine Counter Measure Vessels, among others.

• Two contracts worth £150 million for amendments to the Maritime Support Delivery Framework (MSDF) with BAE Systems and Babcock to ensure the continuing support of the Royal Navy’s entire surface Fleet, including the two new QEC Carriers.

• A £100 million contract for internal and external communications systems support with Thales for fleet-wide communications support, including long-term support for the QEC Carriers and Type 45 Destroyers.

• A £12 million contract with AGI Ltd to support Visual Landing Aids for aircraft on board ships including the QEC Carriers, Type 45 Destroyers, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s Tide Class Tankers.

• A £12 million contract for ships’ protective systems with Babcock for the current Royal Navy surface Fleet including QEC carriers, and submarines.

It is a huge pleasure to welcome Permanent and Military Representatives of NATO to Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde.

Our nation’s commitment to the Alliance – the bedrock of our defence – remains absolute.

In the past year alone we’ve increased our NATO efforts: policing Black Sea skies, leading half of its maritime missions and upping our efforts to mentor Afghan officers. And today, our Prime Minister is in Estonia visiting the 800 UK troops who, supported by our French and Danish allies, are leading NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence providing vital reassurance to our Eastern European allies.

But there’s no greater illustration of our commitment to NATO which, after all, remains a nuclear alliance than our investment in the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent submarine force. And today, we mark the milestone of its 350th patrol at its home base.

So, before I continue, I would like to thank our brave submariners and our submarine enterprise as a whole. For almost 50 years their efforts and those of their forebears have kept us safe every hour of every day. They remain the ultimate guarantors of our security.

And this event offers us a unique opportunity to remind ourselves why our nuclear programme remains so significant.

Protect Our People

First, it’s about protecting our people. Our nuclear deterrent remains our only defence against the most extreme threats to our way of life.

Those threats are intensifying whether they come from North Korea’s latest nuclear testing setting off a hydrogen bomb, launching ballistic missiles and reinforcing her reckless defiance of the international community. Or Russia, which not content with aggression in Ukraine and Crimea, has over the last few years repeatedly ramped up its nuclear rhetoric and in its latest exercise involving some 50,000 troops massed on the borders of Eastern Europe will also test nuclear capable ballistic missiles.

Now the UK remains firmly committed to the long term goal of a world without nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State, I reduced the number of deployed warheads on each submarine from 48 to 40 and the number of operationally available warheads to no more than 120. Just as we remain committed to reducing our overall stockpile of nuclear warheads to no more than 180 by the mid-2020s.

Yet, at the same time, we remain realistic. The total number of nuclear weapons in the world did not suddenly fall. Much as we would love to live in a world without nuclear weapons. We cannot uninvent them.

Our deterrent ensures our adversaries are left in no doubt that the benefits of any attack will be vastly outweighed by the consequences.

No credible alternative exists. And we see no reason to change our posture.

Protect Our Alliance
But this brings me back to the point at which I started.
Our nuclear deterrent isn’t just essential for our security. it’s essential for NATO’s security as well. It forms one of the Alliance’s key centres of decision making that complicates the calculations of our adversaries.

What is more, many nations, represented here today signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the late 1960s, safe in the knowledge they were covered by NATO’s nuclear umbrella including the United Kingdom deterrent. Not only did that deal help halt the nuclear arms race at the time, it has helped to cut the world’s nuclear stockpile by 85%.

It is no coincidence there hasn’t been a major conflict involving nuclear powered states since the end of the Second World War.

Protect Our Future

Finally, our independent deterrent is a promise to protect our future. We don’t know what threats lie around the corner.

Yet by giving the next generation every means necessary – from the conventional though to the nuclear – to deal with whatever comes round the corner.

We are strengthening their hand ensuring that they will have the means to deter potential threats into the 2040s, 2050s, 2060s and beyond.

That is why today we’re building four Dreadnought class submarines which will enter service in the early 2030’s.

That is why we’re continuing to spend £1.3Bn over the next three years on facilities here at Faslane. And that is why we are building on the incredible advanced manufacturing skills found across Scotland to transform this base into a Royal Navy submarine centre of specialisation a base for all UK submarines providing 6,800 jobs now and 8,200 in the future.

Conclusion

So I hope you find your visit instructive and informative.

You can rely on the UK to remain not just 100 per cent committed to our NATO alliance but 100 per cent committed to our deterrent – a message Parliament confirmed overwhelmingly last year when it voted to maintain CASD. At the same time, we can never be complacent.

As we look towards next year’s NATO summit and beyond we must not just ensure the Alliance’s political and military leaders continue recognising the importance of nuclear capabilities as NATO adapts and modernise but continues to make the case about the importance of nuclear weapons to a new generation.

Our national safety the strength of our Alliance and the security of the world depends on it.