Further funding of £2 billion for the future Dreadnought class submarines.

According to a PR published by BAE Systems on May 9, 2022, the Ministry of Defence has announced more than £2 billion of further funding for the Dreadnought nuclear deterrent submarines, which are under construction at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness.
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Artist rendering of future Dreadnought-class submarine (Picture source: Royal Navy)

The funding is to enable the third major phase of the programme, Delivery Phase 3, the most significant stage so far in terms of criticality, value and complexity.

The investment marks the latest financial commitment between the Ministry of Defence, BAE Systems and Rolls Royce. It is the initial investment within a planned total of nearly £10 billion for the whole of the third delivery phase.

Dreadnought is one of the world’s most complex engineering programmes. More than £1 billion has been invested in advanced technology and upgraded infrastructure at BAE Systems’ Barrow shipyard to enable it to deliver Dreadnought, with £450 million of further investment to be made over the life of the programme.

The Dreadnought programme supports almost 30,000 jobs across the UK, with more than half of these estimated to be based in the North West of England, and a supply chain spend of £7.5 billion across 1,500 UK companies. In addition, BAE Systems currently has more than 1,000 employees in training on its early careers schemes within its Submarines business and is set to recruit a further 340 apprentices and 90 graduates into the business this year.

This phase of the programme will see the first of four submarines, HMS Dreadnought, exit the BAE Systems’ shipyard to begin sea trials, laying the foundation to sustain the Continuous at Sea Deterrent for as long as the international security situation makes it necessary. It will also allow learning from this phase to be applied to the build and test of later boats.

The contracts with Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems will contribute significantly to the UK Government’s levelling-up ambitions and will support the training and development of the men and women of the Royal Navy who will take to the water in HMS Dreadnought when she enters service in the early 2030s.

About Dreadnought class submarines

The Dreadnought class is the future replacement for the Vanguard-class of ballistic missile submarines. Provisionally named "Successor" (being the successor to the Vanguard-class SSBNs), it was officially announced in 2016 that the first class would be named Dreadnought and that the class would be the Dreadnought class. The next three boats will be called Valiant, Warspite and King George VI.

The class is expected to have a length of 153.6 m (504 ft), a beam of 12.8 m (42 ft 0 in) and a draught of 12 m (39 ft 4 in). She will have a displacement of 17 200 tons.

The submarines will be armed with four 21 inches (533 mm) torpedo tubes for Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes and 12 ballistic missile tubes for 8 to 12 Lockheed Trident II D5 SLBMS.