UK sets its course for MRSS programme

MRSS Offers Modularity, Amphibious Manoeuvre to Support UK Conventional Deterrence
A landing craft deploys from the amphibious ship HMS Albion, during exercises off Norway in 2023. The UK has announced a programme for up to six new multi-role amphibious ships, designed to support future Commando operations. (Crown copyright/UK MoD, 2023) Pictured: HMS Albion as seen from one of her LCVP’s
The Royal Navy (RN) expects to begin market engagement with industry later this year as part of work to develop the outline business case for the Multi Role Support Ship (MRSS) programme.
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Up to six MRSS vessels are planned to enter service from the early 2030s as the UK’s current amphibious shipping fleet reaches the end of its life. Funding approval for an initial three MRSS vessels was confirmed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) earlier this month, with the stated intention that these ship will be built in the UK.

Speaking at the Defence Leaders Combined Naval Event (CNE) 2024 conference in Farnborough on 22 May, Navy Command’s MRSS programme director Commander Alex Allen said the approval to move the programme into its concept phase was a significant step towards realising the recapitalisation of the RN’s littoral strike capability.

“This really is going to be a multifunction naval ship. [Our] Littoral Response Groups that will deliver littoral strike will be the primary purpose for the Multi Role Support Ship – to be able to lift, protect and enable the Commando Forces.”

Commander Alex Allen, Royal Navy Command’s MRSS programme director

The current UK amphibious capability is delivered by six ships: the RN-manned landing platform dock ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark; the three Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA)-operated Bay-class landing ship dock (auxiliary) vessels; and the air training ship/primary casualty receiving ship RFA Argus. All are due to retire between 2031 and 2034.

RFA ARGUS LSS
The UK’s casualty receiving and auxiliary ship RFA Argus, pictured operating in the Caribbean Sea in 2020, will serve as an interim littoral strike platform to support the UK’s Littoral Response Group (LRG) requirement, the UK Ministry of Defence announced in July 2022. (Crown copyright/UK Ministry of Defence 2020)

“MRSS is seeking to replace all of these capabilities in a single design vessel,” said Commander Allen. “They will operate in two Littoral Response Groups in two geographic regions around the world, and they will be forward-deployed to respond to operations.”

He continued: “These two Littoral Response Groups will be able to form to become a Littoral Strike Group and begin to deliver the warfighting element of our Commando Force. They will also be able to aggregate within a Carrier Strike Group to become an Expeditionary Strike Force and provide a key capability to NATO and our partners.”

As well as delivering the Commando Force, a number of other key requirements will shape the MRSS. These include support to maritime special operations; the ability to host a maritime deployed hospital care facility (Role 2 Enhanced); the ability to host, launch, operate and recover expeditionary offboard autonomous systems; and command and control (C2) up to a two-star NATO headquarters.

According to Commander Allen, the MRSS will also be required to operate in a medium-to-high threat environment independently as part of a Littoral Response Group. “We just have to look to recent events in the Yemen [and] the proliferation of [anti-ship ballistic missiles] where we, as the programme team, have changed our thinking about the level of protection that MRSS is going to need to have.”

Over the next few months, the MRSS programme team will be conducting a value engineering exercise to evaluate how to balance performance, cost and time across the broad requirements set. Operating cycle modelling is also being undertaken to help understand how various different ‘users’ can be serviced, and how these affect the design solution, crewing and support – for example, said Commander Allen, the current view is that the C2 and medical roles do not need to be concurrent, which tends towards modular solutions for these capabilities.

As a pre-procurement activity, the current concept phase is intended to finalise the key user requirements, gather information on the market, test assumptions on the acquisition strategy and establish initial engagement with industry. The current planning assumption is that the MRSS will be procured through competition, although the detailed acquisition strategy will be developed as part of the concept phase.

This activity will culminate in the submission of an outline business case in mid-2025 to update the MoD as to the requirements, affordability and deliverability of the programme. The procurement strategy will also be set at this point.

Commander Allen said that the timelines for the MRSS programme – being conditioned by the out-of-service dates for the current amphibious platforms – would be challenging. He also acknowledged that the UK shipbuilding enterprise faced resource constraints given the scale of current and future programmes in the UK shipbuilding pipeline. “So we’ll be looking, over the next few months, to engage with our industry partners to understand those [capacity] challenges, and look to shape the procurement strategy as we move forward to our next approval point next year.”

The RN and the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) had last year examined the feasibility of a joint common ship design – under Project Catherina – to meet both the MRSS requirement and the RNLN’s own six-ship LPX (now Amphibious Transport Ship) programme need. However, the two navies were unable to sufficiently harmonise their requirements.

“We went through a series of wargames…to test both our sets of requirements and concepts to find the common ground,” said Commander Allen. “And there is a lot of common ground but we identified that both our concepts and our budgets were not aligned enough for a full common design.

“That said, Project Catherina will continue and we’re currently working with our Dutch colleagues to identify what common design elements within our respective designs we could still collaborate on. What we are absolutely signed up to is to ensure interoperability between these two vessels.”

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