On November 16, 2022, the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom announced that in a long-running competition under the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) program for the construction of promising integrated supply ships for the British fleet, it chose the proposal of the consortium Team Resolute, which includes the British companies VMT and Harland & Wolff and the British branch of the Spanish shipbuilding association Navantia (Navantia UK). In fact, this means choosing the design of the FSS ship, presented by the British design company VMT.
Project image of a promising integrated supply ship for the British Navy under the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) program, presented by the consortium Team Resolute (c) Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom The FSS program now provides for the construction of three large integrated supply ships with a total cost of 1.6 billion pounds to provide new British aircraft carrier formations.
The competition under the FSS program with constant delays and postponements has been dragging on since 2017, and finally, the final choice has been made. The contract with Team Resolute should be concluded in the first quarter of 2023, with the start of construction of the lead ship in 2025 and with the commissioning of all three units into the British Navy from 2028 to 2032.
At various stages, almost all leading British and world "pro-Western" shipbuilding companies took part in the tender under the FSS program, however, in September 2021, the British Ministry of Defense selected proposals from four applicants for the last stage of the competition - the above-mentioned consortium of Theam Resolute, the Indian company Larsen & Toubro (acting in partnership with the British company Leidos Innovations), a consortium of Serco and Damen groups, and a consortium of Team UK (which included Babcock and BAE Systems corporations), giving each contracts of approximately 5 million pounds for the submission of draft designs. Thus, the proposals of the Italian association Fincantieri and the Spanish Navantia proper, which were considered strong, turned out to be outside the last stage of the tender.
The VMT project selected as a result, presented by Team Resolute, is considered to be close to the AEGIR series project of Tide-type squadron tankers previously designed by VMT, according to which four vessels were built for the British Navy under the MARS program by the South Korean corporation Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), commissioned in 2017-2019. It is known that the FSS ship of the VMT project should have a length of 216 meters. The full speed should be moderate (19 knots), two Merlin helicopters, as well as transport UAVs, should be permanently based on the ship.
The construction of FSS ships at the suggestion of Team Resolute should be carried out at the Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company in Belfast, while the hull blocks should mostly be built at enterprises in Belfast and Appledore, and partly at the Navantia shipyard in Cadiz (Spain). Navantia's share in the construction program is estimated at 200 million pounds. The UK Ministry of Defense says that the FSS construction program will create 1,200 jobs at British shipyards and 800 jobs at other British contractors.
As part of the British Navy, three new FSS ships should nominally replace four integrated supply ships - two types of Fort Rosalie (built in the late 1970s) and two types of Fort Victoria (built in the early 1990s). At the same time, in fact, now there is only one ship of this class A 387 Fort Victoria left in the British fleet. The second ship of the same type, A 388 Fort George, was decommissioned back in 2011, and both Fort Rosalie-type ships (A 385 Fort Rosalie and A 386 Fort Austin) were withdrawn from the Navy in 2021 and sold to Egypt.
