On January 18, 2023, the British Ministry of Defense issued a contract worth 1.6 billion pounds to 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), for the construction of three new integrated supply ships for the British Navy under the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) program.
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) the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom Earlier in November 2022, the UK Ministry of Defense selected the proposal of the Team Resolute consortium in the Fleet Solid Support (FSS) program, which has been running for a long time since 2017, which means choosing the FSS ship project presented by the British design company VMT.
The FSS program provides for the construction of three large integrated supply ships to provide new British aircraft carrier formations. According to the contract concluded with Team Resolute, the construction of the lead ship should be started in 2025, with the commissioning of all three units into the British Navy by 2032.
The contracted VMT project presented by Team Resolute is believed 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 should be carried out by the Team Resolute consortium at the Harland & Wolff shipbuilding enterprise in Belfast, while the hull blocks should mostly be built at enterprises in Belfast and Appledore, and partially (aft sections) at the Navantia shipyard in Cadiz (Spain). Navantia's share in the construction program is estimated at 200 million pounds. It is planned to invest 77 million pounds in the modernization of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast as part of this program. The UK Ministry of Defense says that the FSS construction program will create 1,200 jobs at British shipyards (including 900 jobs in Belfast) 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.
