File photo: The United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps gives a speech at Lancaster House, in London, UK, 15 January 2024;
Credit: Reuters/Anna Gordon/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - British defence minister Grant Shapps said he would order up to six new warships for the Royal Marines, as the government starts to indicate where a recently announced rise in defence spending will be directed.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in April that he would lift defence spending to 2.5% of GDP a year by 2030, saying the British arms industry must be on a "war footing" when the world is at its most dangerous since the Cold War.
Shapps said on Tuesday 14 May 2024 that the new vessels, known as Multi Role Support Ships, will be built in the United Kingdom and will help strengthen the UK's amphibious special operations commando force for the battles of the future.
The government had said in 2022 it would build new ships for the Royal Marines.
"It's something we're now able to do because the money's been pledged to defence," Shapps told the BBC.
He will speak at the Sea Power Conference in central London later on Tuesday, where he will also say that two current Royal Marine assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, will not be scrapped or mothballed before their planned out-of-service dates in 2033-2034.
The six new vessels are part of a programme of 28 ships and submarines being built or in the pipeline for the UK's Navy, which Shapps said represented "a new Golden Age for British shipbuilding".
BAE Systems, Britain's biggest military contractor, and another UK defence company, Babcock, are amongst the companies involved in building those 28 ships.
