When Warsight wrote about the poor availability of the Royal Navy’s (RN’s) surface and submarine fleets on 15 April 2026, few would have expected the retirement of two more frigates just three months later, though in fact HMS Richmond and HMS Iron Duke had already quietly been withdrawn and were being stripped of weapons and systems at Devonport.

On 13 July 2026, when their retirements were finally acknowledged, HMS Iron Duke had not been to sea for 276 days, while HMS Richmond had last been at sea 225 days earlier.

Frigates are important platforms for the RN’s surface fleet, so the loss of two ships is significant.

Two or three frigates are effectively tied to sustaining Operation ‘Ceto’: a standing military task focused on protecting the UK’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and monitoring Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic and High North. The frigates operate as Towed Array Patrol Ships (TAPS) for Operation ‘Ceto’, but not all Type 23s were equipped for the role.

TAPS patrols typically last for about three to four months and entail streaming a towed array sonar for extended periods, often in rough seas. This imposes a real beating on hulls and ships’ crews.

At one time it was expected that the RN would provide all of the ships forming its Carrier Strike Group, which would normally include two air defence destroyers and a pair of frigates, plus support ships and a screening nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN). It has been unable to do so, relying instead on NATO allies and only occasionally assigning a single frigate to the RN’s centrepiece capability.

Increasingly, what were once considered to be core frigate roles are being assigned to Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), which now undertake forward-deployed ‘presence’ operations, supporting British overseas territories and maintaining a global presence, including one of them acting as the Falkland Islands guard ship. Batch 1 OPVs and Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessels now even shoulder the bulk of the burden of monitoring and escorting Russian warships and shadow fleet tankers as they pass close to the UK.

The two retired Type 23s had undergone life extension (LIFEX) programmes, with HMS Richmond (one of three of its class to receive the Naval Strike Missile (NSM)) having even been re-engined. The last warship built by Swan Hunter on the Tyne, HMS Richmond was no stranger to active service, shooting down two Houthi drones in the Red Sea in 2024 and transiting the Taiwan Strait in September 2025.

HMS Iron Duke underwent a GBP 103 million (EUR 121 million), 1.7 million-man-hour, 49-month ‘LIFEX’ refit between May 2019 and May 2023. The ship was described as having been “so badly corroded that the structural work carried out on her hull was almost twice that required for any previous ship in the class”. The refit was said to have been the most complex undertaken on a Type 23 frigate, but was expected to allow the ship to serve for at least five more years.

Plans to fit HMS Iron Duke with the towed-array sonar removed from the decommissioned HMS Westminster were abandoned in November 2025. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) commented at the time that, “given the platform’s remaining service life, the time required to complete the conversion and competing operational priorities, the benefits of proceeding did not justify the additional cost”.

HMS Iron Duke spent the best part of a year undertaking sea trials, workup and Fleet Operational Standards and Training (FOST) certification after emerging from refit and returned about 16 months of operational availability. The ship was quietly stripped of its weapons and sensors and has not been to sea since October 2025.

HMS Iron Duke underwent a GBP 103 million (EUR 121 million), 1.7 million-man-hour, 49-month ‘LIFEX’ refit between May 2019 and May 2023. The ship was described as having been “so badly corroded that the structural work carried out on her hull was almost twice that required for any previous ship in the class”. The refit was said to have been the most complex undertaken on a Type 23 frigate, but was expected to allow the ship to serve for at least five more years.

Plans to fit HMS Iron Duke with the towed-array sonar removed from the decommissioned HMS Westminster were abandoned in November 2025. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) commented at the time that, “given the platform’s remaining service life, the time required to complete the conversion and competing operational priorities, the benefits of proceeding did not justify the additional cost”.

HMS Iron Duke spent the best part of a year undertaking sea trials, workup and Fleet Operational Standards and Training (FOST) certification after emerging from refit and returned about 16 months of operational availability. The ship was quietly stripped of its weapons and sensors and has not been to sea since October 2025.

Plans for Iron Duke to go back to sea in March 2026 were cancelled and the ship’s crew will now mostly be transferred to the Type 23 HMS Kent when it emerges from a major refit this year.

“Iron Duke’s story is not simply a tale of huge financial waste, although that charge is difficult to avoid,” stated the website Navy Lookout. “It reflects a broader failure to align refit expenditure with sustainable crewing, equipment fit and realistic service-life projections. Investing over a hundred million pounds in a hull that ultimately delivered less than a year-and-a-half of frontline service, and then withdrawing her without ceremony, is another dismal episode in the RN’s recent history.”

The Type 23 frigates were designed for an 18-year service life, but all of them have gone beyond that, with some serving for 30 years or more. Now, however, the type is becoming much more difficult to keep operational and seaworthy. For the 18 years between 1999 and 2017 successive governments failed to lay down a single new frigate hull, while construction of the eight replacement Type 26 and five Type 31 frigates has been ponderous, paced to fit a particular spending profile, rather than by any perception of urgency.

The first-of-class Type 26 and Type 31 ships, Glasgow and Venturer respectively, are expected to be delivered to the RN in 2027, according to BAE Systems and Babcock, and are planned to enter service by the “end of the decade”, with the most optimistic estimate of operational capability being “late 2028”.

In March 2020, the then minister for defence procurement, Jeremy Quinn, said the Type 23 frigates “are continually being updated and upgraded to meet new threats or to replace obsolete technology” adding, “This is achieved via a Through Life Management Plan. On current plans the last Type 23 frigate will transition out of service in 2035.”

Many believe that things may get worse for the RN frigate fleet before they get better, as there are some doubts as to how long one of the five remaining frigates can keep going. It has been reported that the material state of HMS Portland, the second youngest of the remaining five, is a concern. The ship spent much of 2025 in an unplanned docking period.