Navy ship HMS Northumberland to be decommissioned after 30 years of service

A Navy frigate affiliated to the county of Northumberland will be decommissioned in cost-saving measures announced by Defence Secretary John Healey.

Along with other savings, Mr Healey said that ageing Type 23 frigate HMS Northumberland is beyond economic repair and will be decommissioned along with two Wave class tankers. The Army’s Watchkeeper drones, which cost around £5m each and have been in service for a decade but have been beset by problems and are effectively obsolete, will be grounded and assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which have both been flagships, will be decommissioned.

Helicopters will also be affected by the cuts, with the 14 oldest Chinook transport aircraft removed early from service and Puma’s lifespan not being extended beyond March 2025.

In a statement to MPs, Mr Healey warned that further cuts could be required but insisted he had the support of armed forces chiefs for the decisions he had made.

He said: “For too long our soldiers, sailors, aviators have been stuck with old, outdated equipment because ministers wouldn’t make the difficult decommissioning decisions. As technology advances at pace, we must move faster towards the future. So today, with full backing from our service chiefs, I can confirm that six outdated military capabilities will be taken out of services.

“These decisions are set to save the MoD £150 million over the next two years and up to £500 million over five years, savings that will be retained in full in defence.”

Mr Healey said he was dealing with a “dire inheritance, the state of the finances and the state of the forces often hidden to Parliament, billion pound black holes in defence plans, taxpayers’ funds being wasted, military morale down to record lows”.

Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said the cuts meant “scrapping key defence capabilities and weakening our national security”. Conservative MP and former defence committee chairman Sir Julian Lewis warned the absence of the assault ships could encourage an enemy “to try something like the Falklands in the future”.

HMS Northumberland, which was built at the Swan Hunter yard on Tyneside in the 1990s, will go out of service in March 2025, as structural damage makes her “uneconomical to repair”.

Hundreds of people queued for hours to take a look around HMS Northumberland when it returned to Tyneside earlier this year.