RFA Resurgent's Keel Is Laid at Appledore, First of Three Fleet Solid Support Ships
Appledore, 3 September 2026
Key points
- The keel was laid for RFA Resurgent, first of three Fleet Solid Support ships, at Navantia UK's Appledore yard in Devon
- Sister ships are named RFA Reliant and RFA Resourceful; final assembly, integration and trials move to Harland and Wolff in Belfast
- The UK government cites GBP 100 million invested in the shipyards and around 1,200 UK shipyard jobs plus hundreds of apprenticeships across the programme
- The three ships enter service in the early 2030s, carrying munitions, spares, food and stores to Royal Navy vessels including carrier strike groups
- Each ship carries a core crew of 101 Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel plus berths for 80 more for helicopter and boat operations
The keel was laid for RFA Resurgent at Appledore on 3 September, the first hull milestone for a three-ship Fleet Solid Support class that will resupply Royal Navy carrier strike groups from the early 2030s, with final assembly assigned to Harland and Wolff in Belfast.
The programme splits construction across three sites: hull modules at Navantia UK's Appledore yard in Devon and at Navantia's yards in Spain, with final assembly, systems integration and trials consolidated at Harland and Wolff in Belfast. London's own figures for the wider programme are GBP 100 million invested in the shipyards and roughly 1,200 UK shipyard jobs, plus hundreds of apprenticeships, spread across Resurgent and its sisters Reliant and Resourceful. Each ship is built to carry a core crew of 101 Royal Fleet Auxiliary personnel, with berths for 80 more to support embarked helicopters and boats.
The Fleet Solid Support class exists to fix a known gap: RFA Fort Victoria, the last of the Fort class, is the Royal Navy's only solid-support hull, and carrier strike groups have leaned on allied stores ships for munitions and dry stores when she was unavailable. Keel-laying is a hull milestone, not a delivery one — entry into service across all three ships is not due until the early 2030s, meaning the capability gap the class is meant to close persists for several more years of carrier deployments.
The Belfast leg is where this programme has already been rescued once. Harland and Wolff entered administration in September 2024 with the Fleet Solid Support contract on its books, and its shipyards passed to Navantia UK in January 2025; the hull now taking shape at Appledore and the assembly hall in Belfast belong to the same owner only because of that transfer. Großwald's Signal No. 138 carried the keel as a Watch line; the milestone that decides the early-2030s date is the first block move to Belfast, not this one.
