https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f...tion-8ttzrxnz3
Five of Navy’s six Type 45 destroyers are out of action
Most of the Royal Navy’s destroyers are out of action because they are being fixed or are undergoing maintenance.
Figures released by the Ministry of Defence reveal five out of the six Type 45 warships are tied up in dock, with only HMS Defender operational.
Defender is deployed as part of the carrier strike group led by the
HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, which is in the Indo-Pacific as part of its maiden voyage…..
Another destroyer, HMS Diamond, was also escorting the carrier, but had to stay behind as the group travelled through the Suez Canal after suffering “technical issues” related to its propulsion.
In response to a parliamentary question, Jeremy Quin, the procurement minister, said Diamond was in Augusta, in Sicily, undergoing “maintenance, inspection and defect rectification”.
The Type 45s have had long-running problems with their engines, which have struggled to cope in warm waters.
HMS Daring, HMS Duncan and HMS Dragon are undergoing planned maintenance in Portsmouth. Meanwhile, HMS Dauntless is undergoing a “power improvement” upgrade to rectify an issue with the propulsion system that has been deemed unreliable. It is the first destroyer to undergo the upgrade and is expected to return to sea for trials this year…..
All six of the ships, which are equipped with the Sea Viper missiles that can knock moving targets out of the sky from up to 70 miles away, are expected to have been upgraded by the mid-2020s.
Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the defence select committee, said it was “operationally unacceptable for the Royal Navy’s destroyer availability to be reduced to a single ship”. He said that if Defender too suffered propulsion problems the carrier group would be forced to request backup from a Nato ally. “Bottom line — with global threats increasing we need a bigger navy.”
Mark Francois, the former armed forces minister who asked the question, said: “The Type 45 is arguably the best air-defence destroyer in the world — but that’s not much use if it can’t put to sea.”