Future Carrier (Including Costs)
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 807
Likes: 425
From: Portsmouth
Beyond that, not sure she's had that much. Was still running around with a fairly ancient radar IIRC.
Still - about 37 years of useful service. Can't knock it.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Joined: Jul 2000
Aviation Qualifications: Spotter
Posts: 24,509
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From: Peripatetic
https://www.navylookout.com/type-45-...mediterranean/
Type 45 destroyer to be sent to the eastern Mediterranean
Today, it was confirmed that the Prime Minister has ordered the Royal Navy to deploy an air defence destroyer to protect Cyprus in the face of Iranian drone and missile threats. The Fleet Air Arm will also send 2 Wilcat helicopters armed with Martlet missiles to the island.
HMS Dragon is being prepared and will sail on a voyage of around 3,000nm (5,500km), taking about 7 days to get into theatre. As we previously observed, the need for naval assets in the Mediterranean was not hard to predict. The Navy had offered the government the option to preposition a Type 45 ahead of the attack that Trump had telegraphed for several weeks in advance, but planned NATO deployments were deemed the priority. Events in the region are moving fast, and the ship’s arrival could be too late to prevent more damaging attacks on RAF Akrotiri.
A Type 45 can monitor a huge area of airspace and can defeat the medium-range ballistic missiles and attack drones fielded by Iran. The powerful sensor suite fitted to the Type 45s will increase coverage and warning times for the island. The destroyer is also an ideal platform for air defence coordination and could vector jets to intercept drones or cruise missiles.
HMS Diamond proved this capability during actions in the Red Sea in 2023-24. The Sea Viper system and the Aster missiles can easily take down these types of targets, but at £1-2 million per shot, this is a very expensive and precious effector, especially if required to defeat a mass attack. Unfortunately, Dragon has yet to receive the Sea Ceptor system, which would multiply firepower and is a significantly cheaper missile. The Phalanx and 30mm guns are well capable of defending the ship against UAS, but can not add much to the area defence of Cyprus. Whether the ship will deploy with her 48-cell missile silo fully loaded is also uncertain. In 2024, HMS Diamond returned to Gibraltar to replenish missile stocks midway through her Red Sea operations, having only launched a handful of missiles.
Wide open
RAF Akrotiri, a Sovereign Base Area in southern Cyprus, was hit by a Shahed-type drone just after midnight Monday and remains vulnerable. Like the majority of UK defence installations, Akrotiri is wide open to missile and drone attack unless fast jets can scramble fast enough to attempt interception. There are minimal ground-based air defences (GBAD) and no hardened Aircraft Shelters (HAS). It is believed the ORCUS counter-UAS system is deployed at the base, but this is an electronic jamming-based system intended to defend against small, low, and slow drone threats, not the large Shahed-type attack drones in their terminal phase. Deploying one of the Army’s Sky Sabre batteries to Cyprus would seem to be a very sensible step that could also be put in place quickly.
Iranian attacks are most likely to come from its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon. The island is also in range of Shahed drones or missiles fired from Iran, although they must travel 1,200km through Iraqi and Syrian airspace. There is pressure from Cypriot leaders for the UK to do more to defend them. Greece has already announced the deployment of two Hellenic Navy warships to help protect Cyprus, including their brand new frigate HS Kimon, as well as deploying F-16 jets to Andreas Papandreou Air Base on the island. France has announced it will also send a frigate to the eastern Mediterranean, and Germany is considering doing the same.
Juggling act
All part of the naval life, but the ship’s company and support teams in Portsmouth have had to move quickly to prepare the ship to sail at short notice. HMS Dragon was earmarked to become the flagship of Standing NATO Maritime Group One, but her maintenance period has been expedited and she is being taken out of dry dock and will begin loading munitions today. Dragon is expected to sail early next week. She completed FOST in December but has not been to sea since and will need to conduct a brief workup while in transit.
HMS Duncan is available but is earmarked to join HMS Prince of Wales and the carrier strike group on Operation FIRECREST. However, she has some defects that need addressing and is due for a short maintenance period.
The Royal Navy simply does not have enough ships to sustain vessels on deployment overseas, ready to respond to emergencies as it used to. Instead, it is reduced to prioritising its handful of available ships to assign to the most urgent mission at the expense of other tasks. This situation is not of the RN’s making and is the clear result of successive governments underfunding defence. The crippling in-year budget rounds and small spending increases that barely cover the cost of inflation have all contributed to the precipitous decline.
Defence In Paralysis
Now delayed for 8 months and counting, failure to publish the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is causing near paralysis across an organisation that was already grossly under-resourced for the long list of tasks it is required to be ready for.
Despite defence of the nation being the first duty of government, the current Chancellor believes the MoD is just another department that should wait in the queue while she funds other, more politically popular priorities. The argument that defence should have no more money until it can reduce waste and improve efficiency appears superficially reasonable. Unfortunately, this is no time to play politics and is wildly out of step with the urgent need to be ready to ‘fight tonight’ in an increasingly dangerous world. We cannot defend ourselves using apologies for historical mismanagement; what matters is the current and future force. The UK needs to recover its hard power and quickly; this cannot be done on the cheap or without a significant increase in funding.
Today, it was confirmed that the Prime Minister has ordered the Royal Navy to deploy an air defence destroyer to protect Cyprus in the face of Iranian drone and missile threats. The Fleet Air Arm will also send 2 Wilcat helicopters armed with Martlet missiles to the island.
HMS Dragon is being prepared and will sail on a voyage of around 3,000nm (5,500km), taking about 7 days to get into theatre. As we previously observed, the need for naval assets in the Mediterranean was not hard to predict. The Navy had offered the government the option to preposition a Type 45 ahead of the attack that Trump had telegraphed for several weeks in advance, but planned NATO deployments were deemed the priority. Events in the region are moving fast, and the ship’s arrival could be too late to prevent more damaging attacks on RAF Akrotiri.
A Type 45 can monitor a huge area of airspace and can defeat the medium-range ballistic missiles and attack drones fielded by Iran. The powerful sensor suite fitted to the Type 45s will increase coverage and warning times for the island. The destroyer is also an ideal platform for air defence coordination and could vector jets to intercept drones or cruise missiles.
HMS Diamond proved this capability during actions in the Red Sea in 2023-24. The Sea Viper system and the Aster missiles can easily take down these types of targets, but at £1-2 million per shot, this is a very expensive and precious effector, especially if required to defeat a mass attack. Unfortunately, Dragon has yet to receive the Sea Ceptor system, which would multiply firepower and is a significantly cheaper missile. The Phalanx and 30mm guns are well capable of defending the ship against UAS, but can not add much to the area defence of Cyprus. Whether the ship will deploy with her 48-cell missile silo fully loaded is also uncertain. In 2024, HMS Diamond returned to Gibraltar to replenish missile stocks midway through her Red Sea operations, having only launched a handful of missiles.
Wide open
RAF Akrotiri, a Sovereign Base Area in southern Cyprus, was hit by a Shahed-type drone just after midnight Monday and remains vulnerable. Like the majority of UK defence installations, Akrotiri is wide open to missile and drone attack unless fast jets can scramble fast enough to attempt interception. There are minimal ground-based air defences (GBAD) and no hardened Aircraft Shelters (HAS). It is believed the ORCUS counter-UAS system is deployed at the base, but this is an electronic jamming-based system intended to defend against small, low, and slow drone threats, not the large Shahed-type attack drones in their terminal phase. Deploying one of the Army’s Sky Sabre batteries to Cyprus would seem to be a very sensible step that could also be put in place quickly.
Iranian attacks are most likely to come from its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon. The island is also in range of Shahed drones or missiles fired from Iran, although they must travel 1,200km through Iraqi and Syrian airspace. There is pressure from Cypriot leaders for the UK to do more to defend them. Greece has already announced the deployment of two Hellenic Navy warships to help protect Cyprus, including their brand new frigate HS Kimon, as well as deploying F-16 jets to Andreas Papandreou Air Base on the island. France has announced it will also send a frigate to the eastern Mediterranean, and Germany is considering doing the same.
Juggling act
All part of the naval life, but the ship’s company and support teams in Portsmouth have had to move quickly to prepare the ship to sail at short notice. HMS Dragon was earmarked to become the flagship of Standing NATO Maritime Group One, but her maintenance period has been expedited and she is being taken out of dry dock and will begin loading munitions today. Dragon is expected to sail early next week. She completed FOST in December but has not been to sea since and will need to conduct a brief workup while in transit.
HMS Duncan is available but is earmarked to join HMS Prince of Wales and the carrier strike group on Operation FIRECREST. However, she has some defects that need addressing and is due for a short maintenance period.
The Royal Navy simply does not have enough ships to sustain vessels on deployment overseas, ready to respond to emergencies as it used to. Instead, it is reduced to prioritising its handful of available ships to assign to the most urgent mission at the expense of other tasks. This situation is not of the RN’s making and is the clear result of successive governments underfunding defence. The crippling in-year budget rounds and small spending increases that barely cover the cost of inflation have all contributed to the precipitous decline.
Defence In Paralysis
Now delayed for 8 months and counting, failure to publish the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) is causing near paralysis across an organisation that was already grossly under-resourced for the long list of tasks it is required to be ready for.
Despite defence of the nation being the first duty of government, the current Chancellor believes the MoD is just another department that should wait in the queue while she funds other, more politically popular priorities. The argument that defence should have no more money until it can reduce waste and improve efficiency appears superficially reasonable. Unfortunately, this is no time to play politics and is wildly out of step with the urgent need to be ready to ‘fight tonight’ in an increasingly dangerous world. We cannot defend ourselves using apologies for historical mismanagement; what matters is the current and future force. The UK needs to recover its hard power and quickly; this cannot be done on the cheap or without a significant increase in funding.
Joined: Jan 2008
Aviation Qualifications: SLF
Posts: 1,016
Likes: 1,065
From: Australia
ORAC How to you find time to collate and post all this material, ORAC? I really appreciate your constant supply of relevant snippets, thank you again.
. But on balance, lots of interesting stuff. Thanks ORAC.(Especially now that you've found the quote button).
Joined: Dec 2012
Aviation Qualifications: LAME
Posts: 1,155
Likes: 820
From: Co. Down
Awww ... one man's meat is another man's poison, one scrap of intel means nothing to some, maybe much to others when put together! PPrune's a broad church for which we're all thankful, so thanks again to everyone.
Joined: Apr 2020
Posts: 1,978
Likes: 376
From: Hampshire
I may be wrong but I feel a big reason that Dragon is going there is as a platform with the ability to place the two Martlet armed Wildcats further up threat to interdict UAVs, I am not sure the article empasizes that sufficiently.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Joined: Jul 2000
Aviation Qualifications: Spotter
Posts: 24,509
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From: Peripatetic
One and half days to strip it down, two days to reassemble.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
Joined: Apr 2020
Posts: 1,978
Likes: 376
From: Hampshire
Sending them/some ahead seems to make sense given the time to get the ship on station, but in these days of "lean manning" would they be able to get the necessary bodies to Cyprus to reassemble and maintain them, without stripping them from elsewhere where they are required.. Presumably Dragon will have at least one cab onboard.
I note that according to Monday's KHM Portsmouth movements Dragon was due to move from the Upper Harbour Ammunitioning Facility to Victoria Jetty late on Tuesday late in the first watch, nothing in yesterday's or today's emails. I haven't been in Pompey since Monday afternoon (and the webcams don't penetrate the fog) so have no personal observations to report.
Gives me an excuse for posting a gratuitous photo of (a faded ) Dragon from late December.
I note that according to Monday's KHM Portsmouth movements Dragon was due to move from the Upper Harbour Ammunitioning Facility to Victoria Jetty late on Tuesday late in the first watch, nothing in yesterday's or today's emails. I haven't been in Pompey since Monday afternoon (and the webcams don't penetrate the fog) so have no personal observations to report.
Gives me an excuse for posting a gratuitous photo of (a faded ) Dragon from late December.
Last edited by SLXOwft; 4th March 2026 at 16:53.
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 216
Likes: 54
From: Somerset
One and half days to strip it down, two days to reassemble.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
We did have one occasion where during the setting up, ASCOT tasking offered to come to Portland and collect, having misread, in something like an en-route sup, the 600 ft PO runway as a 6000 ft strip🤣
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 2,130
Likes: 326
From: Royal Berkshire
Quickest option surely?
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 3,787
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From: Baston
Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 1,616
Likes: 205
From: aus
One and half days to strip it down, two days to reassemble.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/20...s-to-engineers
Australias new blackhawks were flown over in C-17s, arrived mid morning and by early arvo were airborne and flying to their new base
Joined: Mar 2006
Aviation Qualifications: Military
Posts: 2,059
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From: sussex
Ah but the UK is notorious for not specifying that any new kit is air transportable or at least not needing to look like an unmade Airfix kit to be transported. I give you but one example.
Joined: Dec 2001
Aviation Qualifications: Military
Posts: 2,964
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From: The Roman Empire
I see that the Spanish are now sending a warship to the Cyprus region, which will arrive, of course, well before HMS Dragon.
But we are sending the Defence Secretary to Cyprus ...a (failed?) attempt to make us look serious/relevant?
But we are sending the Defence Secretary to Cyprus ...a (failed?) attempt to make us look serious/relevant?
Last edited by Biggus; 5th March 2026 at 11:50.
Joined: Dec 2001
Aviation Qualifications: Military
Posts: 2,964
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From: The Roman Empire
The latest comment from John Healey is that Dragon will arrive in "the next couple of weeks", implying she won't be leaving soon, and laying the ground for a delayed departure announcement.