On Saturday 4th April HMS Audacious was moved from Devonshire Dock in Barrow towards Walney Channel. Despite the ongoing pandemic and delays to her construction, it is pleasing to report that today she finally sailed for the first time.
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Poor availability of the Type 45 destroyers has been a source of frustration for the navy and attracted plenty of negative, and often ill-informed media coverage over the last decade. Measures to remedy the complex issues have been on-going for several years and there are now real signs of progress. The Defence Secretary has announced that from 2021, four of the six ships will be available for tasking and the varying levels of readiness will continue to improve.
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On 6th February the Minister for Defence Procurement confirmed in Parliament that all 7 Astute class submarines would be completed by the end of 2026, despite the serious delay to the delivery of HMS Audacious. Here we look at the submarine programme in the medium-long term.
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Speaking at DSEI in September 2019, RN Commander Operations, Rear Admiral Paul Halton said: “We are thinking about how we might enhance the lethality of the Batch II OPVs”. In this article, we consider some of the options and implications for upgrading these vessels.
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The delivery of the RN’s second aircraft carrier has deservedly been celebrated as a great success for British industry but behind the scenes, in the naval bases and shipyards, all is not well. 2019 has seen a number of important maintenance projects stalled or delayed. Here we summarise the situation.
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This week HMS Queen Elizabeth returned home from the Westlant 19 deployment to the US. She joined her sister HMS Prince of Wales alongside in Portsmouth together for the first time. Here we look at the new facilities that will support both aircraft carriers.
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Today HMS Forth sailed from Portsmouth for the South Atlantic to be permanently deployed as the newest Falkland Islands Patrol Vessel (FIPV). In this guest article, Chris Sutton who served on some of the FIPVs provides a history of the RN vessels assigned to this role.
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On 16th October the head of the MoD Stephen Lovegrove formally approved a revised schedule for the delivery of the 4th Astute class submarine HMS Audacious. Writing to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee he admitted publicly for the first time that Audacious will not be handed over to the RN until January 2021.
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