HMS Brocklesby has begun her sea trials programme after a period of maintenance work.
During her upkeep, HMS Brocklesby has had her entire propulsion system replaced, including the machinery controls and surveillance system. Other upgrades include overhauling her chilled water plant and fitting new propellers. The ship’s crew have also benefitted from upgrades and refurbishment to the galley.
David Mitchard, Managing Director, Maritime Services, BAE Systems said:
“The work carried out on board HMS Brocklesby is the largest refit programme for a Royal Navy minehunter we have undertaken, so to begin her sea trials four months earlier than any previous upkeep for a Hunt Class vessel is a terrific achievement. This is testament to the new ways of working to maximise how we use the Minor War Vessels Centre of Specialisation at the naval base, as well as the planning and procedures we put in place to ensure the significantly reduced duration of her upkeep programme.”
Although we have set the bar high with the work undertaken on HMS Brocklesby, we have undoubtedly grown our expertise in supporting the Royal Navy’s minehunters and look forward to replicating our work with HMS Quorn later this year.”
Lieutenant Commander Maryla Ingham, HMS Brocklesby’s Commanding Officer, said:
“I would like to extend my thanks to all enterprise partners who contributed to HMS Brocklesby’s refit including BAE Systems, Portsmouth Flotilla (PORFLOT) and of course my own team. We are now back at sea and conducting trials and look forward to our return to full operational capability.”
How did they upgrade the crew? Or did I read that wrong 🙂
They gave them all super human cyborg arms.
I thought they gave the crew gills and dolphin like sonar during their upgrades. We need humans adapted to sub surface warfare as we do not have enough submarines.
in all seriousness though I think some sort of plan to replace all mine warfare vessels with a black swan type sloop of war would be a good plan. If we have a modular design able to fit different systems and weapons pods onto we could have large numbers of these cheap hulls to undertake fishery patrols, migrant rescue, anti submarine, anti mine warfare, littoral warfare, anti ship, close air protection roles. 48-60 hulls and a hive like approach of distributed lethality would be a great idea.