The Royal Navy frigate HMS Sutherland has successfully fired her main gun during capability trials at sea, a key step in the warship’s return to front-line service, the Royal Navy has said.
The Type 23 frigate, known by her ship’s company as the Fighting Clan, said she had spent the last two weeks busy at sea, continuing essential capability trials for operations with the successful firing of her 4.5-inch Mk8 gun, alongside her ceremonial saluting guns.
The 4.5-inch Mk8 is the principal gun carried by the Type 23 class, a single-barrel naval gun used against surface, shore and, to a degree, air targets, and proving it can be fired safely and accurately is one of the milestones a ship must pass on her way back to operational readiness. The trials form part of a wider regeneration programme that has seen Sutherland working steadily back towards the front line.
That programme has been under way for some weeks now, with the frigate having earlier completed final trials of her Magazine Torpedo Launching System after a port visit to Lisbon, where she also hosted the Deputy Commander of Striking Force NATO, Rear Admiral Wood, along with British and NATO defence attachés, before returning to sea to press on with regeneration trials.
HMS Sutherland is one of the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates, a class displacing around 4,900 tonnes and optimised for anti-submarine warfare, armed with the Sea Ceptor air defence missile system, Sting Ray torpedoes and a embarked Wildcat or Merlin helicopter, and forming the backbone of the surface fleet’s submarine-hunting capability.
The gunnery milestone comes only days after Sutherland was on the front line in a very different role, having been one of two warships supporting the Royal Marines as they boarded the sanctioned shadow fleet tanker Smyrtos in the English Channel, an operation that underlined the breadth of tasking now falling to the regenerating frigate as she works back towards full availability.
Glad to see in times of rising tension that one important step towards a return to full operational capability is the correct functioning of the saluting guns. Standards must not be allowed to fall.
Did she trial this after escorting the Russian Tanker or before ?
Looking At the headlines I thought the RN had fired on Someone…!
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This is probably stupid re-ask but could the 4.5″ mounts be upgraded and rebarrelled as 5″s? Might be cheaper than buying in all new BAE 5″ and create a re-usable UK pool of main guns.
What’s happening with the NSM programme? Aren’t the remaining T23s, T45s and T31s all getting kitted out of 11 sets? None of the T45s seem to have them and maybe a couple of T23s do? Surely they’d be really useful with the lack of ready subs and airborne ashms and when facing off against Russian ships in the neighbourhood?