The decommissioned American frigate USS Klakring has been sunk off the Hebrides during the joint US-UK live-fire exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026, in an engagement that drew in warships and aircraft from both navies, according to US Naval Forces Europe and Africa, which has released footage of the strike.
The video shows the American destroyer USS Paul Ignatius launching a missile and the frigate being hit. Other attackers took part alongside her, among them aircraft and further surface vessels, and the full order of battle has yet to be set out.
We will be bringing you an in-depth look tomorrow at what happened off the Hebrides, how the engagement was put together and which units and weapons were involved.
Paul Ignatius is an Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA destroyer, hull number DDG-117, commissioned in July 2019 and named for the former Secretary of the Navy who held the post under Lyndon Johnson. She has been forward-deployed to Naval Station Rota in southern Spain since June 2022, one of the American destroyers held in Europe for ballistic missile defence and wider tasking across the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Klakring was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, decommissioned in 2013 and laid up at the Philadelphia Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility until she was towed down the Delaware River on 12 August ahead of the Atlantic crossing, making first for Campbeltown. The exercise itself was originally planned for a window in May before moving to the second half of September at the QinetiQ Hebrides range in north-west Scotland.
A Request for Information issued by the Ministry of Defence in August 2025, inviting industry to take part, described Atlantic Thunder 26 as “a US-UK multi-domain exercise designed to validate SUW kill chains, build resilient kill webs and deliver strategic messaging through kinetic demonstration.”
The strike was only one part of the exercise though, Klakring is expected to now settle at a depth of around 6,000 feet, where uncrewed underwater vehicles are to carry out battle damage assessment and seabed survey work, a phase the Ministry of Defence treated as central when it approached industry last year.
The precedent is Atlantic Thunder 22, held off the same range in September 2022, which ended with the sinking of the former USS Boone by HMS Diamond, USS Arleigh Burke, RAF Typhoons and US Navy P-8 Poseidons, and was billed at the time as the most complex multinational sinking exercise staged in UK waters.
Off topic, with apologies
Obviously, the high price of electricity is the BBC’s fault! I expect it’s because of the licence fee, as the right (Moggy, Redwood, Tice, Farage, Badenoch etc) launch yet another co-ordinated “bias” assault on the beeb, blaming them for “endless pro-renewables & pro-net zero propaganda”
It’s definitely not because of the unbelievable co-ordinated price gouging of “natural” gas by the fossil fuel cartel right across the globe then Or Trump’s war on the Ayatollah regime, which has only closed the Strait of Hurmuz for six months.
Zelenskyy should do as he’s told and follow Trump’s demand to stop bombing Russian diesel refineries, because his chum, the war criminal Putin, doesn’t like it. Or he won’t get any more Patriot missiles. Oh, sorry the leader of the free world already cancelled their last deliveries. Also the 155mm artillery ammunition and HIMARs orders already paid for by the EU. Hegseth has diverted them to the Middle East, as he rebuilds the many US bases recently totalled by the IRGC with Chinese and Russian help.
As our investment in wind and solar continue harvesting humungous amounts of free energy – exporting £1billion worth of renewable electricity to the EU 2023/2024 – we can look forward to another Big Oil/Gas doubling of the price this autumn, as global oil stocks run down
What was the price of diesel near me yesterday? £2.03 per litre. Remind me to email the BBC about it
The UK has amongst the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe and among developed nations.
Medium-sized industrial users pay nearly double the EU average, and large-to-extra-large users pay more than double compared to many continental counterparts. Small businesses face rates 30% to 40% higher.
Unlike most other countries we include green transition energy costs onto domestic bills rather than through general taxation. These are inconvenient facts for all of us.
I have no problem with a transition to renewables over time but not at the expense of UK industry or impoverishing domestic customers. Your £1 billion of revenue is peanuts compared to the cost of all this across the economy as a whole.
UK emissions are less than 1% of global emissions but let’s pretend we are a global leader because it makes some people happy and because of this mindset let’s not take the benefits in jobs and revenue by screwing every last £ from the oil and gas that remains in the North Sea like those rabid hard right fanatics in Norway?
As for your political points you are welcome to have an opinion some of which I happen agree with.