HMS Portland, a Type 23 Frigate, has now re-joined the Royal Navy fleet.

The Royal Navy say here that eight months after emerging from a major refit, the frigate “has passed her sternest test to date”.

“The Navy’s second most senior officer – Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Andrew Burns – joined the ship off Plymouth for the final day of six weeks of intensive training, a day-long ‘battle’ testing Portland’s sailors in every aspect of modern naval warfare and operations.

Beyond delivering another Type 23 frigate to the front-line fleet – the entire class of 12 ships has undergone or is undergoing the upgrade, which includes installing the Artisan 3D radar and replacing the aged Sea Wolf missile system with the new Sea Ceptor – Portland’s completion of Operational Sea Training marks the first test of a new crewing model being trialled on the ship.”

Commander Tim Leeder, Portland’s Commanding Officer, was quoted as saying:

“In under eight months we’ve gone from emerging from refit to becoming a fully operational warship – that’s an impressive ‘flash to bang’ for a state-of-the-art frigate. FOST and the South Coast Exercise Area is a phenomenal ‘office’ – the best in the world. It’s testing teamwork, the ability to work under stress or when tired.

You’re fending off fast attack craft at 7am, missiles and jets in the afternoon, taking on fuel and supplies in the night. It’s been hard work, but throughout my ship’s company have remained cheerful, shown they are up for a challenge. For all the capability which the ship carries, it’s the people who shine. And they have.”

You can read more from the Royal Navy here.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

61 COMMENTS

  1. Why can she not be used as a mk 41 Test ship if they have spent all this money on upgrading to Sea Ceptor still not well armed no surface missiles fitted for but not with Harpoon is out of date or even PAAMS UK still hasnt got any defence against Hypersonic Missiles

    • Mk41 test?

      No chance on T23.

      Maybe box launched ASHM. But maybe not. That said lack of ASHM is a political hot potatoes right now.

      Mk 41 is defo on T26 and maybe on T31/2 if ex-1SL gets his way.

      Part of the reason the Mk41 VLS was not fitted to T45 at build was the decision to increase stocks of storm shadow and not cruise.

    • Hypersonic missiles are not going to be a threat to a moving target anytime soon. Very large stationary (building) is a different story.

      • This is precisely the point, the technology needed to pinpoint and hit a relatively small moving target while hurtling down towards it at Mach 4 is rather understated, the slightest miss calculation and you miss by miles.

        The lack of any real ability to manoeuvre in the terminal maximum speed dive phase, means it has to have a positive lock onto its target from a significant distance away and be committed to a target coordinate

        The pinpoint ‘moving target’ technology isn’t there yet, unless it’s a nuclear warhead and plus or minus a few miles is good enough to ruin your targets day….

        • Excellent point that so many posters ignore, also I wonder about the structural integrity of the kit both its components and skin at a “hurtling down” mach 4 dive.

      • Or very large ships tied up alongside at usual berthing points…accounts for what..30-40% of the fleet most nights ? I suspect sub launched hypersonic coming in from 250 -500 kms will be the biggest day 1 threat …less than 5 minutes from launch to strike.

      • Define hypersonic first.

        It can mean a lot of things. High altitude, low altitude, parabolic……

        If it isn’t very steerable then yes you can get it down. All you need are a few air bust shells from a 40 or 57mm in front of it and the momentum of the ‘hypersonic’ will do the work for you.

        The real question is how far out you need to make it self destruct to be far enough away from the heavy fast moving shrapnel field?

        Similarly Ceptor/Aster detonated the correct distance in front of it would do the same.

        As @GB has said many times, on here, Mach 4 missiles are nothing new.

        Wether anyone can make anything much faster hit anything precisely or even a moving target is something else all together.

        • Most, Air/Surface defence are Proximity fused wide shrapnel yield , so its going to be up too the Ops rm team too have their eyes glued to the screen because Speeds of Mak 4 + if possible blink and your miss it

          • This is where wide area surveillance is needed.

            Things moving that fast are pretty easy to detect. They are not small.

            If an inbound is picked up then onboard systems will be on auto – with man in the loop only to kill the engagement if it is out of parameters.

          • A PWO(A)or(su) will still have too ensure that all involved IE EW and ops crew Rp have track and track number injected into the system , even when fully auto things can go arye Cardiff 82

          • I think auto now is a different ball game to ‘82.

            Processing power and electronic discrimination are orders of magnitude better.

          • Yeah the system then ran from the 909 adequate at the time if the Dart controller realised that Fast jets don’t fly at 150knts

          • Well there you out your finger on the limitations of 909 #1 and to a certain extent #2 – all built to shoot down WWII vintage planes – the best remote control targets of the time……

          • True but Dart wasn’t really designed as an anti helicopter weapon!

            Even Sea Mouse could hit a chopper – on a good day!

          • I know but it happened, anyway have a peaceful Christmas SB hope George hasn’t got anymore little numbers prior too the big day

          • Sea Wolf did the lot start to finsh. No human input.
            That was on T22 and T23. Stick it in auto and it shot at anything that met the perrameters. Track number generation is all automatic.

          • Bootstrapping the FM1600 computer. Ferrite core store that did everything in real time which even nowadays is not something that is easy to acheive.
            It got easier on the FM 1600 E computers

      • Well only know the US failed in a test recently, probably an SM-3 to intercept one (ballistic I presume) though it has reportedly managed in previous tests to do so. Can’t remember any greater insight if there were any mind.

        • With the Chinese claiming ,their Hypersonic missiles can loop fully round the Earth it’s going too have to be 360 early warning where as before early warning systems looked North to the Pole if land Launched just hope that China is the paper tiger with it claims

    • The ASTER 30 has already shown itself capable agains a GQM-163 Coyote at sea skimming altitude traveling at M2.5. Most Hypersonic ASM are only supersonic at sea level so Sea Viper should be capable. Also who is to say Sea Viper cannot intercept Hypersonic missiles. The system is very fast reacting – public info says it can go from detection to engagement in 5 seconds… The radar SAMSON has been shown to be able to track Hypersonic targets. The ASTER missile is agile and can travel at M4.5. So there is nothing here to make me think it cannot hit hypersonic missiles.

          • At what altitude would the air become thin enough to permit hypersonic flight above 26,000ft when no oxygen exists? Or does the data exist to show they can do hypersonic within a small percentage of oxygen?

          • To be frank I do not know… the atmosphere gets thicker the lower you get. Any missile will have to cope with increasing atmospheric drag and friction heating. So the performance will defend on the missile in question. I a sure you could dive a missile onto a target at hypersonic speed but if it as at altitude it would be detected at range and that would give more time for intercept.

          • There is still oxygen above 26000ft James, but Not enough to sustain human life over a period of time, it is known as the ‘death zone.
            Hypersonic flight is most efficient above 18000m or nearly 60000ft where the air pressure is only 7% of sea level pressure. There is a small amount of air at 100k”ft about 1%.

    • I’d rather it had had a launcher for the interim Harpoon replacement fitted (along with St Albans and Sutherland), but that’s been cancelled in favour of Boris’s vanity National Flagship. How many ships does Boris need to sign trade agreements on?

    • What did they lose the harpoon launch canisters when she went in for refit?

      a defensively very well armed warship , your disdain for the harpoon systems lethality is debatable infact currently worldwide 600 warships are armed with it . The block II has advanced features and integrated technology incorporated from other 1st rate missile systems.

      too much negative baw bawing in here whenever harpoon gets mentioned or the Type 23 , is their better ASM yeah of course but an effective platform regardless of what the haters have to say.

      positive good news for the RN I say

      🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

      • They didn’t loe the launchers. The launchers are a bolt on structure that you fit the launch tubes to. It’s straight forward to fit and remove as required. The cabling is the important bit and that needs to be retained as does the Harpoon Power room inside the ship to provide all of the electrical supplies to the missiles. As the missiles are also air launched the power supply requirements are, to say the least exotic! There is a massive SFC to convert ships power to missile power supplies.

    • There is nowhere to put a mk41 on a T23.
      A strike length Mk41 is something like 5m in length. The Ceptor mag is maybe 2.5- 3 M high at most.
      Compartments below the mag would need to be cleared and the equipment in them moved. There is nowhere to move anything on a T23.

    • What would the point be? There is already plenty of test data on the performance of MK41, if we were going to do that kind of trials we would do as has been done previously and use a barge to test the VLS.

  2. i might come across as a cynic, but of late whenever a RN ship returns back to the fleet after a refit, our wonderful honourable gentlemen have gone out of their way to sell the “damned “ thing.

  3. Welcome back. An ASW frigate with an out of service date of 2035 I think. And with a Merlin still arguably there is at that job. An important piece of the Atlantic and Carrier strike group jigsaws.

    • The ship Will be flogged for the next 6 months as one of the few up to date and I working t23’s. She’ll have to take the full burden of tàsks I feel sorry for the crew and their families they won’t get to see much of each other

      • There are still another 4 T23s ASW’s in operation to work with:
        HMS’s Westminster, Northumberland, Richmond Kent.
        Somerset has been out of the shed since the Spring, so should be ready to go for sea trials.
        Another two are still in LIFEX.

    • It will probably be run on longer than 2025 given the recent LIFEX probably to 2027 which would be the next dry docking for full hull integrity inspection etc.

      The hill would have had to be checked for 6 (?) year life to comply with type rules.

      Can anyone confirm it is 6 years?

      • It was going to be 2034 according to Navy Lookout, at least until the shuffle around earlier this year. I haven’t heard whether it’s among those whose out-of-service date was shifted, and I’d assumed it was still 2034.

      • Normally 5 annual and underwater valve exchanges. However you can defer it and the valves can be changed in the water using coffer dams. Other checks can be done by divers and video. Hull thickness can be checked from internally using ultrasound shots.

  4. HMS Richmond’s ‘Type 26’ propulsion system seemed to hold up quite well during CSG21, let’s hope HMS Portland’s Type 2150 sonar works as equally impressively.

    • Careful saying that.

      someone will pop up and tell you it isn’t true…….!! Usually in a top trumps exchange……mentioning no names…..

      It is, of course, true. It is a test bed.

    • None apart from the one’s currently undergoing LIFEX’- HMS Monmouth would have been the last but she has been retired instead.

  5. Good to see the LIFEX program going so well, as all the T23s are either through the refit or presently in refit, when will they all be back in service ?

    You have to wonder if they will try and get a few more years than planned out of each ship since the mood music is to up the hull numbers for the end of the decade.

  6. The language of the statement is interesting – talk of ‘fending off’ attacks but not of carrying out attacks. It does feed into that characterization of RN ships as ‘porcupines’ (well protected herbivores).

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