HMS Dauntless has embarked on a series of trials and training exercises aimed at testing her systems and enhancing operational readiness.
This follows a recent period of maintenance and upgrades, according to a statement from the ship’s official Twitter account.
Dauntless is headed back to sea for trials and training to prove systems and increase our readiness.@RoyalNavy @RNJobsUK @HMSPWLS @HMSQNLZ #nildesperandum pic.twitter.com/nD1h54BxG4
— HMS Dauntless (@HMSDauntless) August 21, 2024
HMS Dauntless was officially commissioned on 3 June 2010. After successfully completing its first Sea Viper missile test on a Hebridean range, the ship was formally accepted into Royal Navy service in November of the same year.
In May 2011, Dauntless participated in Exercise Saxon Warrior in the Western Approaches, culminating in the intense ‘Thursday War’ scenario. The following month, the destroyer made a transatlantic journey to Norfolk, Virginia, to take part in the FRUKUS war games alongside naval forces from Russia, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. During this deployment, Dauntless conducted joint manoeuvres with the Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko, which included cross-deck helicopter exercises involving the ship’s two Lynx helicopters.
This marked the first such deployment on a Type 45 destroyer.
In September 2011, Dauntless became the first Type 45 destroyer to visit London, berthing opposite London City Airport for the Defence and Security Equipment International event. Later that year, in November, the destroyer hosted the President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül. In January 2012, Dauntless was deployed to the South Atlantic to replace HMS Montrose around the Falkland Islands, a move that drew criticism from the Argentine government, who viewed it as an escalation of military presence in the region.
Under the command of Captain William Warrender between 2011 and 2012, Dauntless continued to serve in various operations. In 2015, the ship was redeployed to the Middle East, where it conducted anti-piracy patrols and provided escort to the U.S. Navy’s USS Carl Vinson during airstrikes against Islamic State. In November of that year, Dauntless participated in an anti-ballistic missile warfare exercise with other NATO vessels.
By 2016, reports indicated that Dauntless had been relegated to use as a training ship due to personnel and technical challenges, a status later confirmed while the vessel awaited refit.
In 2019, Dauntless underwent a significant regeneration refit in Portsmouth before moving to Birkenhead in 2020, becoming the first Type 45 destroyer to receive new generators under the Power Improvement Project. The ship returned to sea in June 2022 after completing this refit.
In 2023, Dauntless deployed to the Caribbean, undertaking guardship duties and playing a critical role in seizing over a tonne of cocaine from drug smugglers. The ship also supported hurricane preparedness efforts in Anguilla, Montserrat, and the British Virgin Islands.
Good to see her underway with a crew.
I’ll be even happier when Daring moves under her own power. I’m not holding my breath as they are clearly some issues.
Clearly it will be very expensive to regenerate Daring but RN needs hulls and it needs T45 hulls to keep the maintenance cycle manageable and the surge capacity intact…..well OK to have any kind of surge capacity at all in fact.
To my mind, it would be more expensive to not regenerate her – and I’m not talking financially here – for as you rightly said, the RN absolutely needs every single hull.
I agree.
The idea of ‘we can manage’ or ‘plan around’ or ‘we can generate more capacity from less’ has all exploded into a close to nothing serviceable outcome.
The translation was always ‘we don’t have enough budget because we are playing catch up with 20 years of minimal capital investment in people, fleet and facilities…..before we even get to munitions!
Great picture 👏
The RN seems to have made a conscious decision to prioritise the number of T45’s in active service by late 2024 to what may well equal an all time high of four units, but at the cost of not having enough sailors to recommission Bulwark. This seems a reasonable decision given events in the Eastern Med and Red Sea, as well as the need to find at least one and ideally two destroyers for CSG25, however increasing the number of trained personnel continues to be the service’s number 1 problem. Decades of constant defence cuts and negative PR have totally… Read more »
Fair summary. With the unravelling of the T23 lifex program the RN must focus on TAS frigates. In effect, it has no GP frigates; so the T45s will have to cover that function as well as their primary role.
Ill be happier when they ditch the gym area and put another VLS unit in like there was suppose to be. And filled with Tomahawks.
Well, there is something scheduled to ‘hit-the-gym’ and that’s a 24 Sea Ceptor ‘mushroom farm’. First of class to be fitted will be HMS Defender in 2026. Admittedly, I think we would all liked to have seen Mk41 VLS fitted instead as was originally planned but it’s better than nothing. Unfortunately, no Tomahawks will ever be fired from a Type 45. Still, at least the wise decision was made to add Mk41 VLS to Type 31, significantly enhancing the offensive firepower of that class. A Type 45 with 48 x Aster 30 Block 1, 24 x Sea Ceptor, 8 x… Read more »
Yeah im not sure what we will get now with Starmer. Is the T26 going to have any land strike capabilities?
Yes, the Tupe 26 will be able to via the Mk41 VLS (24 cells). These can be used to fire Tomahawks.
Cool about time.
And, if we could get any to sea Astute can also fire Tomahawk. Also, albeit a fairly long (and in my opinion not 100% certain) way away, isn’t the AUKUS successor said to have some dedicated VLS (e.g. like the Virginia class)? That presumably will make the next generation of RN SSN more capable (higher volume?) land-attack platforms than the current capabilities. (Not that the current capabilities should be discounted. The RN’s SSN-launched Tomahawk capability has already been used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya albeit from Trafalgar class rather than Astute.)