HMS Defender, a Type 45 Destroyer, has visited Cork in Ireland.

Local media reported that HMS Defender berted at “a rather strange place”, Marino Point.

HMS Defender returned to active service in April 2018 after a major 20 month long refit in Portsmouth.

HMS Defender was formally welcomed back into the fleet earlier in the year by Commodore Craig Wood, Commander of the Portsmouth Flotilla, after a series of trials to prove her upgrades was declared a success.

The Type 45 Destroyer received two new gas turbines, as well as new signals intelligence and surveillance equipment.

Commanding officer of HMS Defender, Commander Richard Hewitt, said:

“I am incredibly proud to have taken HMS Defender to sea for the first time in 18 months thanks to the hard work of Team Portsmouth, BAE Systems, and my ship’s company. With a number of major capability upgrades, HMS Defender is now the most capable Type 45 in the fleet.”

We recently reported that a contract to fully rectify issues within the Type 45 Destroyer fleet will be awarded in 2018, this was again confirmed in Parliament.
Asked by Flick Drummond, Member for Portsmouth South:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when he plans to award contracts for the Power Improvement Project for the Type 45 destroyer class.”
Answered by: Harriett Baldwin, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Defence:

“On current plans, we anticipate that the Ministry of Defence will be able to award the contract for the Power Improvement Project for the Type 45 Destroyer class in early 2018.”

In 2015, the Ministry of Defence acknowledged that the vessels propulsion system, specifically, the Northrup Grumman intercooler was experiencing reliability issues, previously reported as nothing more than “teething troubles”.

A staggered refit was also announced, which will involve cutting into the ships’ hulls and fitting additional diesel generation capacity, this has become known as Project Napier.

George Allison
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
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74 COMMENTS

    • if we could find billions for the carriers then the money could,should be found for more t45’s.destroyers are a must for any navy, it was yet another political betrayal when the original plan for 12 type 45’s was slashed to six.

      • It’s even funnier and more tragic that destroyers 7 and 8 were cancelled to bring the T26 programme FORWARD. This current 18 year build for 8 ships somehow isn’t the worst case scenario.

        On a more considered note, looking at available funds we could’ve spent the QEC project fund (£6.2bn) on either the 2 carriers or the final 6 T45s (just over £1bn apiece). Now the T45s are overall great ships, but completely giving up carrier capability? Not worth it

        • I’D SOONER HAVE SEEN ASTUTE MONIES DIVERTED TO T 45’S 1 ASTUTE FOR THE COST OF 14 CONVENTIONAL SSK SUBMARINES? I KNOW WHICH I’D PREFER

          • Where exactly are you getting 14 SSKs for ~£1.4bn?

            I’m assuming they’re tiny little things with severely limited speed, range, and endurance. Good for coastal defence in littoral waters, extremely unsuitable for a blue water fleet like the RN. As much as the Astute class have suffered from increased costs and technical issues, they’re still first class boats.

        • THE WHOLE T26 PROGRAMME HAS BEEN SHAMBOLIC. IT TOOK AGES FOR THE FIRST NUT AND BOLT ONE OF THEM SHOULD HAVE BEEN DUE IN SERVICE NEXT YEAR, BUT AT THE PACE THE CLYDE TURNS OUT SHIPS IT’LL BE YEARS YET. I THINK TOO MUCH IS BEING BANKED ON THE T31E BEING A SUCCESS.

          • Govt has slowed delivery schedule… Not Clyde.

            Hey check out the Australian order for French subs… No order actually issued yet… Negotiations ongoing.. Local resources a problem and use of sole Naval Group global arrangements causing angst… 32 months after selection announced!

        • as a balance to that, its not long ago that the giant uss j.f.k was on hold at the inactive ships facility at bremerton, availaBle for DONATION OR AS A MUSEUM. GETTING THAT WOULD STILL HAVE GIVEN THE U.K A CARRIER, BUT IT WOULD ALSO MEANT THAT THE U.K WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN HOG TIED TO THE F 35.

        • That 6.2 billion was caused by other factors, design changes fro m big to little back to big, general delays and then slowing the build down adding huge amounts to what was and still is a great achievement. Real cost, far less extra cost caused by non shipbuilders!

        • Certainly not!

          They’ll be terminating babies and marrying any Tom, Dick and Harry like every other modern, “civilized” nation soon.

          And when I say civilized, I actually mean barbarous. But that’s just another sign of a great modern country, good is bad, bad is good, truth is fake and news is opinion.

          God bless Marie Stopes and the 8 million British foetal corpses since 1967, along with the abuse scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Derby and surely others – I feel a radiant glow of joy and inner peace at how enlightened, free and compassionate we are. Surely Ireland can learn a lot from us!

    • there is that facility, although a lot more has to be done, before it is done, i was on birmingham, way back on the old type 42, in mombasa we changed BOTH IN 14 HOURS!

      • I appreciate that the GT’s in T45 are a bit large. But it was one of the ‘selling points’ of GT that an engine swap could be performed. Obviously not very in steam ship due to the size of the turbines and the uptake won’t be as large; GT uptakes are voluminous. Though I think it is a disposal razor solution really because steam plant was quite tough, GT’s are quite fragile so you would most likely have a need to swap them. I have never seen any video or photos of the evolution on YouTube.

        In Birmingham was it the Ollies or the Tynes that were swapped out? Or do you mean both sets of GT’s?

  6. “She had berthed in a rather strange place”, is that a polite way of suggesting she had broken down or suffered some other kind of technical difficulty ?

    • I think you can see from the video that it looks planned for whatever reason that location might be, though no explanation of what’s meant by ‘strange’ is given so difficult to say what they mean.

    • Nah, Marino Point is the old Fertilizer plant, it’s now owned by Port of Cork. As to why, the Cruise liner pontoons we’re up river for Winter so she couldn’t moor in Cobh at the Deep Water, so had to go to Marino instead (also most likely due to ease of control).

  7. I wish they had a anti submarine capability instead of having to rely on the 8 frigates and its helicopter in a future task group…. The Italian and french New destroyers have torpedo tubes ect, would we have had them if we stayed in that project? Why are the horizon class are air defence frigates! And not destroyers like the type 45?

    • I think it’s just that the French choose to term them as frigates. Given that the term “Destroyer” comes from the advent of “Torpedo boat destroyer” in the late C19th & todays frigates & destroyers are the size of WW2 light cruisers, it’s a bit academic.

      Only 8 fully ASW capable escorts is outrageous when most of our trade comes & goes by sea. Just 7 Astutes too is a small contribution to that. With AIP we could build a new class of conventional AIP subs to beef up our hunter-killer fleet.

    • Nomenclature changes from country to country. There was a time when only frigates received a T designation. I don’t think T45 are escorts really but a special type / HVU.

      • The type system is pretty much defunct now. The Type 4X designation was for AAW frigates, but they were rebranded as destroyers with the introduction of the T42s. The Type 8X was originally for general purpose ships like the Type 82 destroyers, but seeing as the T31s are being shoehorned into the ASW numbering system instead of being the T83s, it’s safe to assume the approach is now “40 is a destroyer”

        • indeed , some countries designate corvettes as frigates and others, like pakistan called their type 21’s destroyers. maybe with a gun on the pointy end of a river class or armament given to the sigma 10514 corvette, 20 feet longer,8 knots faster, two triple torpedo launchers, exocet, two quad anti air launchers and a 76mm oto melara gun could see the rivers designated’light frigates. it certainly shows what can be done with platforms the size that they are.

    • i’ve never understood why ship haven’t been built with torpedo tubes like a sub has can’t just be an oversight can it?

  8. I think they would be better of with​ a couple of dozen TLAM like the Arley Burks, considering the fact that their is moor likelihood of them being used in actual combat .

  10. Is this an old picture? If she has had the SSEE SIGINT upgrade There should be a box structure halfway up the mast. Also the CIWS appears to have been stolen….

    I would like to see the T45 with at least a simple towed sonar. Also more VLS 12 strike length for ABM use.

    It appears that only a missile software upgrade is needed to turn the ASTER 30 mod 0 into the mod 1 as ussed in the land based one that is ABM capable. Why have we not done this simple upgrade?

    Rob

    • Replacing MFS-7000 with something more capable would be a better option.

      Some chap here a few weeks ago said that T45 aren’t as noisy as commonly believed. But he never said how he knew…….then again sometimes we shouldn’t confess what we know……. 🙂

      ABM is something we should look towards.

    • Why is there a fixation on giving everything a tail to make it ASW capable.
      It has Medium frequency Sonar that is on par (ish) with T23 S2050.
      You dont need a tail to do ASW.

  13. This blog would improve if it just concentrated on aeroplanes and land forces. Or just didn’t open comments for naval announcements.

        • I don’t think it’s aimed at you 🙂 The capitalised ‘u’ is a typo, as in the word “us” to refer to himself and others on this site who have served at sea.

          • I KNOW THAT!!! 😀 – It was a feeble (OK -very) attempt at that humor that the captain was talking about earlier! 😀 I’m just going to stick to good old Monty from now on…

            Lord, I must be getting to be the stuffy fuddydud my son tells me I am. By the way, on a personal note, he tested for his Black Belt in TaeKwonDo yesterday in Seoul. Start to finish all the belts in less than 9 months. Pretty good!

            Cheers!

      • As somebody with a slight light blue bias, even I have to agree that without the naval news this blog would get pretty dull.

    • It depends – ASTER 30 (land) is capable against short range ABMs and they are Mach 5. It shot down a Black Sparrow target. ASTEr 30 has also shot down a See skimming target drone at Mach 3.5.

      So sea Viper in theory should be good against Mach 5 hypersonics. Although its performance is Secret. It might be able to take out faster missiles however it would depend on how agile the attacking missile is and how agile ASTER is…. it is likely ro be the best SAM in terms of stopping ASMs…

      The West is working on lasers to take down fast ASMs.

      One factor is that a Hypersonic will not be very stealthy in terms of its thermal output – also simple physics would tell us that the faster an ouject goed the more difficult it is to turn. So the dart from an ASTER should be more agile then an ASM…

      Rob N

      • Correct, As the speed of the missile increases so does its turning circle etc due to the significantly higher induced g forces placed on the airframe. The missile will not be able to jink around like the sub-sonic anti ship missiles as it closes with the ship. If they tried this manoeuvre it would rip off the flight controls and most likely cause catastrophic damage to the main body of the missile. So, in some respects the missile’s trajectory becomes very predictable, much like a ballistic missile.

        From a defensive standpoint it is all about early detection, the T45s have a slight advantage over the Arleigh Burkes due to their higher placement of their radar. However, the best method of detection is by airborne look down radar such as E2D or Crowsnest. This will give the earliest search and track opportunity, which will then allow the ship to engage the missiles beyond the horizon.

        There is a lot of talk about can Sea Ceptor or Aster defeat a hypersonic missile, because they don’t travel as fast? Yes they can, as the missile will probably be travelling either directly towards the ship or one of the ships under its protection. The incoming missile will not be jinking around unless it significantly slows down. Therefore, it is “just” case of throwing missiles into the oncoming path of the hypersonic missile and making sure the fusing is advanced to throw a cloud of debris in the missiles path which will hopefully take out its seeker or the missile. Even Phallanx should be able to defeat a hypersonic missile due to the 60 rounds per second of tungsten being lobbed at it. The missile’s debris may be another matter to contend with though!

    • It is essential to get a UK ABM system up & running asap. Without one the UK is an easy target to hypersonic misssile attack, unless USN & other Nato ABM Standard equipped warships lend a hand. If Russia escalates the Ukraine conflict by keeping up blockading the sea of Azov as it is currently doing in violation of existing bi-lateral treaties, trouble in eastern Europe could be with us a long while.

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