Germany is set to assume command of a NATO maritime task group in the North Atlantic, with the frigate Sachsen taking over as flagship from the Royal Navy’s HMS Dragon, according to the German Embassy in London.
The handover comes as HMS Dragon deploys to the eastern Mediterranean, where the Type 45 destroyer has arrived to support regional security tasks, including the defence of Cyprus.
Berlin said the move reflects a broader increase in German military presence in the North Atlantic under NATO, and described the transition as an expression of close UK-Germany cooperation.
The two warships represent some of the most capable air-defence platforms in their respective fleets, though with different design philosophies.
HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer displacing around 8,000 to 8,500 tonnes, is built around the Sea Viper air defence system, combining the SAMPSON radar with Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles to provide area air defence against aircraft and missile threats. The class is optimised for high-end air warfare, with advanced sensor fusion and long-range engagement capability.
By contrast, Sachsen, a 5,800-tonne German frigate, is equipped with a layered air defence suite centred on the SMART-L long-range radar and APAR fire control radar, paired with SM-2 and ESSM missiles launched from a 32-cell Mk 41 vertical launch system. While smaller than the Type 45, the Sachsen-class is designed to provide fleet air defence within NATO task groups, alongside anti-surface and anti-submarine capabilities.
Both vessels carry embarked helicopters and a mix of close-in weapon systems, decoys and electronic warfare suites, enabling them to operate as central nodes within multinational naval formations.
It also reflects the fact that the RN Escort fleet has collapsed, as we no longer have an alternate ship to send at this time.
And the NATO North Atlantic tasking is supposed to be the UK and the RNs back yard.
Well done, HMG……👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 when are you going to announce intent of a batch 2 Of Type 31, Mr Starmer, considering your ridiculous diatribe on the other article about “keeping Britain safe” and “stepping up”?
The RN was mandated in 97 to need 20 Frigates, in a peacetime post Cold War World.
Where is the commitment to get back to even 24 Escorts? Or are you hiding behind toy boats and autonomy again as the solution?
Spot on mate, spot on….
We need to be back to a fleet of 30 plus Frigates and Destroyers, it ‘never’ should have gone below that number.
Its frankly astonishing Labour are just doing nothing, just sitting on their hands.
Can’t pay for those to sit on their arses if there’s 30 Ships to be crewed and built… Apparently it’s not dawned on a party that’s named after the act of work, is advocating more money to the voting bloc of those that don’t work, the end. Like the Greens, they’ve left behind their Environmental credentials to be a Progressive Party that’ll make 1979 Opposition in Iran blush.
Yep.. essentially this is a symptom of the fact that the RN was always meant to have 20 frigates and 12 destroyers..
People can “ but it’s fantasy fleet” that was the identified “need” not want.. and ignoring your “needs” and not expecting a detrimental consequence is the fantasy.
Maritime power and conflict is and always has been a game of numbers over exquisite capability… all the exquisite capability in the world does not matter if you cannot turn up.. and when it comes to maritime power the number of places you need to turn up to are very large… HMS massive will always loss the war even if it wins every battle it fights.
Many of us way back in the early 2000s were getting increasingly uneasy when numbers shrank towards 30, then dipped under, with the T23 replacement programme simply parked up and walked away from.
We could see this shit show brewing decades ago.
Suddenly its a huge surprise to the media in general, that when the country suddenly looks to the RN and the cupboards are bare…
They have been for years!
Because the ignorant masses don’t give a toss, or just assume.
And of course politicians are all too eager to put their pet projects which get them votes, the latest pathetic carrot, ahead of the defence of the realm.
The sooner politicians are loathed from all corners the better as far as I’m concerned, the system needs the biggest volcano up it’s backside the country has seen in the modern era.
To be honest I’m not sure it needs the modern era.. it’s the fact essentially most modern politicians are all essentially purchased by some form of business or interest that is part of the problem.. we need to find those statesmen who’s utter focus was the good of the nation.. not some vested interest within the nation.
Yes, fair one. Who?! Where is this individual, rare as hens teeth.
That’s the problem.. we seem to have stopped creating them.. I think it’s the party systems to be honest.
Although I have a small amount of sympathy for the current administration for the hollowing out of the armed services for the last 30 years, especially under Camerloon (I remember watching the MRA4 being crushed), there is no intention shown to do anything but tinker around the edges. No increase in the budget, no plan to sort out the shrinking RAF, no GBAD (despite the ‘layered’ GBAD they talk about really being point and short range), no proposed increase in the Frigate force just more reductions in hull numbers across RN and RFA. As for the army, they are their own worst enemy so not going there.
For the sake of the country do something meaningful before we truly get embarrassed in action (or inaction) or worse we lose people.
rant over for now
I’d recommend that anyone who has access to SM go on X to LBC and listen to the radio interview between Nick Ferrari and John Healey, the Defence Secretary, about an hour ago.
If true, it shows how utterly out of his depth Healey is, he couldn’t say how many Escorts the RN has without numerous pauses, delays, and splutters, before giving an incorrect answer as 17!
He stated the last Labour government left the force at 23, but of course neglected to detail they cut it from 35 to 23.
An utter car crash, and this man is the Defence Secretary?
I’ll do it for a pittance of your wage…..I can state our force
structure to LBC across all 3 services without needing to lie, or even guess.
When will we have a Minister who is on top of their brief?
Do you think he was trying to count the Rivers 2.. that I believe would make 17.. either way it’s a fantasy.. either a lie or a mistake.
Ahh, yes, good one,possibly.
My other thought was including laid up T23s so non commissioned assets still on MoDs books? I don’t know if that would make 17 as I lose track how many are at the creek in Pompey and not already sold off or scrapped.
The mad thing is I remember the discussions years ago about having 2000 ton warships with only a 30mm cannon on them.. the core reasoning was that they were EEZ constabulary vessels and that if you put a medium gun and other stuff on them then the politicians would think they are warships and reduce the escort fleet and use them as warships… well they have been deployed across the world to replace frigate deployments and may even now be added to the numbers of “ escorts”…. Could not make it up.
Less “The Politicians will think it’s a warship” more “The more stuff you put on them the more expensive they are to run and the more maintenance you need so the availability rate goes down”.
True.. but I still think we should have probably build a set of proper corvettes like the germans did.. but with an ASW focus and sub surface patrol function.. not surface strike, that way they could have freed up the TAS frigate.
The thing is inflation adjusted the Braunschweig’s cost 385million£ per ship (give or take since the first batch was ordered in 2001, and that number is inflation adjusting the Batch 1’s to todays Euro, and the Batch 2’s todays euro’s, dividing the sum by the 10 ships and converting to £ at today’s market rate). The River B2’s meanwhile cost less than half that, 170m£ (also adjusting for inflation from the 2013 order for the first three and the 2016 order for the last two).
Given that making a Braunschweig an ASW focused ship involves procuring and fitting a tail sonar, probably a proper hangar that can fit a merlin, and I’m guessing some sort of Stingray launcher or VLS ASROC system in most people’s books, in exchange for 4x RBS 15 MkIII or VI in cannisters and it’s minelayers, your not looking at a positive cashflow situation, so let’s say you’d be looking at a 400m£ ship now.
That’s T-31 cost. So ignoring all the shortcomings from the perspective of the RN (worth remembering that a Braunschweig has a endurance of 7 days before needing resupply, which makes me question whether one could actually take over the TAPS duty) which, unlike the German navy, doesn’t have a huge interest in the Baltic Sea, we’re talking about maybe 2 Type 130 Royal Navy Corvettes instead of 5 River B2’s.
Remembering that one of them would have to still be the Falklands Guard ship, that means 1 Corvette would have to cover the Med, Gib, Pacific, and somewhow relieve pressure on the TAPS ship? Frankly we’d probably be worse off as the remaining fleet would have been worked harder in the last 10 years.
*should have said Caribean HADR, Gib, Pacific, and TAPS, not Med and Gib obviously.
Heard Healy on the radio this morning spluttering and blustering when asked how many escorts we have available before clearly announcing 17. A blatant lie.
Ha! I just detailed some of that.
Did you note his framing of the question.
“17. It was 23 at last Labour government, so nicely placing blame only at the Tories door. Didn’t mention Labour’s part in it from 97 to 2010, did you?
He also noted the halving of the MCMV force! A force already salami sliced beyond recognition by 2004 when West got his mitts into it, along with several of the RNs escorts.
I just heard the ’17’ bit of the interview as reported on Radio X. I immediately screamed ‘F***ing Liar!’ across the kitchen which had the wife upstairs a bit worried. Beggars belief that he chose to throw in that bit of useless ‘previous government’ spin when he’s been asked such a pertinent question and given such an astonishingly BS answer.
😬🙄….my Wife is used to it as well, she still reminds me that, back in 2010 at the SDSR, she’d never seen me so depressed.
And things are worse now, so I must be immune! 🌞
He might have also spun the 17 as including various spent, cut, and laid up T23s still sitting in the creek in Portsmouth.
So technically, the RN still has them?
Scum…..the lot of them.
Don’t let it trigger your stress response.. it will only release cortisol and cause you mental and physical harm.. things you have no power over are things to let go…do something you have power over such as write a letter to the times and get it published..
I’ve already messaged Nick Ferrari offering to detail the British military ORBAT, then and now, for balance, at just WHERE THE BLAME LIES.
Side note, which task group is this? SNMTG-1 is under Spanish Command and MTG-2 under Italian.
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter how we got here, it’s what are we going t do about it? So far from this Govt, which has been in power for almost 2 years, not a damn thing! 2 years and they haven’t come up with a single defense budget. All they have done is tread water and deferred to the next whatever report/review.
Maybe he’s waiting for permission from ED Miliband 🤔
The unfortunate thing is that pretty much everything that can be done is being done. Even if Labour had spun their wheels massively as soon as they’d gotten into office, the gap in surface warships was already unavoidable.
Excuse me, Dern, but Labour ‘hit the ground, running’ when they got in, according to Mr Starmer. So it’s got to be true…
P.S. They didn’t say exactly in which direction they were running…
If you like, the point being that when Labour came into power the timelines where such that any measures they did take wouldn’t take effect until after the Frigate gap was closing anyway.
I suppose Dern, if they were actually serious about defence, they would have found the money under the guise of an a EOR, to provide funding for spares and munitions, to increase readiness across the existing forces, before actually carrying out a defence review that set about restoring mass, ‘seriously’ increasing finance within this parliament to 3.5%.
They talked the ‘perilous state of finances’ they inherited while simultaneously paying their Union dues with pay rises etc and providing 20 billion a year extra to the NHS, with zero reforms and borrowing more and more.
With defence, all they have done is cause more damage.
3 more years of this clown heavy circus to go…
None of that would have gotten more hulls in the water faster, or extended the lives of the Type 23’s however.
True, but it would have helped stop the rot and started the huge task of putting things right though.
Labour have done absolutely sod all.
‘Didn’t say which direction they were running’
Love it, comment of the week!
I think George should post the comment of the week ad a header.
Thank you John, good idea! Where can I claim my Ten bob?