HMS Duncan and HMS Dragon linked up on security patrols in the eastern Mediterranean, say the Royal Navy.
“Dragon is due back in Portsmouth soon after the most successful drugs-busting patrol by any British warship in the Middle East. Meanwhile Duncan – the youngest of six Type 45 destroyers built to shield the fleet from aircraft and missile attacks – has just sailed from Portsmouth for a six-month stint in the Mediterranean region.”
After a pit-stop in Gibraltar, Duncan has joined an international task group of France’s flagship FS Charles de Gaulle and her key deployment of the year.
It is Duncan’s task to safeguard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and work seamlessly with her Rafale fast jets – an experience which will prove invaluable in 12 months’ time when Britain’s new carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, leads strike group exercises with her flagships and their F-35 Lightning strike fighters, say the Royal Navy in a release.
“It was a great moment seeing the familiar shape of a fellow Type 45 steaming over the horizon and then receiving such a warm welcome from the entire ship’s company of HMS Duncan,” said Commander Mike Carter Quinn, HMS Dragon’s Commanding Officer.
“It is superb to see her back out on operations in the eastern Mediterranean. For the Royal Navy to have two destroyers hard at work on operations – in addition to all the other British ships and units deployed around the world – it sends a powerful message about our commitment to maintaining maritime security and stability around the globe.”
Ooooh!
Lusty mentioned this last night and I’d hoped for a photo!
Great ships. Looking forward to their getting Aster 30 Block 1NT, Harpoon Block II and their Wildcats getting Sea Venom and Sea Martlet.
I’d hope / expect that all 6 will receive an ASM rather than just 4!
as long as the m.o.d don’t do their usual mucking around and wasting time
NOTE TO THE USN when major ships like these rendezvous, the royal navy doesn’t collide them.
Yes doubling as anti ballistic missile platforms will be a real asset to UK national defence.
And replace each ASTER 15 with 4 x Sea Ceptors for a much greater load out!
It will be a sight when the QE stands to sea with a proper escort group. Really look forward to the photos.
Cheers!
Me too !
and not with the modest number of aircraft on board, not as the m.o.d say a ‘modest’ air wing.if they go anywhere without a ‘full load’ why have them/
Fascinating why they would want to put an image of my ex-wife on the bow?
They should start coming in soon for their PIP/Generator refits?
Hope it’s the last for this class, couldn’t bear to have to look at Anne Diamond’s and Duncan Goodhew’s faces…even though it may give us an advantage over the enemy!
PS
I really consider Duncan Goodhew to be a Good Egg! He was a great ambassador for British Sport.
a good egg well, he certainly had the head for it
What is the electronic warfare capability of those radars ?
I’m guessing they could do some serious damage to incoming missiles and aircraft?
Without giving too much away, the ships radars when operating in peacetime, transmit a “training/peacetime” waveform and at significantly reduced power. Even when operating at half power both the Sampson and S1850M have a range over 200 miles which is near to the max performance of the T23s Artisan radar. The Sampson is a dual AESA radar and has two arrays fitted back to back. The S1850M is an uber long range single array PESA radar. The Dutch are just upgrading theirs to the SMART-L Mk2 which nearly doubles the range, specifically to allow their ships to detect and track ballistic missiles.
Because the S1850M operates in a lower frequency band to the Sampson, it has a significantly longer range. The rule is, the higher the frequency the more power is required to generate the same range as lower frequency radar, this is due to atmospheric absorption. The shorter the wavelength the more it is affected by the air.
Because both radar types use beamforming to direct the “pulse”, the 3D lobe can be made very narrow, think spotlight small. Both radars also use active sidelobe management so more energy is directed towards the target. In essence this means if an aircraft pops over the horizon 20 miles way, both radars can target the aircraft with a very narrow beam that contains a lot of EM energy. The first iterations of the radar could transmit 100KW of energy in a broad sweep, so it could in theory using a narrow beam track a target with the full 100KW of energy. Therefore an aircraft that is targeted better have very good EM shielding or it won’t be flying for very long.
There was a case of a Lynx flying through a beam when a T45 was conducting a trial at Portland. The Lynx’s electrical system and engine controls went haywire and it nearly crashed. It was only due to the T45’s beam sweeping the area, that the Lynx was able to recover. A good few years ago, a Tornado crash was attributed to flying too close to the Fylingdales radar, which interfered with its engine and flight controls. The crew banged out luckily. This was one of the few F3 losses when the aircraft was conducting low level SEAD training.
If the Duncan was operating in war mode, the Russian aircraft flying near to the ship could had serious issues, hence the warning.
Fascinating.
The radar itself can act as a weapon.
I recall reading of cars failing in the vicinity of Fylingdales but never appreciated the power of some radar to cause so much trouble to an aircraft…
Does this mean you can shoot down an AShM with the radar?
Possibly, it depends on how well its shielded and what type of filter it has on its own radar.
Never understood why we put so much money into designing and developing sampson and then didn’t put it on the carriers, which would the tallest ships in any task force or the upcoming frigates.
The carriers most likely not be able to get under the Forth Bridge from Rosyth?
maybe the laser system could ork along the same principle
Radar theory… It just brought back all those years sat in Collingrad as a baby tiff
tiff? oh, you poor soul
Its not just aircraft.
GRP ships had an issue when close to SPY1 radars . The radar literally switched off the ships systems …engines, electronics, everything totally dead. Only when the Tico had moved out of range where the systems able to be brought back up .
That issue has now been corrected I should add!
It was 2 miles!
1/3rd of the RN’s destroyer force ……
I saw all 6 9 might have been 5 ?) in Portsmouth a few years ago. got a few Pics somewhere. Got “Investigated” whilst taking the Pics.
“rare” ?
CPW.
Me too! I was onboard the ferry to Saint-Malo. There was also a Khareef class corvette alongside.
Just checked, it was late August 2013.
Yup, That’s what my Picture History shows.
Yes I remember that too. 5 out of 6 were in. Curious why the MDP checked you considering they have pleasure cruises around the harbour with the ships in sight!
No, the term was sycophantic acolyte….highly descriptive!
actually It was “sycophantic acolyte”s””. Referring to anyone on here who just happens to agree with my posts or shares a similar sense of humor.
Or just anyone who He disagrees with since turning up a few weeks back .
TH was the same.
(Reckon It’s an Attention Seeking Thing. )
What happened was, I Arrived on Two Wheels looking like a mixture of power Ranger and Darth Vader and Got my telephoto Lens out when a small white Van with two Blokes inside started taking Pics of me and my Bike. whilst obviously checking me out. So I gave them a wave and took some pics of them too.
it probably didn’t take long for them to check my History and see my reason for having an interest in the Royal Navy.
The MIB’s!
Did they have dark suites and shades?
Nope, They were old bald and Ex forces looking. I can spot them from a mile off.
Got to wonder why, what are they expecting you to discover, considering the ship has been all over the world and has been photographed a billion times.
Lol. A lot of the time i’m on one wheel.
maybe they thought you were ‘cruising for custom, it is a sailors town after all (old joke)
Be careful taking photos in Portsmouth.
We all know the Navy’s secret weapon, HMS Gosport Ferry, soon to be fitted with 19.1 inch naval cannons*, painted grey and augmented with the addition of marines and a flight deck under the orders of Gav’ is based there.
* 19.1 inch just so we can get one up on our Japanese colleagues for those who know their battleship history.
Mrs ?
OK Rear Gunner, My Specialist subject. Musashi. @ 73,000 Tons and the Biggest battleship ever Constructed. Big 18.1 Inch guns and a serious amount of other Firepower. Interestingly though, her Guns weren’t actually any better than 15 or 16 Incher’s. Her and the Yamamoto were both sunk without really influencing the coarse of the War to any great degree.
Stunning looking Ships though. Bigger Displacement than HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Monitor ??????
Lol, just joshing !
Actually RGR, If you haven’t been to Portsmouth, go and take a tour, Warrior Is Amazing. Lot’s of big Guns.
I wish this site was more like FB at times, I could post so many Interesting Pictures including Defence related stuff too !!!!
RGR, LOL again mate.
QE Is sat Humming nicely at the moment She looks proper Impressive too. I used to think Hermes was big but Bugger me backwards ( Mentioned that earlier, Think I got away with It ) These New Carriers are not much smaller than those Big Old Murcan McDonalds outlets.
been on a couple of Boat Trips too over the years.
Go Soon mate, oh and Give me a Shout, i’d love to Meet you and Shake your bloody Hand.
Havent seen the new carrier myself either. I dont get to that part of England that often but I must take a run down. Maybe Ill save it until we have both in harbour! That’d be a sight!
Musashi.
will they call it a type 31 frigate? or move on to the birkenhead ferry?
Actually there is a monitor in the historic dockyard, it’s quite small but with two 6” guns. I think she was built in the 1st WW, and somehow has survived. Last time I visited with various nephews and nieces she wasn’t open to visitors, I don’t think that they had started to refit her and set her up for the visitors. Great shame that we didn’t keep one battleship as a museum piece, the old Warspite had more battle honours than any, from Jutland through to DDay.
I also flew a light plane over Portsmouth harbour in 2016, and all 6 T45’s were alongside. It was summer leave period so not surprising.
Yes, She was recently Painted and lightly Restored too.
Agreed, We really should have kept Warspite. It’s a complete Travesty that almost the Entire history of Britain’s maritime Heritage has been resigned to the Scrap Heap.
Couple of decades ago i met the bloke who Scrapped HMS Ark Royal. Wanted to just punch His Lights out.
HMS Belfast had a Very Interesting History too. Well Worthy of her Birth In London but as you say, she Ain’t no Warspite.
I’d like HMS Hermes along side at Portsmouth too truth be known.
RGR, Have you been to France and seen the Redoutable ? Another well worth Trip In my my Book. 8000 Tons of Garlic smelling Nuclear Boat all open to the General public. Unless you are under 6 Years Old or something like that.
imagine having Hermes outside the Old College in Greenwich! That’d be a sight to see!
maybe they should have kept victorious on the mud next to spice island where it got stuck. being towed out for scrapping, never understood why it was that hms bristol was retained as a museum ship when illustrious,invincible or hermes could have been used.
@RGR – USS Iowa? I know there’s a few pics of her online in Portsmouth.
Lucky you though!
Found this: https://bit.ly/2U5MmAn
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/7zj1vi/uss_iowa_visits_portsmouth_1840x1465/
(This webpage is a bit slow, word of warning) https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/lifestyle/heritage/the-awesome-powerful-and-threatening-uss-iowa-arrives-1-8614964
Probably was then, there’s a few pictures of it on the internet. Lucky you though!
(I tried posting some links, but I doubt they’ll pass moderation)
It was either Iowa, Wisconsin or Missouri if you were there in the 80s.
what about the 4th Iowa?
I’m happy with that! I’d rather just come to one site for my UK defence news. I find the MOD sites a bit clunky. If I’m at a loose end and there’s no new articles on here, I use realcleardefence. That’s quite American heavy, but I always find interesting articles on there too.
Does anyone here know if a next generation Sampson radar is under development somewhere? We seemed to take a world lead with Sampson but other radars are now appearing that seem to challenge it. What will we put on our next gen destroyer? Have we got people maintaining our advantage on radar development, or will we now just rely on buying foreign like with most other things?
The short answer is yes. Sampson is continually improving as its a fully digital AESA radar. As the development of signal processing improves so will the radar’s capabilities.
One of the next development of radars on land will use passive radar techniques. This is where a ground station monitors a large spectrum of emitters from mobile phones masts, microwave data links, digital broadcast signals etc. It will put them all together and look for signal discrepancies and doppler shifts created by moving targets. The problem is it can only really work in the azimuth plane as it wont be able to show the height of the target. Which is due to the signals being transmitted from omni-directional antennas. It will also require a stack of signal processing. Trials have been conducted in the UK and Germany that shows aircraft can be detected and tracked. Much like low frequency radar tracking a stealth target, it knows there’s something there but it can’t tell what it is. This will be absolutely useless for ships as it relies on 3rd party transmitters, not many of those out at sea. The next big thing for military radars will be ultra wideband radar. If we take the old Foxhunter radar fitted to Tornado F3s, it was a multi mode X band radar (8 to 12GHz). Lets say it operated at a carrier frequency of 10GHz and could hop +/- 500MHz, this is typical of most modern pulse doppler radars. However, ultrawideband would increase this to where it could hop from 8 to 12GHz inclusively. There are even further developments, where the radar could seemlessly hop whole bands, so say from S to X, that’s a frequency range of 2 to 12GHz. This will make it very difficult for radar jammers to copy, or for surveillance gear to detect. There are some UK radars that can transmit two bands from the same antenna array which again makes life difficult for jamming etc.
Radar development is alive and kicking in the UK.
Good to know, and very detailed info thanks.
never understood a word of that, i was A STOKER.
I would love to see a land attack missile on the T45. Now that Tomahawk is going out of production, that leaves the Israeli Trigon, a naval version of the Extra rocket. 306mm, 150 km range, 2×4 angled launchers. Wonder if we could squeeze them in next to the Phalanx?
JohnHartley# Wrong priority! Type-45 destroyers are specialist air or missile defence warships.
Would need Mk. 41 system installed.
Better put money into a more capable Type 31 frigate.
I mean, Mk. 41 system to launch Tomahawk cruise missile.
Trigon’s are launched from corvettes.
Adding Tomahawk to the surface fleet would be a pointless optics thing but provide no increase in capability, due to the lack of tomahawk missile numbers meaning there isn’t enough to go around.
The money is better spent else where.
The New Brazilian Corvette looks to be a fair old bit of kit. just been reading up on It over on Janes site.
LOL.
But, They look to have Artizan, Sea Ceptor, 76mm and 40mm guns, Sonar, Chopper with Hanger and A whole host of other Kit I’m wondering how our Type 31’s would compare on Spec and price.
reckon the Tonnage Figures are wrong for Type 31’s and the Corvette, i read the corvette will be @ 3400. Would like to see the costs though.
I fear the money will go into the tonnage rather than the capability. Built to be large enough to be called frigates and not corvette’s but lacking weaponry that a lot of corvette’s now have.
Steve, that does seem to be the pattern but the Type 26 looks to be Top Notch for not only the RN.
Can’t wait to see HMS Glasgow.
Right now it has the potential to be top notch but we will see if it delivers.
The big question currently lies with what it will be armed with, outside the parts that are lifted from the current frigates.
Will we purchase something to replace Harpoon and if so what.
What land attack options will they go with at all.
Will they only rely on helicopters for the offensive side of anti-sub warfare and therefore be limited by weather.
What exactly will the mission bay be used for, beyond a lot of hypothetical.
Yes Steve, Time will tell. But the Specs are looking pretty good in comparison to Others, Apart from the Offensive Suite which once again looks to have been ignored or demoted by the number crunchers.
As you rightly point out and as many others have also.
they should be, most of them are ex R.N!
See, that’s what I like about this site and It’s Format.
Part of me wonders to which Comment you are Replying to,
another part of me thinks you have sussed the “Smooth Lines below the Waterline” Comment
and another part of me wonders If you linked the “Smooth” bit with the “Brazilian” Bit”.
Whereas another part of me thinks that you just thought about RN Ships or Us Matelot’s having Razor sharp Shaving Skills and Clean Habbits.
It’s all a bit Confusing at times.
No Wonder Posters take things all the wrong way at times !!!!!
Yes Steve, Time will tell. But the Specs are looking pretty good in comparison to Others, Apart from the Offensive Suite which once again looks to have been ignored or demoted by the number crunchers.
As you rightly point out and as many others have also.