A new £18 million contract for work on the Royal Navy’s Long Range Radar (LRR) was announced by UK defense minister Harriett Baldwin as she visited BAE Systems’ Great Baddow site on November 23. The contract will ensure the continued availability of Long Range Radar (LRR) equipment on the UK’s six T
Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond is returning home early from a deployment to the Persian Gulf after experiencing propeller problems. The Type 45 destroyer was forced to leave the gulf despite sailors’ efforts to repair the ship at sea, a Times report on November 23 said. The problems are reportedly
US shipbuilder General Dynamics Bath Iron Works has teamed up with Spanish Navantia to compete for a contract to build the US Navy’s FFG(X) frigate. Announced by Navantia on Thursday, the agreement will see the two companies work together on evolved designs of Navantia’s AEGIS frigate family. Norweg
Swedish defense and security company Saab has announced a contract for the delivery of further Sea Giraffe AMB naval radars for the US Navy’s Independence-variant littoral combat ships LCS 28 and LCS 30. The US military designation for the Sea Giraffe AMB radar is AN/SPS-77. Saab said the work would
Lockheed Martin has received a $22.7 million contract modification under a wider, $6 billion contract for the construction of four up-gunned littoral combat ships for the Saudi Arabian navy. The contract modification was administered through the US Naval Sea Systems Command under the foreign militar
Ingalls Shipbuilding launched the US Coast Guard’s eighth national security cutter Midgett (WMSL 757) in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on November 23. Midgett was translated via Ingalls’ rail car system to the floating dry dock last week, and the dock was moved away from the pier on Tuesday night. With t
When Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth got underway from Rosyth in June this year, the ship sailed with a specialized night vision goggle (NVG) lighting suite developed by UK-based lighting specialist Consolite. As the company explained, the aircraft carrier’s original design did not incor
A French Navy amphibious task group got underway from the Toulon naval base on Wednesday, November 21, for a deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Composed of Mistral-class amphibious assault ship LHD FS Tonnerre and the Horizon-class air defense destroyer FS Chevalier Paul, the task
A US Navy aircraft with 11 crew and passengers has crashed into the Philippine Sea southeast of Okinawa, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement. The aircraft crashed at approximately 2:45 p.m., Wednesday, while en route to the US aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) which is currently operating
The French Navy has received a new visual defense simulator (Simdav) at its base in Brest, the system manufacturer Naval Group announced on November 22. Brest is the second base to receive the Simdav after Toulon received one at the end of 2016. Both deliveries are part of a 5-year modernisation and
The Royal Australian Navy’s recently-commissioned destroyer HMAS Hobart recently added an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter to the list of her capabilities, certifying its deck for helicopter handling. The deck handling trial took place at the Oiler Wharf, Garden Island, Sydney, on November 7. At the center
US guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76) got underway from San Diego on November 20 to start a regularly scheduled independent deployment to the US 7th Fleet and 5th Fleet areas of operation. Higgins has a crew of nearly 330 sailors, officers and enlisted, and is a multi-mission ship designe
US Navy’s littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) departed the US 7th Fleet area of responsibility on November 21, after spending nearly 14 months in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. During the rotational deployment, the ship and crew operated with navies of 16 partner nations, participated in 11 multilater
Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset scrambled recently to shadow a Russian naval destroyer as it transited the Moray Firth, returning home from the Mediterranean Sea. It was not the Kulakov’s first visit to UK waters as the destroyer was also shadowed by HMS Somerset from the same position in the Moray
