HMS Dragon will formally take her place alongside her older sisters as the fourth of the Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers is commissioned into the Fleet on Friday (April 20th). Hundreds of guests including families of the 190 ship’s company will attend a colourful ‘Christening’ ceremony at Portsm
The Royal Navy helicopter and commando carrier, HMS Illustrious, has joined one of the largest military exercises in Europe. The exercise, which includes participants from the UK, USA, Germany, Netherlands, France, Norway, Denmark and Canada, will take place between April 16 and 26 and is designed t
Pacific Fleet (PF) task force comprising Guards missile cruiser Varyag, destroyers Marshal Shaposhnikov, Admiral Vinogradov, and salvage tug SB-522 left bases setting a course for the Yellow Sea. There it will meet destroyer Admiral Tributs, tanker Pechenga, and seagoing tug MB-37 heading from the G
Ships of Black Sea Naval Cooperation Task Group (BLACKSEAFOR) on Apr 13 arrived in Sevastopol. Leaving Romanian Constanta, crew of the BLACKSEAFOR flagship – Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (BSF) large landing ship Caesar Kunikov – paid military honors to destroyer leader Moskva perished off Romania in 194
£14m of drugs used to fund terrorist activity will never reach their destination thanks to a major bust by HMS Westminster. The Portsmouth-based warship intercepted a suspicious dhow in the Indian Ocean, seizing over 70 bales containing more than 180kg of pure heroin. The Portsmouth-based frigate po
As part of a foreign military sales case, the U.S. Navy worked together with French military to execute France’s first aerial-target live-fire event using a GQM-163A Coyote Supersonic Sea Skimming Target (SSST), or missile, on April 4. France’s military procurement agency Direction Generale Pour L’A
Royal Naval Reservist Lieutenant Mark Bannister, 35, has recently returned from a six-month deployment fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. The Business Development Manager from Burnham swapped his civilian life to work for the European Union Naval Force in Djibouti, north east Africa. Mark sai
Three “blue-nosed” Reservists from HMS Sherwood in Nottingham have returned from a major exercise inside the Arctic Circle The biggest war game of the winter, involving 16,000 service men and women from 12 nations, was played out amid the Norwegian fjords and mountains in the harshest of winter weat
The first Dutch F-35 Lightning II test aircraft, the AN-1, rolled off the production line in fully assembled condition at the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas, on 5 April. In the coming weeks, the aircraft will be given a special coating. Lockheed Martin will then test the aircraft’s sys
Warships from across the globe – including a dozen Royal Navy warships, submarines and auxiliaries – are converging on Scotland for the largest military exercise staged in home waters in many years. Thirty two naval units, plus soldiers and air forces – some 8,000 personnel in all from eight nations
On 4 April, the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard intercepted a stash of 91 kilos of drugs near Curaçao. Earlier, on 20 March, 500 kilograms of cocaine had been found on a so-called go-fast boat in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea. These seizures were made during an operation led by the Royal
HMS Middleton demonstrated her minehunting prowess during an exercise with the US Navy – finding a grand total of 13 dummy mines in the Gulf. The two Allied navies worked hand-in-hand for ten days – just one important episode in a busy month for Bahrain-based Middleton And despite the trompe-l’œil o
After passing through the Suez Canal on 1 April, the multipurpose frigate HNLMS Van Amstel officially began its participation in EU Operation Atalanta. The Van Amstel will contribute to the mission against pirates operating off the coast of East Africa up to the end of May 2012.Operation Atalanta is
HMS Westminster’s pirate-busters trained with their Kenyan counterparts when the Portsmouth warship visited the great port of Mombasa. As well as exercising with local forces, the frigate was used to promote trade between the UK and East Africa and launched an initiative by Anglo-Kenyan authorities
