DAN ENTWISLE

ON a winter day in 1975 tugs busied themselves around a new arrival at the Royal Navy dockyard in Portsmouth. The subject of their attention, a ship called Sheffield. A brand new ship, the first of a new generation of vessel that was to take the Royal Navy out of the steam age, through the cold war and into the hazardous waters of the 21st Century. By modern naval standards the Type 42 destroyer was a rush job. There was an urgency behind its building because the Royal Nav

NEWS that the Royal Fleet Auxilliary ship RFA Lyme Bay is about to take part in humanitarian relief operations in Dominica jogged my memory. Back in 2011, I wrote a lengthy piece on the class promoting their vitrues as a multi-role vessel ideal for humanitarian relief operations. Note that 3 ships are now in service with the RFA. Largs Bay, the lead ship of the class was sold to Australia and renamed HMAS Choules. The video animation in this post comes from the Royal Austra

ROYAL NAVY Offshore Patrol Vessel HMS SEVERN is to return to her base in Portsmouth after an eight-month deployment to the Caribbean. The fact that a Royal Navy ship is coming home after a stint in the West Indies isn’t really news. What is newsworthy is that Severn is the first ship of her type to be sent abroad in such a role. Severn is one of four Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) in service with the Royal Navy. Small and lightly armed, she is more commonly seen patrolling ar

POLITICIANS will be politicians, often saying what they mean in a roundabout way. When British Prime Minister David Cameron this week made comments about UK defence, commentators seized on every word, trying to read between the lines, second guessing what he really meant. What has become apparent this week is that the UK is now committed to the NATO minimum standard of spending 2% of GDP on defence. David Cameron’s observations, that more money should be spent on what he ref