The Russian government has announced plans to build new shipyards near St Petersburg specifically for the construction of helicopter carriers. The facilities on Kotlin Island will become part of Admiralty Shipyards and later be used for other military and civil…
The first of three Project Khareef ships being built for the Royal Navy of Oman by BAE Systems has completed her initial sea trials. The corvette, RNOV Al Shamikh, put to sea in freezing conditions, with a combined shipyard and…
With little mention of the future of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in the latest Defence White Paper, the service seems to have once again evaded the wholesale privatisation that many had feared. The optimistic outlook stems from a lack of…
Ambush, the second of the Royal Navy’s new Astute class submarines, was officially named in Barrow-in-Furness on 16 December 2010, although a technical fault with the lifting equipment prevented her being rolled out from the Devonshire Dock Hall for the…
The UK MoD’s Disposal Services Authority has offered ex-HMS Invincible for sale by tender on its website. The aircraft carrier is listed as sound for towing but not in running condition, and will almost certainly be scrapped, with the MoD…
The US Navy has capitalised on lower than expected tenders for a major contract to design and build up to 55 warships. Instead of an original intention to order a batch of ten Littoral Combat Ships of the winning design…
The SDSR announcement has set out the future shape of the Royal Navy in 2020. The latest cutbacks will leave a highly capable force, albeit with fewer ships, with a fleet headed by a single Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier…
The two Castle class OPVs sold to Bangladesh have completed their multi-million pound refits at A&P’s Hebburn shipyard. The ships, renamed BNS Dhaleshwari (F36) and BNS Bijoy (F35), were formally handed over on 24 September. The Bangladeshi Navy classify them…
Australia’s A$8 billion project to build new air warfare destroyers has encountered a major setback. According to press reports, the Melbourne shipyard building modules for the new ships has ‘botched’ the construction of the first central keel block, making it…
The first major surface combatant to be designed and built in Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union was floated out at the Severnaya Verf shipyard in St Petersburg on 29 October. The future RFS Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza…