The Royal Brunei Navy took delivery of two 80m OPVs at a ceremony in Germany on 7 January. The patrol vessels, KDB Darussalam and KDB Darulehsan, were handed over at the Lürssen Werft shipyard ahead of their expected arrival in…
Brazil is the latest Latin American country to publicly refuse a Royal Navy warship permission to visit one of its ports. A planned call to Rio de Janeiro by the permanent Falkland Islands Protection Vessel, HMS Clyde, was denied in…
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…
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…
Despite the anticipation of tough Treasury sanctions on defence spending, the outcome of the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) has been met with widespread consternation. Many consider the prospect of building a large aircraft carrier that will never…