£1bn warship conksout and quits mission
ONE of Britain’s most advanced warships has had to abandon a crucial mission to the Gulf after breaking down at sea.
HMS Diamond, a £1billion Type 45 destroyer, had problems with a propeller that could not be fixed on board and has had to return to the UK for repairs.
It is understood there were no ships to replace her so Britain will be unable to perform a longrunning commitment in the region.
Diamond had completed only two months of a nine-month deployment.
Details emerged as Chancellor Philip Hammond was criticised in the Lords for not mentioning the Armed Forces in his Budget speech and failing to give the Ministry of Defence any extra cash despite warnings the military is about to collapse.
Former head of the Royal Navy, Lord West, said the Government ‘does not seem to care about the damage being done’ to the Armed Forces.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas added: ‘More defence cuts could put our position in Nato in jeopardy.’
Former Army chief Lord Dannatt
said a rise in defence spending would send a strong message to Britain’s allies.
The broken ship is the latest debacle to hit the Navy’s six-strong fleet of destroyers built by BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, which started entering service eight years ago.
Diamond was built by BAE Systems Naval Ships on the Clyde and launched in 2007.
The other five are already undergoing repairs in Portsmouth, in a year the Government has called ‘the year of the Royal Navy’.
Their engines were unable to cope in the heat in the Gulf and kept cutting out. It is understood there is also a shortage of sailors to man the vessels.
According to the Royal Navy website, Diamond had been due to ‘be working with international and Nato allies to protect some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, keeping them free from criminal activities’.
It is rare for the Navy to fail to fulfil one of its priority tasks and is a sign of the strain the service is under following decades of cuts to the fleet and to personnel numbers.
Diamond was deployed to the Gulf in early September but was initially diverted to relieve the fleet flagship HMS Ocean as it was moved from a Nato operation in the Mediterranean to deliver hurricane relief to the Caribbean.
By the end of October Ocean had resumed its Nato mission, enabling Diamond to sail towards the Gulf.
But within days the propeller problem forced the ship to return.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: ‘We can confirm HMS Diamond has experienced technical issues, but we do not discuss the detailed state of our operational ships and are unable to comment further.’