UK — Daring joins allied navies for her first major operation

Britain’s most advanced war­ship has joined allied navies in a sweep of trou­bled waters for her first major oper­a­tion east of Suez.

HMS Dar­ing, HMAS Par­ra­mat­ta, RFA Wave Knight and PNS Babur tak­ing part in Oper­a­tion SCIMITAR ANZAC [Pic­ture: LA(Phot) Kei­th Mor­gan, Crown Copyright/MOD 2012] Source: Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

The Type 45 destroy­er joined Aus­tralian, Pak­istani, New Zealand and Yemeni ships and per­son­nel for Oper­a­tion SCIMITAR ANZAC, scour­ing the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the coast of Yemen for ille­gal activity. 

The oper­a­tion has also seen HMS Dar­ing put her com­mand abil­i­ties to the test for the first time as she host­ed the Aus­tralian and New Zealand Navy per­son­nel who are cur­rent­ly direct­ing the at-sea activ­i­ties of Com­bined Task Force (CTF) 150, to which the Type 45 belongs on her east of Suez mission. 

For as well as being able to shoot down incom­ing mis­siles trav­el­ling at three times the speed of sound, the Portsmouth-based war­ship has spe­cial­ly-built com­mand facil­i­ties, includ­ing a ded­i­cat­ed plan­ning room, from where the move­ments and actions of a task group can be directed. 

In addi­tion to the CTF 150 com­mand team, Dar­ing — on her maid­en deploy­ment — also embarked Yemeni observers, whose con­tri­bu­tion proved extreme­ly valu­able, pro­vid­ing exper­tise and in-depth knowl­edge of the region to the ships involved as the group moved around the area of operations. 

The Task Force also enjoyed the sup­port of tanker RFA Wave Knight, which kept the ships sup­plied with fuel and stores and also con­tributed her Lynx helicopter. 

Daring’s Pet­ty Offi­cer, Lee But­ler, said: 

“See­ing all of the dif­fer­ent nations work­ing togeth­er aboard Dar­ing was very encour­ag­ing. The in-depth knowl­edge pro­vid­ed by the Yeme­nis has also been par­tic­u­lar­ly useful.” 

Cap­tain Lance Cook, Roy­al New Zealand Navy, Chief of Staff of the embarked com­mand team from CTF 150, explained that the oper­a­tion is sig­nif­i­cant as more than 23,000 ves­sels a year pass through the waters patrolled dur­ing SCIMITAR ANZAC. 

His Task Force’s key mis­sion is to stamp out illic­it activ­i­ty — pira­cy, smug­gling, peo­ple-traf­fick­ing — and safe­guard mariners going about their law­ful busi­ness, thus main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the region. 

Press release
Min­istry of Defence, UK 

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