Royal Navy: Defence Secretary John Healey 'not happy' with warship situation as German frigate drafted into replace HMS Dragon on Nato op
The Defence Secretary has insisted that UK borrowing a ship from Germany for a Nato exercise is not embarrassing - but “hat good allies do”.
As reported by The News on Wednesday night, Sachsen, the lead ship of a fleet of Sachsen-class vessels, will command Nato’s Standing Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) in the North Atlantic.
This role was originally earmarked for HMS Dragon, but she has deployed to Cyprus to protect RAF Akrotiri from drone attack amid fallout from the Iran-US conflict. Despite Dragon being one of six Royal Navy Type 45s, none of the others is in a position to take her place in the exercise.
This morning Defence Secretary John Healey said the Germans were “good allies” to step in and provide their frigate, adding that the ship will be commanded by a Royal Navy commodore. He told LBC radio: “This is what good allies do. The Germans have stepped in to supply their warship.”
Asked if he was embarrassed that the UK needs to borrow a ship from Germany, he said it was a “sign of the strength of the Nato alliance … but I’m not happy with the situation we have with British warships, and that’s because it takes six years to build a warship”.
The UK has 17 frigates and destroyers, he said.
Asked why they did not make another ship available for the pre-planned Nato mission, he said: “I have to make decisions based on what we’ve got.
“We were preparing Dragon in order to play that flagship role, the way that Iran hit back in an indiscriminate, widespread way, meant I needed to reinforce the defences that we’d already before the conflict broke out, put into the Middle East.”
Of the other Type 45s, HMS Daring, Diamond, and Defender, are undergoing Power Improvement Project enhancements to restore their engines and other parts of the ships. Dauntless and Duncan are undergoing maintenance.