HMS Lancaster sails for three years forward-deployed in the Gulf HMS Lancaster has left Portsmouth Naval Base for a three-year deployment to the Gulf. Photo: HMS Lancaster/Twitter HMS Lancaster sailed today Monday 15th August from Portsmouth and will not return home for three years, being forward-deployed in the Middle East and based in Bahrain. HMS […]
Lima Charlie: What is the future of the Royal Navy’s anti-ship capabilities? Will the loss of Russia’s flagship Moskva alter how the UK equips its ships for naval combat? HMS Montrose flexing her warfighting muscle with the successful firing of a Harpoon missile. Photo: MOD Throughout the history of naval warfare, one of the most […]
During INDO PACIFIC 2022 several contenders emerged for the Royal Australian Navy’s requirement for new Joint Support Ships (JSS). Under project SEA2200, Australia will domestically build two multipurpose auxiliary vessels, able to perform both sealift and replenishment operations, to replace HMAS Choules. HMAS Choules at Fleet Base East in Sydney, the week of Indo Pacific […]
In 2009, Australia’s government decided that it would replace eight Anzac-class frigates with nine ships optimised for antisubmarine warfare (ASW). There was no justification in the Royal Australian Navy capstone doctrine for acquiring and optimising a frigate for ASW, which it regarded as among the most difficult of naval operations to be conducted and most […]
Dutton and Chief of the Navy Respond to Fears Around Hunter Class Publication of a leaked engineering report criticising the anticipated performance of the RAN’s future Hunter-class frigates has drawn swift rebuttals from the Defence Minister, Defence, and the Chief of Navy. Details of the classified ‘Engineering Team Assessment’ undertaken by Defence in November were […]
ANNUAL COMMEMORATION AND LUNCH SYDNEY, 7 MAY 2016 Address by Rear Admiral James Goldrick AO CSC RAN at the Australian National Maritime Museum Sydney We think of the face of naval battle as grey warships on a blue horizon, with the flash of guns and the splash of shells. We imagine it as very frightening […]
By LCDR Desmond Woods, RANR Karl von Clausewitz famously wrote that war is the realm of uncertainly. The lived experience of war at sea bears this out. Ships like people can be the Victims of Circumstances, not of their making. So it is with the story of the RAN’s Heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra. It […]
By Hector Donohue The following description of a little known incident onboard Yarra during Confrontation is taken from the recently published book ‘United and Undaunted – the First 100 Years’, a history of Diving in the RAN 1911 – 2011, by EW Linton and HJ Donohue. The Indonesia – Malaysia Confrontation (Konfrontasi) was fought from […]
By Richard Francis Today I managed to score an unexpected conducted tour of one of the RAN’s latest Collins Class submarines, HMAS Sheean, alongside the dedicated submarine berth at West Wall in Fleet Base East. On first appearance the black, sleek submarine hull seems small but sinister. On boarding and being greeted by a smart […]
(This piece of whimsy was first published in NOCN 85, 1 June 2011, in a shorter version. This presentation contains material omitted from the Newsletter one for reasons of space, and in fact includes all the material received without omission.) Very occasionally, something drops into the Naval Officers Club Newsletter’s editorial inbox that has its […]
