Posted on 02/01/2006 5:21:30 PM PST by Cornpone
The most powerful frontline warship since the Second World War was launched by the Countess of Wessex yesterday, marking a resurgence of British naval ship building.
The first of Britain's new Type 45 destroyers took to the waters of the Clyde as the world's most advanced air defence ship.
Daring will be able to track and destroy a target the size of a cricket ball travelling at more than three times the speed of sound, a "quantum leap forward in the Navy's capabilities", according the Royal Navy.
The boat's defensive system, combining a hugely powerful radar and missile system, has left American visitors to the yard "shaken and shocked", according to BAE Systems, its builders.
The destroyer's launch was watched by a crowd of 11,000 and hundreds of Daring's Glaswegian shipbuilders.
In the next 10 years, as many as eight T45s could be built at a cost of £650 million each. Also to be commissioned are two large aircraft carriers (£3.5 billion), four Astute class hunter killer submarines (£3 billion) and a fleet of up to 14 auxiliary ships (£3.5 billion).
Daring will be fitted with its radar and missile systems before its sea trials in early 2007. Its Samson radar, from its current location in Portsmouth, can monitor all take offs and landings from every major European airport.
Better to be shaken and shocked than simply stirred.
I'm glad they're on our side! BTW, you have an excellent home page!
>>>Shaken and shocked...a "quantum leap forward in the Navy's capabilities"
>>That sounds fetched.
Sounds like the Philadelphia experiment! :o(
I thought I read a while back that we have 'portable' laser systems that can do that and that they would be deployed in Iraq in the near future.
Shock and awe?
A new anti-ballistic missile system is being installed on 18 US Navy ships.
"track and destroy a target the size of a cricket ball travelling at more than three times the speed of sound..."
Not that it matters, but isn't that about the radar cross section of an F-35?
Guess we better not get into a tiff with the brits. ;->
What else can one say but, "Rule Britannia!"
We still have one kind of ship which a sunburn would bounce off of, if our leaders had the brains to use them instead of making museams out of them.
It's a Dalek in a rowboat!
Granted, ours (DDX) is still on paper...
Well, I like the Brits, they're our allies and all, but all the braggadocio upon launching this ship brings the Titanic to mind ... they're tempting fate.
Still HMS Daring sounds a lot better than USS Carter.
LOL!
Yeah, well they can say these things because the only thing that has kept them from military defeats over almost one hundred years is the finest military ever fielded by the greatest nation in the history of mankind.
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