Navy Lookout exclusively reports that Plymouth-based HMS Iron Duke is now withdrawn from active service and its weapons and sensors have been stripped.
Despite ‘no formal decommissioning announcement being made’, many are questioning the Royal Navy’s ability to sustain even its much-reduced surface fleet, and only three years after a £103 million refit.
Navy Lookout is the UK’s leading independent publication focused on the Royal Navy — its operations, procurement, people, and future direction and founded in 2007.
Westward Shipping News library pictures of HMS Iron Duke in the Sound.
Russian ships and submarines are brazenly entering UK waters, while Moscow’s sanctioned vessels are sailing through the English Channel unchallenged.
The Royal Navy’s fleet has only five active frigates remaining, the majority of which are used to monitor potential submarine activity in the North Atlantic.
Defence experts say that HMS Iron Duke’s withdrawal leaves the Navy’s resources to counter Russian activity in the Channel even more stretched, and means it is unable to assign more than a single frigate to the UK’s Carrier Strike Group.
Navy Lookout says, the repair work on HMS Iron Duke was the most complex ever undertaken on a Type 23 frigate, costing £103m.
