The Type 45 Dauntless-class destroyer was designed to be the most powerful air-defence ship ever built. One of the vessel’s crucial – and perhaps most emblematic – features is the powerful radar ball sitting on the top of the central tower. Rotating every four seconds, it is reportedly capable of tracking 1,000 objects as small as a cricket ball travelling up to three times the speed of sound while simultaneously co-ordinating the flight of up to 16 missiles. These missiles are predominantly the anti-aircraft and anti-missile Aster. The vessel can fire eight of them in less than 10 seconds, and they are capable of hitting a moving projectile 120 kilometres away. The 152-metre destroyer comes with a £1.05 billion (Dh4.8 billion) price tag and the British Royal Navy has six of them. The Type 45, known as the Daring class, is a critical element of the Royal Navy’s new generation of ships – alongside the two new aircraft carriers, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the under-construction HMS Prince of Wales. It is a highly specialised vessel designed to operate as part of a group, providing protection against airborne threats. Although it wasn’t included originally, in 2013 the Royal Navy began retrofitting four of the Type 45 destroyers with Harpoon anti-ship launchers taken from decommissioned older destroyers. Questions have been raised about the ships’ anti-submarine capabilities, as they rely predominantly on helicopters they can carry and launch. There are no reported plans to retrofit torpedo tubes. The HMS Duncan, which is being sent to the Gulf region, is coming from the Black Sea where it took part in Nato exercises that brought together 3,000 troops, 32 ships and 24 aircraft. The ships might come with state of the art fighting equipment, but they have suffered a string of issues with the propulsion system. The Ministry of Defence has acknowledged that the propulsion system proved unreliable and announced a staggered refit after several partial or total power failures.
