The Royal Navy is scrambling to deploy one ship to Cyprus – it’s a total embarrassment | World | News

Inside Royal Navy headquarters, officials are scrambling to get HMS Dragon ready to deploy to the Mediterranean. The arrival of this highly capable warship in the region to help protect Cyprus and British bases will be warmly welcomed amid a diplomatic fallout, yet the question of why it’s taken so long has left many scratching their heads.

HMS Dragon is a £1billion Type 45 destroyer. It is one of the trump cards in the Navy’s surface fleet alongside two Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers. Six ships make up the Daring Class, considered to be among some of the world’s most advanced warships. Not only that, but they have a CV to back that up.

The Daring Class is battle-hardened and has proved itself when it comes to dealing with threats like those HMS Dragon might have to face in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In recent years, sister ship HMS Diamond shot down nine drones and a ballistic missile fired by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels as it protected merchant shipping in the Red Sea.

HMS Dragon, just like Diamond, is an air defence specialist.

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Its Sea Viper missile system can target and destroy multiple targets simultaneously and can launch eight missiles in under 10 seconds, while guiding up to 16 simultaneously.

The ship’s SAMPSON radar is also state-of-the-art and can detect and track threats from more than 250 miles away.

This is a serious kit and will help form a shield around Cyprus.

But the decision to deploy HMS Dragon to Cyprus was only taken after RAF Akrotiri on the island was hit by a drone.

No casualties were sustained, and damage was “minimal”, according to Defence Secretary John Healey.

However, the incident has raised serious questions over the Government’s preparedness and why no Type 45 was in place to begin with — after all, it had been apparent for weeks that the US and Israel planned to attack Iran, which in turn threatened to drag the entire region into a war.

What has added greater pressure on the Government is the fact that HMS Dragon won’t be ready to sail until next week.

The journey itself will take five to seven days, meaning HMS Dragon will likely arrive in the region by mid-March.

To add further embarrassment, European allies France, Italy, Greece and even Spain – which has refused to reach NATO’s new 5% of GDP spending target – are rushing warships to the Eastern Med to help bolster Cyprus’s defences. All ships will almost certainly arrive before Dragon.

Many will argue that this reflects how the UK armed forces have been “hollowed out”. Critics will also say that the Navy has no warship in the Gulf for the first time since 1980 is further evidence of this.

In a major warning over the state of the Navy, former First Sea Lord, Lord West, last month told me the Senior Service is « probably the smallest and probably the weakest » in the past 60 years as a result of cuts by successive governments.

HMS Dragon was understood to be one of only three Type 45 destroyers able to deploy for the mission, with the others in maintenance and unavailable.

The lack of deployable Type 45 destroyers has been a longstanding concern among defence experts and commentators, but it appears this issue is now at the forefront of many minds across the Commons and the country.

Mr Healey met his counterpart in Cyprus on Thursday, following criticism from the Cypriot Government over the drone incident at Akrotiri.

It is still unclear where the Shahed-type UAV was launched from. Western officials say it was not fired from Iran, while Cypriot officials have said they believe it was likely launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Further drones heading towards the base on Monday were intercepted.

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman has denied that the UK was not fully prepared for the threat. Officials said additional air defences, radar systems and jets had already been deployed to the base weeks earlier. Wildcat helicopters, with counter-drone missiles, are also being sent.