HMS Daring Reaches 3,000 Days in Refit
The Royal Navy’s HMS Daring, the lead ship of the Type 45-class air defense destroyer, has now spent 3,000 consecutive days in refit. That equals a staggering eight years, to put that in perspective the UK has had five Prime Ministers in the intervening period. Launched in 2006, she completed sea trials in 2008 and was handed over to the Royal Navy in December 2008. She was formally commissioned on 23 July 2009 and deployed operationally for the first time in 2012. Despite successfully completing a number of operational tours Daring suffered power and propulsion issues which emerged across the class. Daring broke down in November 2010 and April 201 while other vessels from the class; Dauntless and Duncan suffered failures in February 2014 and November 2016 respectively.
The issues with the class stemmed from a design flaw in the Northrop Grumman-designed intercooler unit of the Rolls-Royce WR-21 gas turbines, which compromised power reliability, especially in warm climates. First Sea Lord, Admiral Philip Jones, explained to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee in July 2016 that the “WR-21 gas turbines were designed in extreme hot weather conditions to what we call ‘gracefully degrade’ in their performance, until you get to the point where it goes beyond the temperature at which they would operate,” he continued “we found that the resilience of the diesel generators and the WR-21 in the ship at the moment was not degrading gracefully; it was degrading catastrophically, so that is what we have had to address”
Britsky, an X user who maintains a tracker of Royal Navy fleet asset readiness states based upon open sources, shared his latest update on 16 August. The noted that HMS Daring had spent 2,998 days alongside. This is nearly three times longer than the next vessel to have spent a consdierable period laid up – HMS Ambush, an Astute-class SSN, which has spent 1,111 alongside.
In March 2018, the UK Ministry of Defence announced the award of the £160 million “Power Improvement Project” (PIP) contract to BAE Systems, BMT Defence Services, and Cammell Laird to remove the two current diesel generators and install three larger diesel generators
In May 2023, then-Defence Minister James Cartlidge confirmed that PIP work on HMS Daring had been completed, in a statement to Parliament he noted:
“Completing the Power Improvement Project (PIP) work is dependent on the availability of ships to undertake the upgrade, balanced against the Royal Navy’s current and future operational commitments. PIP work on HMS Dauntless and HMS Daring has completed. HMS Dauntless has been handed back to the Royal Navy and has returned to operational service. HMS Daring is undertaking refit and regeneration work at Portsmouth. PIP work is ongoing on HMS Dragon. HMS Defender is due to commence PIP work in Portsmouth later this year. It is planned that all six Types 45 ships will have received the PIP conversion by 2028. No PIP-related technical issues have been reported in either HMS Dauntless or HMS Daring.”
Overt Defense reached out to the Royal Navy for an update on HMS Daring’s status, a Royal Navy spokesperson declined to comment on the status of Daring but noted that ‘the Royal Navy continues to fulfil all of its operational commitments.’