HMS Dauntless has arrived in the Middle East to continue the Royal Navy's unwavering fight against terrorism and piracy.
The Portsmouth-based warship – which is affiliated to the port of Great Yarmouth, will spend the next four months in the Gulf region, dividing her time between the international effort to prevent piracy and drugs trafficking and joining the carrier strike group of the USS Carl Vinson.
Commander Adrian Fryer, the Commanding Officer of HMS Dauntless, said: 'We have been training incredibly hard for the last year to reach this transition point to UKMCC tasking and it is a credit to the determination of the men and women in HMS Dauntless to overcome any hurdle put in front of them.
'We look forward to bringing the full effect of a highly capable Type 45 destroyer into this area of operations.'
Since leaving Portsmouth between Christmas and the new year, the Type 45 destroyer has been flashing up all her systems and keeping the 200 sailors and Royal Marines on board fully trained.
They have carried out practice shoots involving her Phalanx automated Gatling gun, board and search work-outs for her Lynx helicopter and commando/Navy boarding team as well as conducting a replenishment at sea with the US Navy's tanker Charles Drew.
Using her world-beating air defence radar and Sea Viper missile system, the Type 45 destroyer will build an accurate air surveillance picture over the whole of the Gulf and guard the aircraft carrier group against possible air attack while they patrol the Gulf and launch airstrikes against ISIL.
HMS Dauntless is the second of the Royal Navy's six Type 45 Destroyers. She was launched by her sponsor, Lady Burnell-Nugent, in January 2007.
She is capable of carrying out a wide range of operations, including counter-piracy activities, disaster relief work and surveillance operations as well as high intensity war fighting.
A team of crew from Dauntless visited Yarmouth to take part in Remembrance Sunday services last November.
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