I seem to be slipping into an unfortunate habit of not taking a PAD on the last day of the weekend. In this particular case, that was the Monday since we had the Labour Day long weekend. I'll have to look to that.

By Tuesday it was time to be back at work, but many of the warships which had attended the 2013 Fleet Review were still in port and therefore provided camera fodder.

This Is HMS Daring, the lead ship of the Type 45 class air defence destroyer of the Royal Navy. It's a very different animal from the last HMS Daring (D05) which was all guns and very little radar whereas this is the other way around. My familiarity with the old Daring class comes not so much from the old HMS Daring herself (she was paid off in 1971) but from an Australian variant of the design HMAS Vampire (D11) which continued in Australian service until 1986. More to the point, if I were to turn 90° to my right, I'd be looking straight at Vampire since she is now an exhibit in the National Maritime Museum only a few hundred metres away.

The new Daring relies on missiles rather than guns, as most warships do these days. Each missile is of course far more potent than any single round from an old-fashioned piece of naval artillery is, and far more likely to hit its target. The problem is that they cost a hell of a lot more and you can carry far fewer of them when you're away from your base. The key limitation to the projection of naval force these days is therefore the prospect that the enemy, operating from well supplied bases can simply keep harassing you until you've used up all of your ammunition. That is, unless you have a carrier battle group at your disposal with enough firepower to take out the enemy before they can do that. Most navies can build ships like this but for those without carrier battle groups (which is, essentially, all but one) they need to hope that they never need to use them.

Unfortunately both the title and the commentary on today's shot is pretty prosaic. But hey, what can you really say about an air defence destroyer that's amusing or witty.

Nice ship, but she can still go cruising without me.