NAVY NEWS, MAY 2008 23
Pictures: LA(Phot) Des Wade, Naval
Strike Wing, PO(Phot) Christine
Wood and LA(Phot) Darby Allen,
HMS Illustrious

W
ITH a little jink of the joystick, the Harrier
The white light adjacent to Henderson.
glides sideways over the fl ight deck of
AS BRITAIN’S fl agship deployment of 2008 reaches
‘air’ dies; the adjacent yellow Goalkeeper only comes to
HMS Illustrious.
its climax, Richard Hargreaves reports from HMS light illuminates.
life in the final moments of
The Falcons are still a good
an attack. The gun has three
A couple of spots away, a The Merlins of 814
Illustrious in the Gulf of Oman... and experiences a
25 miles away. There’s nothing
modes:
helicopter of 814 Naval Air NAS, the legendary distinct feeling of déjà vu.
Squadron lifts off to begin Flying Tigers, do not
Illustrious can do at this range.
● automatic –
another sweep for submarines search the oceans purely
For self-defence, the carrier
Goalkeeper does
first time – six aircraft plus 140 there were other warfare serials
lurking beneath the waves. for the threat beneath them,
relies on Goalkeeper, 20mm
everything itself;
men and women to look after going on as well. Everything
It could be the Iceland Gap, but the threats riding on them
Oerlikons, a quartet of Miniguns
● semi-automatic – the
them. was working as it should in
circa 1985. too.
and, ultima ratio, a clutch of
operator designates the
Except that the jets are The Harriers of the Naval
For Cdre Cunningham’s staff harmony.” ship’s company blazing away
target and Goalkeeper
bomber variants, not the justly- Strike Wing – elements of 800
there’s the chance to brush up This concurrency of exercises with SA80s.
deals with it;
lauded FRS1. and 801 Naval Air Squadrons
on skills needed to work with typifies Orion. War rarely throws All are weapons of last
● manual – the operator
The helicopters doing the – are no longer interceptors;
Allied navies whose language a single threat at you at once, so resort. Long before Goalkeeper
designates the target and
dipping are Merlins, still a they take the fight to the enemy,
or working practices – or both why should peacetime? engages, Edinburgh’s Sea Dart
fires the weapon.
twinkle in the Admiralty’s eye as they have recently proven
– differ from their own. There are if not constant, then or Cole’s RIMs should have
two decades ago. with aplomb in Afghanistan.
And for the men and women of at the very least frequent tests taken down the aerial threat.
Lusty is fitted with three
And the temperature’s in the And rather than lead a British
Orion – there are well in excess of Illustrious’ readiness to cope But what if, as Stanley Baldwin
Goalkeepers: one on the bow,
mid-30s. battlegroup in the Atlantic, Lusty
of 1,500 British personnel with threats by air and sea.
one on the stern and a third
once warned, ‘the bomber
There’s a distinctly Cold War heads an international task
committed to this exercise – Today, we’re threatened by
on the superstructure between
always get through’?
the funnels.
feel to Orion 2008 – but with force: the USS Cole, Spain’s
there’s work. A lot of work. ‘two bruisers’ – the codename Today, we’re chiefly testing
All three ’keepers talk to
all the 21st-Century weaponry SPS Mendez Nuñez, France’s FS
Orion had what Capt Steve for a couple of jets bearing Goalkeeper – a seven-barrelled
each other, so that no two
and technology the Senior Jean Bart, alongside the home-
Chick, Illustrious’ CO, calls “a down on the flagship. 30mm Gatling Gun capable of
guns aim at the same threat.
Service can muster. grown ‘talent’ – Edinburgh,
difficult gestation”. Engineering The ‘bruisers’ are two Falcon firing 70 rounds every second
In the operations room, we
For the crux of the Westminster, Trafalgar, RFAs
and personnel issues dogged jets, flown out from the UK to until its magazine runs out,
see whatever each keeper
deployment is focused on the Wave Knight and Fort Victoria.
the first few weeks of the the Gulf of Oman for a week of having thrown up a supposedly
sees thanks to a large grey
foe much of the Royal Navy All-in-all, says the task
deployment (more on the former trials with the task force (the impenetrable wall of steel hail.
console with three TV screens,
was designed and built to group’s Commanding Officer,
later on...). Harriers of the Naval Strike Wing The weapon has to be fired
one for each gun.
contend with: the submarine. Cdre Tom Cunningham, “Orion
Fast forward a couple of have also been called upon to every six months – and that
As the Falcons close in on
The world has moved on is a nice little package”. There is
months, however, and Cdre ‘bomb’ the Orion group). demands a prey. There aren’t
Lusty, the Goalkeeper director
since the Soviet submarine something for everyone.
Cunningham is convinced that Lusty has charged USS too many volunteers, oddly, so brings his weapon to life with
fleet was our potential foe, For the Naval Strike Wing,
the Orion jigsaw has come Cole and HMS Edinburgh with a target is hauled on a 10,000- the flick of a switch.
however. there’s the chance to learn
together. protecting her (something they yard line to simulate an incoming On the grey console, the
And that’s reflected by the about carrier life once again. “Things which were not were designed to do).
missile. cameras suddenly start
location, scope and mission of Commitments in Afghanistan natural when we left the UK are In Lusty’s ops room, a rather “Because we fired Goalkeeper moving, roaming the skies.
the Orion task force. mean it is a year since RN fast now,” he explained. antiquated-looking light box successfully just off the UK They fi nd their prey – at this
For a start, the core of the jets last deployed at sea. “A couple of days ago I was flickers into life. A series of before we left, we know that it point an indistinct blur on the
deployment is spread across For the Flying Tigers, it’s listening to the radio chatter in coloured lights outline the threat works. If it tells us it’s locked horizon. The camera hurriedly
the Gulf of Oman and Indian the chance to deploy an entire a Merlin while the Harriers were the carrier faces: air, sur[face], on, then we know we’ve got it,”
zooms in.
Ocean. Merlin squadron at sea for the up bombing a splash target and sub s[urface] and mine. explained CPO(ET(WE)) David Continued on page 24marina
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