Minute By Minute Navy Ships Gunners Drone Attack 4823820

CARDIGAN BAY – The sun is dimming when the crew spots it: a drone on the horizon, coming in fast. Two sailors, in deep blue overalls, are holding binoculars to the warship’s windows, while dozens of crew members monitor information the attack flooding in on screens below deck.

We are on board HMS Dauntless, in Cardigan Bay just off the coast of Wales, for a week-long training exercise designed to replicate the drone threats which are rising around the world.

A Type 45 destroyer, Dauntless specialises in air defence and is capable of creating a protective bubble over an area of land or sea.

The training programme, Exercise Sharpshooter, is teaching them – using dummy drones and simulated missiles – how to bring down the real thing.

This week, Russia has been accused of sinking a merchant ship off the coast of Europe , using drones to take out the vessel. In the Red Sea, Houthi militants have been launching them to target commercial vessels since 2024, killing several sailors, with the Royal Navy deployed to protect ships.

The wargame in Cardigan Bay forces the crew to respond day and night to unexpected attacks from air or sea, testing their weapons – and their wits – for an assault that could unfold within minutes.

The first few seconds: detection

Often, a threat will first be spotted in the ship’s operations room, a secret site nestled deep in its underbelly. Almost pitch black, it hums with the sound of air conditioning and chatter. Inside, 40 analysts sit in rows, each looking at three screens showing the location of Dauntless and other objects in the vicinity, their supervisors hovering nearby.

Those on duty here spend eight hours at a time, wearing flame-retardant overalls, headsets and white leather gloves to protect their skin in case of explosions.

This room is the brains of the ship, bringing together information feeds ranging from radar detection to human intelligence to help the sailors detect incoming threats. From this location off the coast of Wales, the radars can spot threats as far away as Paris, monitoring hundreds of objects simultaneously.

“We’ll have different stations around the ops room, and they’ll be looking out at different ranges on their radar,” says Dan, a fighter controller who manages the combat jets working with the ship to respond to threats.

“As soon as they see something at various different ranges, they’ll then report that through, and we’ll then work through trying to figure out what it is, what it’s doing and what we can do it.”

After a missile or drone has been spotted, the crew will work to identify it, looking at its speed, size, location and imprint on the electromagnetic spectrum, gathering around a monitor to it. At the same time, they must protect themselves, with a tannoy going off to alert the crew to an incoming threat so they can cover their heads and arms with protective gear.

From 45 seconds: select a response

Once they can confidently determine the threat, the team can pull together options for a response.

Lieutenant Commander David Ferguson – who spent six weeks on board the frigate HMS Richmond as she tackled Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea in 2024 – said his crew had responded in as little as 45 seconds.

HMS Dauntless , one of the Navy’s most powerful warships, carries six varieties of weapon and hosts a Wildcat helicopter, itself capable of launching its own missiles. The ship’s biggest gun, the Mk 45 Naval Gun, can fire 25 rounds per minute – each shell larger than those fired by a tank.

It is the crew’s job to match these capabilities to the threat in hand – as quickly as possible. To do this, they will start with the weapon that has the longest range suitable for the target, aiming to shoot it down as far away as possible, then moving through the ship’s defensive options as the target moves closer.

“We call it layered defence,” says Dan, standing in the operations room in his overalls. “We’ll push that boundary out as much as we can. Fighter jets are a really good way because we can send them far away really fast, we can then send them back to resupply without using our own weapons on board.

“We can then use things like our helicopter, and our missiles that can fire much further away. And then as we work through, we’ve got the [large] guns, all the way down to machine guns, which are a really close last defence.”

The time it takes to respond to an attack can vary dramatically. “Sometimes they can be sort of split-second decisions,” says Dan. “Sometimes they can be over minutes and hours as we get different intelligence and feeds and detection ranges. It really depends. That’s part of the art, I guess.”

First 15 minutes: take action

When a decision has been made, the operations team radio up to the bridge – the command centre of the ship – to move it into the right position to fire. The 7,500-tonne warship turns, its body tilting and the horizon appearing to slant outside the window, before it levels out again. It is enough to turn your stomach.

The ship’s semi-automated Phalanx gun fires for a few seconds at a time, creating an ear-splitting drilling sound that echoes around every corner of the vessel, alternating with the sharp pop of a machine gun from the deck outside.

However, most visceral of all is Dauntless’s main 45 gun mounted at the bow, which creates a boom so powerful it rattles the ceiling panels.

The Royal Navy frequently works with allies including the US and France, and if friendly warships are nearby, decisions will be made in liaison with them. This helps to avoid doubling up – or hitting one another.

“It’s all that co-ordination. That battle space management is another one of the roles that we’ll be doing to make sure we both employ them effectively, but also safely,” says Dan, who frequently talks to allies over his headset.

If needed, an armed helicopter can lift off from the ship in under 15 minutes, fly in the direction of the target, locate it on cameras and sensors, and wait for approval from the ships’ operations room to fire or monitor.

“We bring the ability for the ship to extend its camera range, its radar range and its weapons, so they can then focus on another area of warfare,” says Arnie, a 26-year-old flight observer who manages , weapons and sensors while his partner flies the helicopter. “We’re just an extension arm of the ship, and able to do more.”

Jets, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly facing threats from jamming, where an enemy interferes with GPS signals or ground communications so they lose . But these Wildcat pilots can “operate in any environment”, using maps, radars or the drift and speed of the aircraft to work out where they are. Even in a rapidly changing battlefield, “there’s lots of old-fashioned methods, which still are relevant today”.

First few hours: escalate if necessary

Navy warships have the authority to act autonomously, without approval from headquarters, but updates attacks will be fed back to a team of officials on land.

If the attack is serious or unexpected, these updates can reach the First Sea Lord, the Navy’s chief, the Chief of the Defence staff – the head of the entire military – and even the Prime Minister. Special and military advisers within the naval staff and Ministry of Defence would help top officials formulate a wider response.

In the most serious case, the UK could convene a meeting of Nato which could devise a collective response, ranging from a sternly worded warning to a full-scale military deployment .

While I am on board, Dauntless deals with more than a dozen simulated attacks, successfully passing the exercise, which allows it to deploy on operations in real life. With threats from Russia and Yemen’s Houthi militants only growing, the stakes have never been higher.