THE warship ordered to Cyprus to defend British forces from drones spent three days bobbing about in the Channel, The Sun can reveal.
Destroyer HMS Dragon only left UK waters yesterday after setting sail from Portsmouth on Tuesday following a week-long delay for repairs.
The £1billion vessel’s responder, which broadcasts position, was switched off after the ship set out.
HMS Dragon could have taken even longer to pass Land’s End as she had been scheduled to call at Plymouth for a change of crew.
The plan was abandoned as Royal Navy top brass demanded the ship press on. By contrast, the first surface ships in the Falklands War task force sailed three days after Argentina invaded. The first sub left the day itself, April 2, 1982.
Sir Keir Starmer had ordered HMS Dragon to set out after RAF Akrotiri, a British base on Cyprus, was hit by an Iranian drone on March 1.
The weapon evaded air defences and hit a hangar used by US spy planes near family homes.
Senior officers ordered military dependants to evacuate the base amid fears of more strikes.
The PM was accused of leaving the base vulnerable without enough air defence weapons.
The Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers, like HMS Dragon, have Britain’s best air defence missiles.
Their radars can track 1,000 objects from 250 miles away and blast up to eight missiles simultaneously to intercept targets. But all six were stuck in port when the drone hit on March 1.
Only three were classed as operational, including HMS Dragon, which meant they should have been ready to sail at 72 hours’ notice.
But HMS Dragon was stranded in dry dock without weapons and had scaffolding on when the PM ordered her to sail.
Sailors worked around the clock to load her with Sea Ceptor missiles and stores. Navy sources insisted “they did six weeks’ work in six days” to get her ready to sail.
But delays heaped pressure on the PM, who was accused of leaving UK interests exposed as tensions with Iran deepened.
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West fumed: “There is no understanding in government of the importance of maritime power.
“There isn’t a single warship between Singapore and Gibraltar.
“It’s astonishing that no one had the geopolitical sense to make these decisions earlier.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed HMS Dragon was continuing her transit to the eastern Mediterranean to help “safeguard UK assets and interests”.
He added: “It’s not uncommon for ships to continue final maintenance and preparations while on deployment at sea, shortly after sailing.”
The urgency of HMS Dragon’s mission was underlined last night as France said one soldier from its Alpine Hunters battalion had died in a drone strike at Erbil in Iraq. Several others were wounded.
RAF Regiment soldiers armed with Martlet ground-launched missiles downed multiple drones there on Thursday night.
Defence Secretary John Healey said they had been almost “continuously active” as they protected a joint Special Forces base.
Lt Gen Nick Perry, the commander of UK operations, said no British soldiers were injured.
It came as UK fighter jets flew defensive patrols over Bahrain for the first time. Typhoons and F-35s continued air defence missions over Qatar, Cyprus, UAE and Jordan.
Elsewhere, all six members of a US military refuelling aircraft’s crew were confirmed dead after it crashed in western Iraq. The US initially said it had located four of the deceased crew.
Iran, meanwhile, continued to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz, worsening global oil supply chaos.
Specialist units from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps began the process on Thursday.
Mines as small as a beach ball — capable of sinking a tanker or warship — threaten to escalate the crisis and seal the Persian Gulf strait.
They will tighten Iran’s stranglehold as a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the 24-mile wide bottleneck between its coast and the Gulf state of Oman.
US President Donald Trump vowed to hit Iran “twenty times harder” if it blocked the strait.
Iran has attacked at least 16 commercial vessels in or near the waterway, including ten oil tankers.
