In October 2010 the Royal Australian Navy Anzac-class frigate HMAS Perth completed a big step toward an important modernization. She was fitted with a new, uniquely shaped radar mast hosting the Ceafar and Ceamount radar systems that will make it possible for the vessel to engage significant numbers of advanced antiship missiles. The new systems also will form part of the improved 9LV Mk3E combat suite being upgraded and tested on the warship in the months ahead. The Perth had been undergoing the mast installation at the Australian Marine Complex in Henderson, Western Australia, since January 2010. If subsequent tests prove successful, all Australian members of the Anzac class are to be similarly upgraded during the next decade. The Perth and her seven Australian sister-ships entered service between 1996 and 2006, with the Perth, the youngest of the class, commissioned on 26 August 2006. The Anzac-class frigates are armed with the Mk 41 vertical-launch system, which makes them capable of carrying Sea Sparrow or Evolved Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles. The ships also are fitted with a 5-inch gun and torpedo tubes, and have the ability to carry a Harpoon antiship missile and a single helicopter.
The Russian Navy has long prided itself on its powerful Cold War–era warships, and none more so than the 25,000-ton Kirov class of nuclear-powered guided-missile cruisers. Last November, Russian media reports indicated that efforts to rehabilitate, modernize, and reactivate the third unit of the class have begun in earnest. The Admiral Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) was launched in 1986, and the vessel’s service began in December 1988; she is pictured here in 1991. Long inactive and tied up at her pier, the vessel had been scheduled to recommission in 2011, but this has been postponed. The current schedule optimistically calls for reactivation activities to begin on the Admiral Nakhimov in 2011 and to complete in 2012. Regarding her three sister-ships, the Admiral Ushakov (ex-Kirov) was removed from the Russian Navy list in 2004, while the Admiral Lazarev (ex-Frunze) is also being considered for eventual reactivation. The Petr Velikiy (ex–Yuri Andropov), youngest of the class, was commissioned in 1998 and continues to serve in the Northern Fleet.
The U.S. Navy and the Iranian coast guard were involved in a rare cooperative naval encounter on 18 November. The Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer USS Oscar Austin (DDG-79) was operating in the Persian Gulf as part of Combined Task Force 152 when she was notified that a merchant vessel had sighted two stranded Iranian mariners. Survivors of a sunken dhow, they had attempted to signal passing ships with a flare gun, and the U.S. destroyer was dispatched to investigate. The Oscar Austin located the Iranians on board a life raft floating less than a mile from Iran’s territorial waters. After providing aid and coordinating with Iranian authorities through the Omani Navy, the Oscar Austin looked after the raft and its crew from 0500 to 1230 hours, at which time an Iranian search-and-rescue vessel, pictured here, arrived on scene to thank the U.S. warship and bring the Iranian survivors back home.