The Canadian Navy welcomed a new auxiliary replenishment oiler into the fleet earlier this year. The M/V Asterix, a German-built commercial container ship converted for underway replenishment duties, originally entered civilian service in 2010. Beginning in 2015, she was converted in Canada as a supply ship under “Project Resolve” to help replace the capabilities of legacy supply vessels. Operating under lease from Federal Fleet Services, the Asterix is crewed jointly by a mix of Royal Canadian naval personnel and Canadian merchant mariners. Displacing 26,000 tons, the 599-foot ship has an 83-foot beam and carries a crew of 150. She is fitted with two helicopter hangars, four replenishment-at-sea stations, and can carry more than 10,000 tons of marine diesel and 1,300 tons of aviation fuel. The Asterix is able to conduct liquid and solid resupply from both sides of the ship simultaneously. Acquisition and conversion of a second ship, the M/V Obelix, is under consideration.
Within roughly 72 hours in September, the F-35B short take-off/vertical landing aircraft marked two major milestones and an unfortunate first. On 25 September, F-35Bs landed for the first time on HMS Queen Elizabeth, initializing two months of flight tests as the Royal Navy gets back into the big-deck aircraft carrier business. The two fighters were assigned to Naval Air Station Patuxent River and piloted by British officers. This was followed on 27 September by news that F-35Bs from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, assigned to the USS Essex (LHD-2) notched the fighter’s first-ever combat strikes while supporting forces in Afghanistan. The following day, the Marine Corps confirmed the first crash of an F-35. The aircraft, assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, went down near Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. The pilot ejected safely.
New details continue to emerge regarding Israel’s four planned Sa’ar VI-class guided-missile corvettes being built in Germany under a 2015 contract. Construction of the first vessel, to be named the Magen, began in February 2018, with delivery planned for late 2019. Three sister ships—to be named the Oz, Independence, and Victory—will be handed over in the years ahead, with deliveries due to complete by 2022. At 1,900 tons, the four 295-foot warships will be the largest surface combatants in the Israeli Navy and are expected to be tasked with offshore-patrol duties and protection of gas platforms in the Mediterranean Sea. The new class will carry an advanced EL/M-2248 phased array radar, 16 Harpoon antiship missiles, a naval version of the Iron Dome/C-Dome missile defense system, and Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles, as well as a 3-inch naval gun and a single SH-60 Seahawk helicopter.
Mr. Wertheim, a defense consultant in the Washington, D.C., area, is the author of the 16th edition of The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World, available from the Naval Institute Press (www.usni.org).