{"id":25882065,"date":"2026-10-01T09:17:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T07:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/sea-venom-nsm-royal-navy-first-firings-ex-uss-klakring-sinkex-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:50:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:50:01","slug":"sea-venom-nsm-royal-navy-first-firings-ex-uss-klakring-sinkex-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/sea-venom-nsm-royal-navy-first-firings-ex-uss-klakring-sinkex-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea Venom and NSM: Royal Navy Sinks Ex-USS Klakring"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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The former USS Klakring had been towed across the Atlantic from Philadelphia to be shot at. Over the course of a single afternoon she was hit by at least five different weapon types, fired in a deliberate order, and then sunk by a torpedo.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Two of those weapons had never been fired at a real warship by the Royal Navy before. One of them was launched from a helicopter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>That is the part worth stopping on. Exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026 was a US 6th Fleet production, and the headline hardware was American: an Arleigh Burke destroyer, a brand-new Virginia class submarine, <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-15e-strike-eagle\/\">Strike Eagles<\/a> out of Lakenheath. But the two genuine firsts belonged to the British, and the smaller of the two came off the back of a Wildcat.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f9;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:28px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.75\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#0d1117;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Target<\/strong> &mdash; ex-USS Klakring (FFG 42), Oliver Hazard Perry class. Commissioned 1983, decommissioned 2013. Named for Rear Admiral Thomas B. Klakring, three-time Navy Cross recipient.<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Where<\/strong> &mdash; roughly 150 nautical miles offshore of the MoD Hebrides range, north-west Scotland. Exercise window 14 to 25 September 2026.<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Firing order<\/strong> &mdash; longest range inward: SM-6 from USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117), then Naval Strike Missile from HMS Portland (F79), Sea Venom from an 815 NAS Wildcat, guided bombs from 48th Fighter Wing F-15Es, and finally a Mk 48 ADCAP from USS Massachusetts (SSN 798).<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Sea Venom<\/strong> &mdash; MBDA, known as ANL in France. About 120 kg all-up, 30 kg semi-armour-piercing warhead, Mach 0.85, range beyond 20 km, INS plus imaging infrared seeker.<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Naval Strike Missile<\/strong> &mdash; Kongsberg. Sea-skimming, high subsonic, replaced Harpoon in UK service. Ordered by the UK in 2023 under the I-SSGW programme.<\/p><p style=\"margin:5px 0\"><strong>Next time<\/strong> &mdash; the following Atlantic Thunder is targeted for 2028.<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A frigate towed across an ocean to be shot at<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Klakring was commissioned in 1983 and struck in 2013, and then did what most decommissioned American warships do: nothing at all, for thirteen years, tied up at the Philadelphia Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility. In August 2026 she was towed out. Ship-spotters on the Delaware photographed her leaving, which is usually the first public sign that a SINKEX is coming.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Preparing a hull for this is not a matter of pointing missiles at it. Fuel, oil, loose wiring, batteries, anything that could leak or burn has to come out, and the US Navy does this to a published standard before the ship is allowed near a range. Then the instrumentation goes in. Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock and Naval Information Warfare Center fitted sensors throughout the frigate before she crossed the Atlantic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=2087737760476000321&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:520px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>Those sensors are the actual point of the exercise. A missile hitting a real steel hull does things that no model reproduces reliably: how the blast propagates through compartments, where the structure folds, how fast water moves once it is inside. The Navy has said the resulting data will take several months to process. Everything you can film is secondary to a hard drive.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The division of labour was financial as much as operational. Under the bilateral arrangement, the Americans paid to prepare and tow the target; the British paid for the range. That is also, more or less, why the target was an American ship rather than a British one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Longest range first, and why that matters<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The engagement ran from the longest-range weapon inward, so that each impact could be assessed before the next one arrived. Fire the short-range weapons first and every later shot lands on a wreck already torn open by something else, which makes the data worthless.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>USS Paul Ignatius opened with a RIM-174 Standard Missile 6, fired at what the US Navy describes as its maximum range in the anti-surface role. SM-6 is first and foremost an air-defence weapon, and its secondary career as a ship-killer is one of the more useful accidents of modern missile design: a very fast missile with a modest warhead, arriving from a long way away.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/f-15e-strike-eagle-48th-fighter-wing-kc-135-atlantic-thunder-scotland-2026.jpg\" alt=\"A US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle approaches a KC-135 Stratotanker over Scotland during exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An F-15E Strike Eagle of the 48th Fighter Wing closes on a 100th Air Refueling Wing KC-135 over Scotland during Atlantic Thunder, 21 September 2026. Lakenheath jets dropped guided bombs on the Klakring. US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Cody Mott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Air power was woven through the whole thing. F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath dropped guided bombs on the frigate, supported by KC-135 tankers of the 100th Air Refueling Wing out of Mildenhall. P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft from both navies took part, although no weapon release has been attributed to them, and their role appears to have been surveillance and targeting rather than strike.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Atlantic Thunder demonstrates the unmatched lethality and interoperability of the United States and United Kingdom. This sinking exercise not only validated the power behind U.S.-UK offensive weapons but delivers a clear message to adversaries that the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy remain a ready allied force.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Captain Kelechi Ndukwe<\/strong> &mdash; Commander, U.S. Task Force 65<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Sea Venom: a helicopter missile gets a real target<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>HMS Portland&rsquo;s embarked Wildcat, from 815 Naval Air Squadron, fired a Sea Venom at the Klakring. It was the first time the weapon had been fired operationally against a representative maritime target, and the crew ran the whole sequence rather than just the trigger pull: find the ship, fix it, identify it, strike it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Sea Venom, called ANL on the French side of the MBDA programme, is not a ship-killer in the sense that NSM is. It is a 120 kg missile with a 30 kg semi-armour-piercing blast-fragmentation warhead, cruising at about Mach 0.85 out to more than 20 km, guided by inertial navigation and an imaging infrared seeker. Against a fast attack craft or a corvette, one is enough. Against a frigate, the intended effect is a mission kill rather than a sinking, and the usual answer is more than one missile.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A Wildcat can carry up to four. Initial operating capability was declared during Operation Highmast in 2025, and clearing this firing should allow full operating capability to follow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;This was a landmark moment for the Wildcat Force. For the first time we demonstrated the live firing of an operational Sea Venom missile against a representative maritime target. More importantly, we proved our ability to execute the full maritime strike kill chain under realistic operational conditions.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Lieutenant Commander Rhydian Edwards<\/strong> &mdash; Test and Evaluation Commander, Maritime Aviation Strike Operational Advantage Group, Royal Navy<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>There is a small factual trap around this missile that has already propagated through several reports of the firing. Sea Venom weighs roughly 120 kg; its warhead weighs 30 kg. Published accounts that credit each missile with a 120 kg warhead have swapped the all-up mass for the explosive load, and the difference is not cosmetic. A 30 kg warhead is what makes the multiple-missile tactic necessary in the first place.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/f-15e-strike-eagle-aerial-refuelling-night-atlantic-thunder-2026.jpg\" alt=\"An F-15E Strike Eagle takes fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker during exercise Atlantic Thunder over Scotland\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The same jets taking fuel on the way out. The Hebrides range sits roughly 150 nautical miles offshore, which is why the tankers mattered. US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Cody Mott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">NSM finally meets a ship<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The other first was Portland&rsquo;s Naval Strike Missile. The Royal Navy had launched one before &mdash; HMS Somerset in September 2025 &mdash; but that was a test shot rather than an engagement of a warship. Firing at the Klakring was the first time the weapon was used the way it would be used in anger, and the ship hit what it aimed at.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>NSM is a Kongsberg design, sea-skimming and high subsonic, bought to replace the Harpoon Block 1C that the Royal Navy had run well past its sell-by date. Britain came to it late: the I-SSGW requirement dates from 2019 and the order was not placed until 2023, by which time Norway, Poland, Malaysia, the United States, Japan, Romania, Australia and Spain were already in the queue ahead of it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Portland also worked as a node in the targeting network rather than simply a launcher. The link architecture was run out of Sixth Fleet headquarters and shared with the frigate, and the task force commander reported no communications problems across the whole engagement. For an exercise whose stated purpose is interoperability, that is arguably a bigger result than the missile impacts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Being the first person to fire war-shot NSM and achieve a hit is a very proud moment, and one that will stay with me for the rest of my career. This was the culmination of over a year&rsquo;s effort in planning and bringing the drills into service, and I am glad that I was able to contribute.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Petty Officer James Kenyon<\/strong> &mdash; Above Water Warfare specialist, HMS Portland<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RkhrD7-CzWI\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin:-14px 0 26px;font-style:italic\">The Royal Navy&rsquo;s own footage of the Naval Strike Missile leaving HMS Portland.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Both weapons are placeholders in a longer plan. The Future Cruise\/Anti-Ship Weapon, named Stratus, is in development at MBDA and is intended to become the fleet&rsquo;s heavyweight long-range anti-ship missile. NSM and Sea Venom are what the Royal Navy has in the meantime, and until 21 September neither had been pointed at a real warship by a British crew.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The successful firing of NSM marks a significant milestone for the Royal Navy, demonstrating our ability to deliver credible, modern maritime strike capability.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Lieutenant Commander Louise Kirkaldy<\/strong> &mdash; Principal Warfare Officer, HMS Portland<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=2104854677753856251&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:520px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The last hit came from underneath<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>What actually sank the Klakring was none of the above. After the missiles and the bombs, USS Massachusetts put a Mk 48 Advanced Capability torpedo into her, and that was the end of it. A heavyweight torpedo detonating under a keel breaks a hull in a way that no anti-ship missile is designed to, which is why SINKEX programmes so often finish this way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Massachusetts is worth a paragraph of her own. She is the 25th Virginia class boat, commissioned in March 2026, and she went to sea without the traditional post-shakedown availability that normally follows commissioning. That was a deliberate decision to offset the US Navy&rsquo;s current shortage of available attack submarines, and it has been publicly described as a calculated risk. She was photographed at the Royal Navy&rsquo;s Faslane base earlier in September.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>There is one wrinkle in the record worth flagging rather than smoothing over. US 6th Fleet material dates the SINKEX to 20 September; Navy Lookout and the Royal Navy timeline put it on 21 September, within an exercise window running 14 to 25 September. The imagery released by the US Air Force carries both dates in different fields of the same caption. We have not seen anything that resolves it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=2104974395248914584&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:520px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What it was really for<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Strip away the press language and Atlantic Thunder 2026 did three things. It gave two British weapon systems the one qualification that cannot be simulated. It produced a dataset on how a real warship fails under modern warheads, which will not be published and will matter for years. And it demonstrated that a targeting network run from a headquarters ashore can hand a Royal Navy frigate a firing solution without dropping the link.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The next iteration is already being planned for 2028, half the gap between the last two. By then the Royal Navy expects its first Type 26 frigate in service and NSM fitted more widely across the fleet. Whether there will be a British hull on the receiving end next time is a different question, and the answer to that one is usually about money.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Royal Navy; U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa \/ U.S. 6th Fleet; DVIDS; Navy Lookout; Forces News; Naval News; MBDA Sea Venom\/ANL product documentation; Kongsberg; GlobalSecurity.org; Naval Technology. Quotations are as released by the Royal Navy and U.S. Task Force 65.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What is the Sea Venom missile?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Sea Venom, known as ANL in French service, is a lightweight anti-ship missile built by MBDA for helicopters. It weighs about 120 kg in total, carries a 30 kg semi-armour-piercing blast-fragmentation warhead, flies at roughly Mach 0.85 and reaches beyond 20 km. The Royal Navy carries it on the AW159 Wildcat.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Which ship was sunk in Exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The target was the former USS Klakring, an Oliver Hazard Perry class guided-missile frigate commissioned in 1983 and decommissioned in 2013. She was towed from the Philadelphia inactive ship facility in August 2026 and sunk off the Hebrides range in north-west Scotland in the third week of September.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Was this the Royal Navy&rsquo;s first firing of the Naval Strike Missile?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It was the first Royal Navy firing of NSM against a warship target. HMS Somerset launched the missile in September 2025, but that shot was a test event rather than an engagement of a ship. HMS Portland&rsquo;s launch at the Klakring was the first time the weapon was used as it would be used in action.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What weapons were used against the ex-USS Klakring?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">At least five types. USS Paul Ignatius fired an SM-6 in its anti-surface role, HMS Portland fired a Naval Strike Missile, a Wildcat of 815 Naval Air Squadron fired Sea Venom, F-15E Strike Eagles from RAF Lakenheath dropped guided bombs, and USS Massachusetts finished the frigate with a Mk 48 ADCAP torpedo.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why do navies sink their own ships in a SINKEX?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A real hull reacts to a warhead in ways no simulation reproduces. Before the Klakring crossed the Atlantic, Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock and Naval Information Warfare Center fitted sensors throughout her, and the recorded data on blast, flooding and structural failure will take months to process.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did the SM-6 shoot first?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The engagement was sequenced from the longest-range weapon inward so each impact could be assessed separately before the next arrived. Firing the shortest-range weapon first would have left the later shots hitting a wreck already damaged by something else, which destroys the value of the data.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What aircraft took part in Atlantic Thunder 2026?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, KC-135 Stratotankers of the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, a Royal Navy AW159 Wildcat from 815 Naval Air Squadron, and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft from both the US and the UK.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>When is the next Exercise Atlantic Thunder?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Planning for the next iteration is under way with execution targeted for 2028, half the gap between the last two. By then the Royal Navy expects its first Type 26 frigate in service and the Naval Strike Missile fitted more widely across the fleet.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is the Sea Venom missile?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Sea Venom, known as ANL in French service, is a lightweight anti-ship missile built by MBDA for helicopters. It weighs about 120 kg in total, carries a 30 kg semi-armour-piercing blast-fragmentation warhead, flies at roughly Mach 0.85 and reaches beyond 20 km. 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By then the Royal Navy expects its first Type 26 frigate in service and the Naval Strike Missile fitted more widely across the fleet.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/uss-mobile-bay-sinkex-rimpac-2026\/\">The Navy Is Sinking Its Own Cruiser<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/b-2-spirit-lrasm-sinkex-valiant-shield-2026\/\">The B-2 Just Became a Ship-Killer<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/uss-eisenhower-mishap-two-aviators-eject-carrier-landing-2026\/\">USS Eisenhower Mishap: Two Navy Aviators Eject During Carrier Landing<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share this story The sea off the Outer Hebrides in late September is the colour of wet slate, and roughly 150 nautical miles out into it sat a 43-year-old American frigate with nobody aboard. The former USS Klakring had been towed across the Atlantic from Philadelphia to be shot at. Over the course of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":25881902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25882065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sea Venom Missile: Royal Navy&#039;s First Firings | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Royal Navy fired the Sea Venom missile and NSM at a real warship for the first time, sinking the ex-USS Klakring off the Hebrides.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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