HMS Dragon will head to Cyprus in next couple of days, says defence secretary

John Healey tells Commons crews working hard to prepare warship after criticism over slow response to drone attacks

HMS Dragon will set sail in “the next couple of days”, the defence secretary has said, meaning the British destroyer may not arrive in the eastern Mediterranean until after the weekend.

John Healey told the House of Commons that navy crews were working “tirelessly, 22 hours a day” to prepare the warship, as he faced accusations of not acting fast enough to protect British interests in the region.

The Labour minister said proposals to deploy the warship were discussed six days ago and then signed off about 36 hours after a drone struck the RAF airbase at Akrotiri on Cyprus.

That was on the fourth day of a joint US-Israel attack on Iran, which began after a highly visible six-week-long buildup of US forces in the Middle East and led to an Iranian retaliation against 10 countries within 24 hours.

However, the time it has taken to prepare the Royal Navy destroyer means that it is no longer certain that it will arrive off the coast of Cyprus by the weekend. The sailing time from Portsmouth is estimated at anywhere between five and seven days.

France has already deployed its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier into the eastern Mediterranean and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, met Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, and Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on Monday.

Britain has faced criticism from Cyprus from not acting fast enough to protect the country, home to two UK bases, after the drone attack. Nearby villages and non-essential personnel were evacuated while two other incoming drones were intercepted.

James Cartlidge, the shadow defence spokesperson, complained that France, Greece and Spain had already sent warships to Cyprus. “Labour’s failure to deploy the Royal Navy to the eastern Mediterranean has completely undermined our international standing,” he said.

Healey responded by accusing past Conservative governments of having “hollowed out and underfunded” British forces,” cutting £12bn from the defence budget and reducing the number of frigates and destroyers from 23 to 17.

Three of the Royal Navy’s six type 45 destroyers, equipped with counter-drone systems, were in theory available for deployment last week, though HMS Dragon had to be taken out of dry dock maintenance.

Earlier, Downing Street had played down reports that the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier could be dispatched to the Middle East amid reports that its readiness time had been cut to five days. Officials hinted it was due to be sent to the northern Atlantic as part of Nato commitments to patrol the Arctic region.

Healey told MPs that the drone that hit Akrotiri was small and came either from “Lebanon or Iraq” – meaning that its exact origin still could not be determined by UK experts. Cypriot sources had suggested a week ago it had been flown from territory controlled by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

Fragments of the attack drone, previously described as an Iranian Shahed type, were also “being analysed for foreign military hardware”, Healey said, meaning that the UK was not in a position to confirm social media reports that it had contained Russian components.

Typhoon pilots had shot down two more drones, Healey said. One was successfully intercepted heading in the direction of Bahrain, while a second was destroyed in the sky over Jordan. The RAF was also flying missions to protect the UAE, the minister added.

The Iranian regime, had “been a source of evil” and supplied over 60,000 drones used by Russia against Ukraine. Since the start of the war, Iran had fired “over 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 drones” at Israel and other Middle Eastern countries in an attempt to retaliate against western interests broadly.

Before Healey’s statement in the Commons, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said she had made the Treasury’s strategic reserve available to fund the cost of military operations in the Middle East. There was no immediate budgetary reason for the time it was taking to deploy HMS Dragon, she added.