A strange-looking military ship arrived at the U.S. Navy’s Mole Pier the morning of June 27 — and did not go unnoticed.
Brian Dombrowski, an email acquaintance who maintains a network of mounted cameras overlooking Key West Harbor, emailed me a video clip that had captured the ship’s arrival at 8 a.m.
“Just captured this bizarre ship coming into the Navy Mole with a spinning sphere on top of it. … Any idea or news on this vessel? I’m looking for info.”
His message was the first of several I received throughout the morning, all with a photo attached, and all asking where the ship was from, why it was here and what the hell was up with that spinning ball.
Picture a giant rock-climbing wall rising from the deck of a Navy destroyer with a spiky, spinning sphere at its summit. The sphere itself sort of reminded me of one of those cartoonishly aggressive, but biologically accurate, pictures of a coronavirus molecule.
And you can’t blame Key Westers for inquiring about unusual military activity. Missiles, after all, did line our beach during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s.
Brian’s email had gotten my attention, and I immediately sent the photo to Ron Demes, my friend and local military cheat sheet.
I knew Ron would know what was up. He replied to my text quickly, including a link to the ship’s home page.
The Royal Navy’s HMS Dauntless visited Key West around 2012, but it was out of commission for the past seven years, being refitted in England to correct power problems with that class of destroyers.
“On May 31, the Royal Navy’s most advanced destroyer deployed to the Caribbean to support British Overseas Territories during hurricane season and counter drug trafficking in the region,” according to a report from seawaves.com. “The ship will be in the Caribbean to respond quickly to natural disasters during the region’s hurricane season from June to November, while visiting island communities as a reassuring presence, working with local services and authorities to ensure the most rapid and effective aid is provided should nature strike.
“While in the Caribbean, she will also head for Exercise Unitas and mark the 200th anniversary of the Colombian Navy. Unitas (Latin for “united”) is the oldest and largest maritime exercise in the region dating back to 1959 as a South American and U.S. regional exercise designed to demonstrate a united stance against the spread of the Soviet Union’s influence and presence in Latin America,” seawaves.com states.
Oh, and that spinning sphere is a radar that “can track multiple incoming targets simultaneously, prioritize them, assign countermeasures and deploy them to their targets,” states the British website navyrecognition.com. “It can even track a threat the size of a cricket ball approaching at three times the speed of sound. “
For footage of the ship, visit BLC Streams on YouTube.
