The Danish frigate Ivar Huitfeldt is on her way home a bit early from her air-defense mission in the Red Sea. The warship shot down four Houthi drones while in theater - but her commander was concerned about her ability to shoot down too many more, according to Danish outlet Olfi.
The paper obtained a message from the Huitfeldt's commanding officer that described multiple shortcomings in its weapons systems. The frigate's air-defense missile system experienced a glitch in the middle of a hostile engagement on March 9, apparently because of a software issue in the interface between its fire-control radar and its combat management system. The crew switched to a backup radar and worked around the problem, but their most capable top-end radar remained unusable for half an hour.
"Our clear understanding is that the issue has been known for years without the necessary sense of urgency to resolve the problem," the CO said in the message.
Ivar Huitfeldt also ran into problems with ammunition quality. It downed the drones with its five-inch deck gun, a common auto-feeding model that is used by navies worldwide. But about half of the proximity-fused rounds exploded just after leaving the muzzle, and never reached anywhere near the drones according to the CO.
"All shells in standard combat equipment are more than 30 years old, they have been retrofitted with a '2005 proximity fuze' . . . which appears to be unsuitable for actual combat," he said.
Since the warship had to use far more of the defective shells to down the targets, the CO warned that the Huitfeldt risked running out of ammunition at an inopportune moment, potentially reducing the ship's survivability.
Ivar Huitfeldt was expected to remain in the Red Sea through mid-April, but by March 25, she had transited the Suez Canal and arrived at Souda Bay, Crete. After resupply and shore leave, Huitfeldt returned to Denmark, arriving April 2.
The frigate's technical issues have turned into a political firestorm in Denmark's government. The defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, first learned of the problems when media inquired about it on Monday night, according to DR. Chief of Defense Gen. Flemming Lentfer has been relieved of command, effective Wednesday.
Danish Navy insiders told DR that the crew of the Huitfeldt also had to borrow the five-inch cannons for their warship from other vessels in the class before departure, and could not rule out that this may have increased the risk of a malfunction.
