Well, its taken six years to construct but HMS Daring, first of the Type45 destroyers have left Scotstoun for Portsmouth for sea trials before entering service next year. The crew have been on board since 2006.

Built in Labour voting constituencies the Clyde shipyards, the project has ploughed £6 billion into the Labour local community, safeguarded an estimated 2000 Labour voters’ jobs and saved a few marginal constituencies Glasgow’s shipbuilding industry.

Captain Paul Bennett, the destroyer’s commanding officer, said: “For some of Daring’s crew, Glasgow has been their home for almost three years and it has been a great place to be stationed.”

Poor bastards. I bet it was cold.

Six of these bits of kit are lined up, with two more “awaiting Government approval” which means they are due to be canceled after the next election because the votes will already have been counted.

UPDATE: They were officially canceled on 18th June 2008. Sorry.

Originally air defence ships were planned to be built under the 8 nation NFR-90 project which later became the Horizon Common New Generation Frigate programme with France and Italy. The CNFG collaboration fell apart in April 1999 when France and Italy cited structural flaws in the design….a lack of reverse gears and insufficiently large storage space for white flags.

Still, it’ll help keep the Red Flag flying in a couple more places come the election.

Full tech spec on Wikipedia, although too much metric stuff for TheEye to want to read.

UPDATE2: If this is supposed to be a Next Generation warship, are the lot after that going to be called “Voyager”? (Only Trekkies need apply for this joke)