Support for Bangladesh from Royal Navy stocks

In mid-February, Whitehall announced that it had sold one of the two decommissioned Echo-class hydrographic survey vessels, HMS Enterprise, to the Bangladesh Navy. The sister ship, the HMS Echo itself, is also available for subsequent acquisition as a spare parts donor. As the two ships (91 metres, 3,700 tonnes) were only in Her Majesty's service for two decades, they should not yet be counted as old iron. This is because they are also much younger than the frigates and corvettes, which are mainly supplied by China and make up the bulk of the Bangladesh Navy's fleet. In London, it is said that the whole thing will help Bangladesh to make the Bay of Bengal safer nautically, increase its military presence there and promote relations between the two countries. Reading between the lines, it is clear that the north-eastern Bay of Bengal will not be left exclusively to Chinese benevolence.