The HMS Diamond shot down the drone - the first time in decades that the Royal Navy has taken out an aerial target in anger
A Royal Navy destroyer warship has shot down a suspected attack drone over the Red Sea, the Defence Secretary has said.
The HMS Diamond was only sent to the region two weeks ago amid growing international concern about the threat to shipping.
The Type 45 destroyer was said to have destroyed the suspected attack drone targeting merchant shipping - with a Sea Viper missile.
It is believed to be the first time that the Royal Navy has shot down an aerial target in anger since the First Gulf War in 1991.
Grant Shapps said it was believed merchant shipping in the Red Sea was the intended target, in the latest such confrontation in the key global shipping route.
“In anger?”
Don’t look back with it
I heard you say
They shoot down training drones all the time, so shooting things down isn’t novel. “In anger” is a normal phrase to describe doing something in a conflict situation, in contrast to training
I wouldn’t consider jt a normal phrase in the sense that it is used often, or, like, at all. I’ve never heard it in this context.
Maybe it’s a British thing?
I’d consider it a normal phrase and I’m Australian, so it’s not just a British thing.
I would too and I’m American. This person is simply unlettered. Maybe they’re just a kid, in which case it’s forgivable.
Eh, you guys are just Southern Brits with way better weather
I did not know that. I believe you, but that seems like a pretty strange word to use. I couldn’t find any references to it online, either… I wonder if it’s colloquial.
EDIT: I did manage to find some references to the phrase with a little more digging. I wasn’t getting far with “anger” or “in anger,” but the phrase “fire in anger” started leading to some interesting results.
Dictionaries - MW and Dictionary.com don’t contain the phrase “fire in anger” or “in anger,” and their entries for “anger” don’t support this usage. Oxford has an entry for “in anger,” which just means “when angry.”
Cambridge Dictionary’s entry for “anger” doesn’t support this use either, but it does contain the phrase “in anger” per se, which notes that the phrase is a) primarily in UK English, and b) is considered an idiom… i.e. not an ordinary use of the word “anger.” Interestingly, it doesn’t mention the military context, and uses examples (mostly) unrelated to warfighting.
Wiktionary contains “fire in anger” (but not “in anger”). It’s described as a military idiom consistent with the usage in OP’s article. It doesn’t suggest usage outside of that context.
Etymology - I can’t find any compelling etymology of “fire in anger” or Cambridge’s idiomatic sense of “in anger,” and the etymology of the word “anger” itself (“grief, sorrow,” cognate with words in other languages for “regret”) doesn’t really help. I have my guesses, but who knows?
Conclusion - It seems to be chiefly British, largely but not exclusively used in a military context, and it’s not so ubiquitous as to be represented in most dictionaries. Definitely exists as a phrase though, and perhaps in some circles, it’s very common. TIL.
No, it’s entirely normal and part of standard usage. You probably don’t read very much.
Lol dammit, I knew that asking about a term that I hadn’t heard before would out me as completely illiterate. Caught me 😏
Anyway I dug a little more and made an edit above, if you’re interested.
We really need a better way to take these out.
Missles will always cost more than the drone which makes it unsustainable.
They’re well into development and deployment of many methods.
Cheaper drones with self destruct
Several options are floating around.
Radar guided smart munitions. These gun based munitions steer based on commands from the ships radar and detonate when near their target.
Ship based lasers are also in use as prototypes by the US.
Electronic counter measures. Jamming the GPS signal and/or the signal with the operator can render most drones useless.
Ship based lasers are also in use as prototypes by the US.
Lasers will always be in the prototype stage as they have been since the days of the Reagan administration
40+ years ago.2021: How Close Is the Navy to Putting Lasers on Its Warships?
2010: Boeing designs ship-based laser weapon system
2001: The Promise and Problems of Laser Weapons
Their use in SF movies are far, far from reality.
The simple measure measure of covering a drove in mylar reflects 90% of the incoming radiation, meaning your system now needs to be 10 times more powerful to be effective.
Would a mylar covered drone not be easier to spot given its increased reflectiveness? Maybe that could be countered some other way via earlier detection making another option more viable?
We use lasers, so you cover in mylar, so now this other thing works.
Maybe kamikaze drones? Not as fast as missiles, but as long as they’re faster than the attack drone, they could still be effective.
If you wanna unite the world powers against you, the easy way to do that is to target international shipping
Exactly, the spice must flow
World powers lol. Lost to goat herders in Afghanistan. Can’t even afford the war in Ukraine.
The only reason they’re not invading Yemen is because they know it’s gonna cost billions of dollars and they’ll lose anyways.
I’m sorry but if the West / the USA aren’t world powers in your book, then who is?
Lost. To. Goat. Farmers.
World powers is an incredibly overplayed term when everyone can now launch drones and missles from a huge distance. Sure people can’t invade America but America sure as hell can’t just invade everywhere either. America will only invade places where they can steal huge amounts of natural resources that offset this cost. Not Yemen.
America can easily win one war but they can’t win at every place at once
An American ship can defend a few kms but it would take a whole military invasion to prevent the Houthis from launching across the entire country since they got long range missles.
Not to forget Ukraine is slowly getting ditched too so the “world powers” are losing that one as well.
Winning and losing is nebulous concept since ww2. The initial goal in Afghanistan was destroying al qaeda’s base of operations and killing bin laden. All accomplished, so ‘win’? The whole nation building was a nice idea, but who really cares about the goat farmers as long as they don’t harbor terrorists.
As for Ukraine, please tell me how Russia thinks it’s (still) winning, support does seem to be waning for Ukraine support. But Russia has lost almost double the amount of tanks the US has in service alone.
Even if they win, it will absolutely have been a pyrrhic victory that gutted their armed forces, ruined their economy, and made them dependent on China, Iran, and NK.
BTW, a US destroyer (with some airborne radar support) can defend a thousand km in each direction and low earth orbit.
Al Qaeda still exists. ISIS still exists. Taliban still exists.
Yea the 2 million dollar missles can take down a 5-15k drone. Hope you’re bankrolling israel’s genocide buddy. This defense is gonna be EXPENSIVE.
Russia will win if they hold out until American and EU support stops which (sadly) seems to be reaching a breaking point because funding a genocide seems more fun for the West than stopping one.
They said Russia ran out of everything two years ago. Now America is running out?
Is there a world? Yes. Are there certain countries that have the ability to project power globally? Yes. What part about this do you not understand?
