Originally Posted by
rattman
Missed an interview with Richard Marles, Australian defence minister. He said that the first virginia's would be around 2030 and be 13 years old. That would put it at the Washington SSN 787, Block 3.
That would Washington, Colorado and Indiana to australia with South Dakota and Delaware with the possible 2 additionals. All block 3
It would be unlikely to be USS South Dakota as that vessel has been fitted with a large number of new technologies that are being developed for future Virginias, Columbias & SSN(X) classes.
https://news.usni.org/2016/03/28/sub...ional-concepts
Posted by
golder: “
From what I saw, the first would be secondhand and block 3 fits, With the remainder new build. though not with vertical launch.”
All Virginias have vertical launch - Blocks 1 & 2 via 12 individual launch tubes, Blocks 3 & on via 2 Virginia Payload Tubes (VPT’s) mounted in the bow section. Obviously, the RAN won’t be getting the Block 5’s Virginia Payload Module which has 4 VPT’s that are additional to the bow mounted ones.
I don’t understand the speculation that the possible two extra Virginias would be new builds as these vessels would just be required to fill in until sufficient AUKUS SSNs have been built. The RAN would only need 2nd hand Virginias with sufficient reactor life to fill in any production gap.
Sky News are saying that the Collins class are getting Tomahawk missiles, it would be interesting to find out if this means that production of the tube launched version has been restarted or whether there’s sufficient parts in the USN inventory available to modify the recently ordered 20 RGM-109E Block 4 missiles to the UGM-109 standard.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia...3f91b3041dd7ba