Future Carrier (Including Costs)
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From: Portsmouth
Joined: Oct 2018
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From: Ferrara
Overall , since commissioning, they've had problems - all well documented and not all shaft problems IIRC
Yes the PWLS did much better on the recent trip - but it 's a brave man who would say that they are robust.
Yes the PWLS did much better on the recent trip - but it 's a brave man who would say that they are robust.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Joined: Jul 2000
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From: Peripatetic
Ouch…..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...t-for-purpose/
Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet ‘no longer fit for purpose’
Former Navy chief calls for ‘radical’ action to revive programme after catastrophic failures
Britain is “no longer capable” of running a nuclear submarine programme after “catastrophic” failures pushed it to the brink, a former Navy chief has said.
In an extraordinary critique, Rear Admiral Philip Mathias said the UK’s “silent service” was facing an “unprecedented” situation from which it was highly unlikely to recover without radical intervention.
The former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence said delays in building new attack boats had reached record levels and had driven up the duration of patrols for crews from 70 days during the Cold War to more than 200 days now. This had led to a “shockingly low availability” of submarines to “counter the Russian threat in the North Atlantic”, the retired submarine commander warned.
The admiral, who led the Trident value for money review in 2010, called for Britain to pull out of the multi-billion Aukus defence deal with America and Australia to build 12 new nuclear submarines. “The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine programme,” he said.
“Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting, which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale. Performance across all aspects of the programme continues to get worse in every dimension. This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age. It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.”
The Navy’s fleet of Astute submarines is already facing significant problems, with many having been stuck in port for years. Out of the seven planned, six are in service.
HMS Ambush is currently inactive, having spent 1,222 days – more than three years and four months – in port, according to defence analysts. Sister vessels Artful and Audacious are undergoing sluggish maintenance programmes, having both spent more than 950 days out of action. Astute and Anson are also in port.
HMS Agamemnon, the sixth and penultimate vessel, entered service in September during a commissioning ceremony led by the King, with ministers hailing it a “truly remarkable manufacturing feat”. But Rear-Adml Mathias said: “The uncomfortable truth is that she took over 13 years to build – the longest-ever construction time for a submarine to be built for the Navy.”……
The UK’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet is critical to defending the country and deterring Russia and other dangerous states from using weapons of mass destruction. The fleet of four Vanguard stealth boats carries Britain’s nuclear missiles, with one vessel always patrolling the seas at any time.
Each of the submarines can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 60 ton ballistic missiles armed with up to eight individual warheads, the combined destructive power of which dwarfs the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the Second World War and would wipe out millions of people.
However, the boats have faced problems during launch tests issues in the past. In 2016, one of the 44ft Tridents fired from HMS Vengeance veered off course and reportedly self-destructed. Then at Port Canaveral, Florida, on Jan 30 last year, a missile launched from HMS Vanguard misfired and landed back in the sea.
In his critique, Rear-Adml Mathias said Britain’s next generation of nuclear weapon boats, the Dreadnought class, should be the “last class of nuclear-powered submarines that the UK builds”. He said the Aukus programme should be “cancelled now”, with the money instead spent on better “cost-effective” ways of delivering the same capability but with cheaper tech, like aerial drones or smaller unmanned submarines.
The naval commander pointed towards historic cuts in defence spending, repeated changes to how nuclear submarine programmes are delivered and a “huge failure” to manage key personnel as contributing factors to the decline. But he also criticised the role of industry giants for delays to programmes and added that not a single one of the UK’s 23 decommissioned nuclear boats had been dismantled since the first, HMS Dreadnought, left service in 1980.
“This is an utter disgrace and brings into question whether Britain is responsible enough to own nuclear submarines,” he said.
A defence source insisted the “right people were in the right place” to continue to oversee Britain’s nuclear programme.
The Ministry of Defence said it was committed to delivering the next generation of nuclear submarines, and that the Dreadnought programme remained on track.
It added that it was committed to the safe disposal of old boats and was a responsible nuclear operator, meeting the highest standards of safety, security and environmental protection for the current projects in Devonport and Rosyth and through planning for a future disposal capability in the UK.
A spokesman added: “We are unwavering in our commitment to renewing and maintaining the nuclear deterrent underlined by the biggest sustained investment into defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
“The Strategic Defence Review made clear the need for sustained investment across the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. This will see delivery of the most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy and the investment of £15bn this Parliament into our sovereign warhead programme.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...t-for-purpose/
Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet ‘no longer fit for purpose’
Former Navy chief calls for ‘radical’ action to revive programme after catastrophic failures
Britain is “no longer capable” of running a nuclear submarine programme after “catastrophic” failures pushed it to the brink, a former Navy chief has said.
In an extraordinary critique, Rear Admiral Philip Mathias said the UK’s “silent service” was facing an “unprecedented” situation from which it was highly unlikely to recover without radical intervention.
The former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence said delays in building new attack boats had reached record levels and had driven up the duration of patrols for crews from 70 days during the Cold War to more than 200 days now. This had led to a “shockingly low availability” of submarines to “counter the Russian threat in the North Atlantic”, the retired submarine commander warned.
The admiral, who led the Trident value for money review in 2010, called for Britain to pull out of the multi-billion Aukus defence deal with America and Australia to build 12 new nuclear submarines. “The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine programme,” he said.
“Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting, which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale. Performance across all aspects of the programme continues to get worse in every dimension. This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age. It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.”
The Navy’s fleet of Astute submarines is already facing significant problems, with many having been stuck in port for years. Out of the seven planned, six are in service.
HMS Ambush is currently inactive, having spent 1,222 days – more than three years and four months – in port, according to defence analysts. Sister vessels Artful and Audacious are undergoing sluggish maintenance programmes, having both spent more than 950 days out of action. Astute and Anson are also in port.
HMS Agamemnon, the sixth and penultimate vessel, entered service in September during a commissioning ceremony led by the King, with ministers hailing it a “truly remarkable manufacturing feat”. But Rear-Adml Mathias said: “The uncomfortable truth is that she took over 13 years to build – the longest-ever construction time for a submarine to be built for the Navy.”……
The UK’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet is critical to defending the country and deterring Russia and other dangerous states from using weapons of mass destruction. The fleet of four Vanguard stealth boats carries Britain’s nuclear missiles, with one vessel always patrolling the seas at any time.
Each of the submarines can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 60 ton ballistic missiles armed with up to eight individual warheads, the combined destructive power of which dwarfs the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the Second World War and would wipe out millions of people.
However, the boats have faced problems during launch tests issues in the past. In 2016, one of the 44ft Tridents fired from HMS Vengeance veered off course and reportedly self-destructed. Then at Port Canaveral, Florida, on Jan 30 last year, a missile launched from HMS Vanguard misfired and landed back in the sea.
In his critique, Rear-Adml Mathias said Britain’s next generation of nuclear weapon boats, the Dreadnought class, should be the “last class of nuclear-powered submarines that the UK builds”. He said the Aukus programme should be “cancelled now”, with the money instead spent on better “cost-effective” ways of delivering the same capability but with cheaper tech, like aerial drones or smaller unmanned submarines.
The naval commander pointed towards historic cuts in defence spending, repeated changes to how nuclear submarine programmes are delivered and a “huge failure” to manage key personnel as contributing factors to the decline. But he also criticised the role of industry giants for delays to programmes and added that not a single one of the UK’s 23 decommissioned nuclear boats had been dismantled since the first, HMS Dreadnought, left service in 1980.
“This is an utter disgrace and brings into question whether Britain is responsible enough to own nuclear submarines,” he said.
A defence source insisted the “right people were in the right place” to continue to oversee Britain’s nuclear programme.
The Ministry of Defence said it was committed to delivering the next generation of nuclear submarines, and that the Dreadnought programme remained on track.
It added that it was committed to the safe disposal of old boats and was a responsible nuclear operator, meeting the highest standards of safety, security and environmental protection for the current projects in Devonport and Rosyth and through planning for a future disposal capability in the UK.
A spokesman added: “We are unwavering in our commitment to renewing and maintaining the nuclear deterrent underlined by the biggest sustained investment into defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
“The Strategic Defence Review made clear the need for sustained investment across the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. This will see delivery of the most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy and the investment of £15bn this Parliament into our sovereign warhead programme.”
Joined: Apr 2006
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From: Portsmouth
Joined: Dec 2012
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From: Co. Down
Take a look at #8369 above. How much more do you want? Time we stopped kidding ourselves the Royal Navy ruled the seas. The personnel are great if the politicians would leave them alone with adequate resources rather than grandstanding from conference to conference in a cloud of bluster.
Joined: Apr 2006
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From: Portsmouth
Former admiral has an opinion. Which may or may not represent the truth. Does it take too long to build our boats? Undoubtedly. Has the support infrastructure been neglected? Again, undoubtedly. Are they being addressed? Yes. Is the solution uncrewed submarines? Only if you don't understand physics
Joined: Aug 2001
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From: se england
And on top of this how does our Nuclear sub fleet fare with a less than friendly US who exercise significant control over our missiles , like storage and maintenance , and like all complex devices who knows what is really embedded in their software . Trumps anti Europe comments are really worrying and as we are in Europe, whatever the BxxxxT idiots, think can we really rely on them going forward. Whatever the state of our 'deterrent. maybe its time to hand that back to the RAF in the form of nuke carrying drones-they cant be far away can they?
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Joined: Jul 2000
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From: Peripatetic
Former admiral has an opinion
*
https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-conte...ney-Review.pdf
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 807
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From: Portsmouth
Former nuclear submarine commander, UK director of RN nuclear policy 2005-08 and author of the “Trident Value for Money” review* 2010, has an informed opinion.
*
https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-conte...ney-Review.pdf
*
https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-conte...ney-Review.pdf
Joined: Oct 2018
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From: Ferrara
Royal Navy unveils new Atlantic strategy to counter Russian threat
ByPaul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent
- Published
8 hours ago
The SG-1 Fathom is on the prowl for intruders. "The glider patrols through the depths of the ocean monitoring and listening for adversaries that might be in the area," says Fathom's programme manager Katie Raine. Adversaries like Russian submarines operating covertly in or near British waters, suspected of working with spy ships to map the UK's vital undersea cables and pipelines. Fathom, made by the German defence company Helsing and now being trialled by the Royal Navy, moves silently, its sensors constantly gathering information.
It's designed to patrol for months on end, working autonomously with dozens of other gliders, using software trained on decades of acoustic data. "The glider processes and identifies threats more quickly than we've been able to do previously," Raine says. If it proves effective, Fathom will likely form part of Atlantic Bastion, a network of drones, warships and surveillance aircraft aimed at protecting vital undersea infrastructure.
The Atlantic Bastion programme is a network of drones, warships and surveillance aircraft designed to protect undersea infrastructure The Ministry of Defence, which is unveiling elements of Atlantic Bastion on Monday, said in a statement that the programme was "in direct response to the resurgence in Russian submarine and underwater activity". The government says there has been a 30% increase in the number of Russian vessels threatening UK waters in the last two years. Russia says its the UK government that's being provocative. In September, the parliamentary National Security Strategy Committee said it was "not confident" the UK was equipped to protect its undersea cables, warning that an attack could cause "catastrophic disruption" to vital financial and communications systems.
Last month, the Yantar, a Russian oceanic research vessel suspected of mapping British undersea cables and pipelines, shone lasers at RAF pilots tracking its progress near UK waters. Defence Secretary John Healey called the action "deeply dangerous", saying the Yantar had repeatedly crossed in and out of the UK's exclusive economic zone. On a visit to Portsmouth last week, Healey stressed the government's investment in new technology to combat the threat was vital. "This is about keeping us ahead of the Russians," he told me aboard the XV Patrick Blackett, the Royal Navy's experimental ship used as a testbed for new technologies.
Some of those new technologies were on display, from a remote-controlled speedboat, zipping about in the harbour, to a mock-up of Proteus, the navy's first pilotless helicopter. On the dock above us loomed the black hull of Excalibur, a 12-metre-long, 19-tonne unmanned submarine, first launched earlier this year. "We know the threat that Russia poses," Healey said. "We track what their ships do. We track what their submarines are doing. "We know that they are mapping our undersea cables and our networks and our pipelines, and we know that they are developing new capabilities all the time to put those at risk."
First Sea Lord Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins hope new technology can help Britain stay ahead of Russia in the Atlantic Accompanied by his Norwegian counterpart Tore O Sandvik as the two countries signed a defence pact - the Lunna House Agreement - to work together to hunt Russian submarines and protect underwater infrastructure, Healey said time was of the essence. "It's a rapidly evolving threat and that's why it requires a rapid response from the UK." It's a daunting challenge for the man charged with supervising Britain's response, the First Sea Lord Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins.
So how does the UK keep up with an opponent who hasn't declared war but is investing heavily and behaving increasingly aggressively through increasingly complex means? "Despite the cost of the war in Ukraine to [Russia], they continue to put hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of investment into their submarine fleet," he said. "We're still ahead in the Atlantic, but it's not by as much of an advantage as I would like. We're being pressed, and we're definitely in the competition to stay ahead of where the Russians are."
Others are less optimistic. Prof Peter Roberts, an expert on contemporary conflict at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), says the Royal Navy's new strategy looks fine on paper but "feels like putting lipstick on a pig". He argues the UK has "neglected" its post-World War Two responsibility to be the guardian of the western Atlantic, and now the Royal Navy is "trying to find a way to look credible" in addressing a threat that has been "steadily increasing for the past 20 years... but still ignored by the government and Navy". "The Royal Navy does not have the ships to do this job coherently or credibly and is looking to address it with drones as they are cheaper and can provide coverage of the geographical areas for which the Royal Navy is responsible in lieu of new ships," Prof Roberts adds. "Russia so far is going unchallenged in much of UK water space and this strategy is playing catch up long after the fact."
Russia says it's Britain that's being provocative, even hysterical. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow that the Lunna House Agreement was being used to justify "monitoring Russian naval activity" and risked "provoking unnecessary conflicts" in international waters. But the military says it's clear-eyed about the dangers. And it's working closely with industry to address them.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
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From: Peripatetic
SOSUS was retired/handed over to the oceanographers decades ago - and replaced with mobile unmanned sensors….. drones, much as being discussed…….
The South China Sea's Gathering Storm
The South China Sea's Gathering Storm
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From: Bishops Stortford, UK
There's an article in today's Times that touches on all this, though it may not add much to the BBC link:
Royal Navy head insists: We will stay a step ahead of Russia
https://www.thetimes.com/article/68b...43f9fe7ee7958f
Royal Navy head insists: We will stay a step ahead of Russia
https://www.thetimes.com/article/68b...43f9fe7ee7958f
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From: surfing, watching for sharks
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From: Portsmouth
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From: Here 'n' there!
Like all such developments, it's probably fair to say that the technology will have moved on considerably and the infrastructure significantly upgraded with other technologies being integrated into the IUSS and so on - just as SOSUS itself evolved in it's day. And we'd never know how that all looks now, and which elements of the old (say 1990's era SOSUS network) remain (probably much enhanced) - for obvious security reasons.
ORAC, I believe SOSUS equipment only became "dual use" after the Cold War ended whereby certain scientists with appropriate security clearances were given access to some of the SOSUS capabilities for their scientific work. It was never a case of "OK, we're off buddy, here's the keys to SOSUS ...... oh, and don't forget to feed the cat!".