Jed Babbin was pretty accurate about our Gallic chums.

Could've stuck with the French boats for that!

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....015e046a8b.jpg

HMS Astute has just arrived in Perth. What a coincidence. Expect to see an announcement of her being based there in the not too distant future or even transferred to the RAN

It’s much more than that. With Merkel going he assumes he will be the new top dog in the EU.

Are you sure about that ? I don t think so !

Doesn’t prove anything of course, but it could very well be seen as straws in the wind. Doubt a permanent transfer is on the cards, but a long-term deployment would certainly provide scope for the training and familiarisation of both crew and base support personnel.

Forward based - possibly. Transfer - no. We need seven SSNs to provide cover for CASD, contribute to NATO operations in the North Atlantic and High North, contribute to the carrier/amphibious based task group, and operate in the Middle East.

Bit difficult to do any of those from Perth…..

One of the jobs is the escort of carriers, if/ when POW is based in Oman can see its escort spending its spare time in australia

Not sure how you use a submarine as an escort*, but you do have a point.

*Coordinated ASW is the phrase you want. On which note, I wonder if any ASW related programmes are part of AUKUS? RAN ASW helicopters have taken part in UK/NATO exercises.

standard doctrine has US and UK carrier battle groups having an SSN as part of the escort, CSG 21 actually has artful, so naval news might be wrong on saying it was part of the carrier group because MOD lists it as artful and not astute

as to the ASW australia has been focusing on it, with the new M-60R's and 14 posiedens

Not so much escort as consort. Saying the carrier has escorts suggests that the other warships in a task group just defend the carrier, and that the carrier is passive. Submarines and frigates (in RN terminology) work in conjunction with the ASW helicopters. Continuously operating ASW helicopters around the clock requires a big deck with multiple aircraft.

Likewise a carrier's fighters are frequently controlled by an AAW destroyer.

All of this provides a defence over a large area, and the carrier may be used to protect things like amphibious forces or seaborne logistics - which was the main role of US and UK carriers during the Cold War, and is coming back to the fore in a new era of great power competition.

There must be a better term than 'escort'.

Just terminology in the end. Even the MOD cant be consistent, saw artful listed as part of the escorts making up CSG21, then latter they said CSG 21 + artful. In the end what ever term you want to use for it US and UK carrier battlegroups always have an SSN as a member of the CSG/CBG. Which for 21 is artful and not Astute.

There is probably more likelihood too, of the Canberra Class LHD's having more of an ASW role with Allies, than landing mechanised infantry throughout the Pacific. A Canberra class LHD with a squadron of MH-60R's, would go some way in beefing up the single helicopter warships of the RAN and prove somewhat more useful than their envisioned amphibious roles in the event of Indo-Paciic naval conflict .

Article in the New York Times today expressing doubt over the whole project. Starting to look like too much submarine. No way are they going to be built in Adelaide. That is fantasy land.Hope this is not a fiasco in the making. Did everybody have their grownup pants on when they signed up for it ??

Always said virginia is to much submarine. If you can figure out the reactor issue astute is a better buy for us. Cheaper, faster, quieter and less crew. Assuming VLS is not a big thing astute has more synergies with the RAN as it looks to be a more antisub focus

Wow.
Do both share the same Crossection?
If not who wins?
Or do you always go for the bigger of the two dimensions?
In an always cramped Sub if you need to squeeze your crap in a narrower or lower Hull, all Off- the- Shelf goes out the window and you start basically from scratch. Also all the piping and wiring will be a nightmare to combine.
This approach clearly sounds 'interesting'.

Hes not saying build the front half of an astute and tack it on to the back half of a virginia.



Submarines are built is sections and assembled together. Same way planes are built and even many ships are buiilt as blocks

Indeed. Many internal modules, like the command deck, are also built separately then slid into the partially assembled hull.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....215e09d36f.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e67ca8f8d3.jpg

The UK builds SSN & SSBN in a small town in NE England. I fail to see why so many hold the Australians to be incapable of replicating these facilities. True, the reactors and some other internal systems will have to be imported, but the rest is just marine engineering. What's the problem?

"Events, dear boy," and the experience to deal with them. The UK paused submarine building and rapidly found that without any work for the builders all the experience had been paid off. The vertical re- learning curve for Astute meant EB had to come and help BAE out.
I expect the expertise from building the Collins boats has also been dissipated so there will be a lot of things to re-learn, fast. The experience now exists in BAE and EB, but whether there is enough of it to expand from two build operations to three I don't know. Much depends on timescale for the first two or three boats. Go slowly and you can train Aussies in UK and US to assemble and to build in Oz. Be in a hurry and you need to buy ready made, or learn hard and expensive lessons as you go.
You also need a submarine design capability, but upkeep of the Collins boats should have retained that base expertise. Whether it can be expanded fast enough to both keep the existing boats safe and capable whilst sorting out the design work to incorporate Australian content in the new boats is moot.
None of this says that SSN building cannot be done in Oz. Only that it will take time, probably more
time than the pollies want, and it will not be cheap. After all, SSK building has been done before and no one is suggesting an Australian power plant.

N