I agree - but if they order enough boats atthe start there'll be a 20 -30 year production run

That should eb long enough to train a lot more people

Of course Barrow is not the easiest place in the UK to get more staff of any sort - its a bugger of a place to commute to

Has it occurred to you that a twenty to thirty year production run is a very bad thing? From a design team sustenance and supply chain obsolescence perspective?

As for Barrow - you don't commute there. You enjoy the lake district and the associated property values.

There seems to be an assumption ahead of the formal announcement by many commentators that the Oz Virginia class boats, if not second hand, will be entirely built in the US.
Knowing absolutely nothing about how submarine hulls are fabricated and assembled I wonder if there may be a way of sharing work between Electric Boat's yards in the US, and those in Adelaide.
The boats seem to be constructed in 10 modules.
Would it relieve the pressure on Electric Boat's yards to build the modules in the US and then actually put the sub together down in Australia?
From memory, Australia has quite a bit of expertise in submarine steels of very high quality.
No doubt a mountain of arms control export and practical, logistical barriers to doing so.
Interested in comments from those of you with more knowledge.

We will know in 3 sleeps, but the chat is that its going to 2 + 3 virginia. 2 block 3 virginia's will be leased to australia on a 10 year lease with the option buy. For the 3, australia will be given some options either 3 block 4 (with VLS) second hand or 3 new build block 5's with or without the VPM at australia's choice

...and a very wry suggestion on Twitter for naming at least one boat - the objective of a nuclear submarine being to disappear into the ocean.
HMAS Harold Holt.

That might be hard. We don't name our fleet after a person or battle.

Yes we do - where do the Collins' names come from?

You are right. I was unaware of that. Named after places is very common.

If the new subs are Astute-class, we might adopt "A" names again (as we used for the first Attack-class PBs).
There were good names in there, Attack, Assail, Acute, Archer, Adroit, Advance, Ardent, Arrow, Aware - more names than subs!

US Law prohibits using non US yards for US Navy ships.
Sometimes called the Jones Act.
There is a possible Presidential exception, but I do not think any president would try except in EXTREME circumstances.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/8679

(a)Prohibition.—
Except as provided in subsection (b), no vessel to be constructed for any of the armed forces, and no major component of the hull or superstructure of any such vessel, may be constructed in a foreign shipyard.
(b)Presidential Waiver for National Security Interest.—
(1)
The President may authorize exceptions to the prohibition in subsection (a) when the President determines that it is in the national security interest of the United States to do so.
(2)
The President shall transmit notice to Congress of any such determination, and no contract may be made pursuant to the exception authorized until the end of the 30-day period beginning on the date on which the notice of the determination is received by Congress.

If we get 3-5 virginia's they should be named after the scrap iron folitla. voyager, vampire, vendetta, stuart and water hen

either A or V's would give a lot of cool names. But we know they will name them after people

Yes, heaps of good "V" names, but I doubt Voyager would be used again after its loss in 1964.
Waterhen is currently a shore establishment.
Stuart should be retained for "River"-class vessels - we had 6 frigates in this category before the MEKO/ANZACs.

As the Virginias are stop gaps till Astutes are comissioned they can be named after stop gap PMs who didnt last a full term. Plenty of them!

"Has it occurred to you that a twenty to thirty year production run is a very bad thing? From a design team sustenance and supply chain obsolescence perspective?"

well one of the problems identified by others (not me) on the thread was that its was an issue because the UK stopped design and building for a period - hence the current issues.

However I was thinking that if the UK is going to build boats for Australia we'd have a long period with guaranteed jobs which would attract more people into the industry. And of course we can go for incrementable improvement - the Japanese do this with their frigate/destroyer fleet as do the Chinese. The US has been building steadily improving Arleigh Burke's for over 30 years - the latest ones being very different from the lead ship.

The supply chain will keep building kit if they know there are more orders.

Kylie, Karen, Kevin, Keith and Chlamydia. (I know...)

Long production runs over many years do not preserve design teams - in fact quite the opposite, because they're not conducting design activities. Design activities are not properly exercised by incremental changes - you don't get to consider why things are the way they are, or assess alternatives, because the majority of the design is fixed.

The supply chain issue is more to do with supportability / sustainability of equipment items over a long period. A type 2050 sonar installed in a T23 in the 90s, used a 2MB disc drive. Try finding that ten years later. Ditto things like refrigerant gases. Regs on those change, making it progressively harder to make the same kit over a long period.

HMAS Scott Morrison, HMAS Peter Dutton, HMAS Barnaby Joyce... the mind boggles.

From the multitude of leaks, it’s obvious that the RAN will not be getting Astute’s. The plan appears to be for British designed SSN(R)’s built in South Australia with a number of second hand Virginia class bought/leased as a stopgap until the new boats become operational.

I like your idea of stopgap PM names for the stopgap Virginia’s.

"Long production runs over many years do not preserve design teams"

Reading Friedman's "British Frigates & Destroyers" there seems to have been no problem in grinding out dozens of studies and designs few of which were ever built. A design time is per head relatively expensive but in total hardly makes the rounding error when you start building. I suspect people move on because so little is actually built

Had you understood the context of that book, you'd also realise it was a different construct and a vastly different periodicity.

The single worst thing you can do is lose your design capability. It is incredibly difficult to reconstitute it, as most western navies, shipbuilders (including the US) are finding out.