Post by Focus on Jul 19, 2013 17:12:36 GMT
The Navy’s two most advanced hunter-killer submarines ever have entered service after years of delays.
HMS Astute and HMS Ambush are the first of seven new nuclear-powered British attack submarines to become operational over the next decade.
The Astute class submarines have cost more than £1 billion each and are among the most advanced in the world. They can circumvent the globe without surfacing, carrying a payload of dozens of cruise missiles and torpedoes.
The Astute class submarines are among the most advanced in the world
Their sonar is so sensitive that one lurking in the Solent would be able to detect a ship leaving New York harbour 3,500 miles across the Atlantic. Advanced acoustic tiles mean they are virtually silent. They can also stay underwater indefinitely, only needing to surface if the 100-strong crew has run out of food.
The programme has been bedevilled by delays, faults and runaway costs since it began in the mid-1990s to replace the Navy’s Trafalgar class submarines.
Naval commandersalso faced embarrassment in 2010 when HMS Astuteran aground on rocks off Scotland during sea trials.
Rear Admiral Simon Lister, director of submarines at the Ministry of Defence, said the seven Astute class vessels would be the “backbone of the submarine fleet”.
He said: “They do the power projection, intelligence gathering, patrolling and have that deterrent effect.”
Three more of the 106-yard-long and 7,400 tonne submarines are currently in various stages of production in the vast BAE Systems assembly hall in Barrow-in-Furness and last week the keel was laid for Agamemnon, the sixth submarine. Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria has built 311 Royal Navy submarines since 1901.
Stuart Godden, engineering director, said the programme to build the submarines was Britain’s most complex engineering project and as difficult as a space programme.
He said: “I think it’s at least as complex as the NASA space programme.”
The submarines have no periscope, but are equipped with an array of powerful sensors which can allow them to carry out spying and eavesdropping missions. Each submarine’s electronics means it has more than 60 miles of cabling.
The Astute class is also the first where every submariner gets their own bed, rather than having to “hot bed” and sleep in shifts.
Engineers say the boats can stay underwater indefinitely, with the only limits to dives being the amount of food they carry and the morale and endurance of the crew.
Most patrols from their base in Faslane, Scotland, will be three months long.
Philip Hammond, defence secretary, a “part time deterrent” and will save as little as £50 million a year
Ricki Rotimi, leading chef on HMS Artful which is nearing completion, said his team would cook four meals a day for the entire crew.
He said: “The rubbish thing is when we start running out of fresh vegetables and fruit, but you just have to get on with it.”
The submarines became operational in the week a Liberal Democrat review of Trident concluded that Britain can maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without a like-for-like replacement of its Trident submarine fleet.
The review, led by Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander, said there are alternatives to the UK's current stance of round the clock patrols by nuclear armed submarines.
Philip Hammond, defence secretary, was scathing about the alternatives, saying they would create a “part time deterrent” and save as little as £50 million a year.
Errmm not much help without a crew to man then, have we any left after the cutbacks you've made this last year Hammond?? - Fx
