Babcock International has completed a £200M refurbishment of number 9 dry dock used for the deep maintenance of Vanguard-class submarines and the facility is now ready to accept HMS Victorious.
HMS Vanguard occupied number 9 dry dock from 2016 to 2023 during a much-delayed refit that ended up taking 7 years. Following her extended stay, the facility required maintenance and upgrade work ready to take the next boat in line. Babcock says the updates to 9 dock will allow the next refit to be completed more quickly. Details are sketchy but the project included repairs to concrete structures, recertification of cranes and the installation of an Alternative Mechanical Handling package that will improve working efficiency.
The next boat, HMS Victorious is on the Power Range Testing berth in adjacent 5 Basin with work on her £560M Deep Maintenance Period (DMP) having already begun on her while afloat. She will be taken into the newly refurbished dry dock in the next couple of months. The MoD and Babcock are reluctant to publicly commit to a completion date for Victorious’ DMP but lessons have been clearly been learned from the Vanguard project, Victorious should return to the fleet within 3-4 years.
Devonport-Submarine-Support-Facilites-SWIF
Although this is a positive step, there is still a long way to go to resolve the core submarine support infrastructure issues. The major project to completely rebuild the adjacent 10 Dock to support future SSN and SSBN maintenance is now well underway but will not be completed until 2028.
At the time of writing, HMS Audacious has been afloat for 529 days since she arrived and is still awaiting 15 Dock to be ready to accept her. More than 2 years since the last Trafalgar-class SSN refit was completed, the dock is still undergoing conversion to support Astute-class boats. According to a Ministerial statement from the last government, the dock should be ready before the end of this year.
It’s not much but this plus HMS Sutherland almost ready to return to service qualifies as good news.
Yes. It’s ever so easy to moan. Let’s celebrate the small wins.
I sometimes wonder if a continuous build programme would be more efficient than a fleet with mid-life refits. I.e. just keep a class of ships / boats under construction indefinitely with each new ship replacing the oldest. The retired ship still being young enough to be attractive to nations that purchase 2nd hand ships, continuous builds makes us more competitive on the export market and makes us more resilient in times of war.
When you look at the cost of new build V’s refit it’s clear refits are far cheaper. Thats why all the worlds major navies refit rather than replace there ships/subs till they’re between 25 and 35 years old, longer for very big ships.
With nuclear submarines early retirement would also increase the volume/ disposal costs of nuclear waste.
Perhaps with SSBN’s given we only need 4.
But with SSN’s a continuous build across the 90’s would have certainly helped!
Its been a continuous build for Astutes since 2001 when 1st of class was laid down, which was a 10 year gap- although there was a bit of overlap with Vanguards from 92-98
Vanguard also included a refuel in its LOP, which was a one off for its class
I get refits are cheaper when compared like for like. But as we’ve seen with the Astute programme it’s very expensive to get production going again after a pause. A continuous production policy would eliminate that financial & security liability. Not to mention potential extra export sales of brand new and 2nd hand hulls (although I get the international market for nuclear powered subs is rather small).
Far cheaper, yes. But with only 4 SSBNs (and those being our only nuclear deterrent) having 7 years out for a life-ex is unacceptable and is much worse value for that money. It leaves just 3 boats of a similar advanced age to be refitted and only 1, maybe 2 docks in which to do it in. But life-extension refits aren’t mutually exclusive with rolling build programs.
The problem (I think) is our build schedule, number of ships and available repair facilities.
So of the 4 Vanguard boats, we built 3 of them pretty much simultaneously, if you include fitting out after launch all of them were built concurrently within a 13-year period from September 1986 to November 1999. They had projected service lives of 25 years, though it’s being extended to ~35 years. This means that there’s a ~12-year gap between finishing building and building the next new class, which means either laying off workforce, or transitioning them to Astute. It promotes a feast then famine culture that isn’t good for the company, the workforce or the taxpayer.
That’s 1 problem, but the major one comes when they have to get refitted (they didn’t know when they were being built that they would go through a 4-7-year-long life-ex/DMP but when that time came, all the boats that were all launched within a 6-year period from 1993-1999, are all going to reach their 25 year service lives within 6 years of each other, and if we only have 1 dry dock to do the work, and it takes 4-7 years to do the DMP, the maths simply doesn’t work! Of course we’re going to have a queue for the drydock with boats past their life-span, sitting around, waiting for DMP but too knackered to keep serving as normal.
I believe the answer is staggering the build schedule instead of building the whole class concurrently. If we only built 1 boat at a time, over said 25, or even 35-year period, we’d have a slow but steady trickle of boats coming online and more importantly, it would mean their planned DMPs would be naturally staggered too.
Not every role in the build process would be needed for the whole 8-year build time (e.g. welders are needed more towards the beginning than near the end), so interspersing the SSBNs with building 2x SSNs should keep a steady workflow for the shipbuilders.
Though I think ultimately, a similar sort of thing needs to happen with the drydocks themselves, planning and building excess capacity into the system, so drydocks can THEMSELVES be maintained, upgraded or entirely rebuilt, without halting the tight maintenance cycle of the fleet. Currently, there are 2 drydocks (#14 and #15) dedicated for SSNs, 1 (#9 dock) dedicated to SSBNs and 1 (#10) that is shared between them. You could either build another large dock capable of servicing either class, or if you needed more regular dock maintenance, an extra for each SSN and SSBN. Of course, that’s not cheap, upfront investment in infrastructure is always expensive, but it would allow much more efficient use of the assets we have, so in the long run would probably actually work out to be cheaper overall.
But that comes back to the perennial issue with British politics/management… Short-term gain over long-term planning, leading to a lack of investment and resulting in issues, delays, poor value for money etc.
Refits get more expensive as your boats gets older. The first round of maintenance and refueling for the Vanguard class was not an issue. Not cheap but reasonable. It is now that we are talking about refitting boats that are 25 years old that it starts to get difficult.
The original plan which was based on a 25-30 service lives with just one midlife refit, I would argue that plan was quite reasonable. As you start to talk about 40-year service lives, and multiple refits, the benefit of a second refit vs new build is not so clear.
Now you are slowing down your new construction, making your builds more expensive. Those refits on old boats take longer and cost more. I can’t see HMS Victorious returning to the fleet before the end of the decade. I see four years as very optimistic indeed.
I suspect it is actually cheaper to work to a thirty-year build cycle than a forty-year build cycle.
Vanguard was only refuelled once. The rest of the class wont need one at all. Same goes for Astutes and the under build Dreadnoughts.
The French with their low enriched uranium reactors need refuelling around 8-9 years and their hulls have a bolted ‘ hatch’ above the reactor compartment and seem to have just 2 yrs or so for refuel and refit
Please don’t confuse reactor refueling with maintenance, which is what I was referring to. Even if the Vanguard’s had of received their H cores when built(image what a mess the RN would be in now if that had happened), they still would have been due for their first round of hull maintenance and system upgrades around the same time. The need to refuel increased the cost associated with these maintenance periods, but had very little impact on the amount of time they spent in dry dock.
Sometimes I wonder if people overstate the effect of removing the need to refuel a reactor. While it is a time consuming and expensive process, so is hull maintenance. So is any kind of system upgrade in a limited access environment.
HMS Vanguard had major corrosion issues, this added years to her refit, HMS Victorious will be no different.
Im well aware that nuclear refuelling was always concurrent with a deep maintenance period or refit.
The eralier refit plus refuelling were wickedly expensive for their time
“January 2005 and July 2008, Victorious underwent a Long Overhaul Period (LOP) and reactor refuelling which cost around £270m. HMS Vengeance undertook a similar LOP(R) between March 2012 and February 2016 costing £322m.
https://www.navylookout.com/extending-the-life-of-hms-victorious/
I was slightly wrong in my refuelling of Vanguard class, the other boats had a previous refuelling, Vanguard has just had its 2nd but the other boats wont need that.
Duker, these facts are not disputed.
I am not sure what your point is?
We’d struggle to sell a serving hand nuclear reactor to another nation
True, but if you had of removed the reactor section from every decommissioned sub, refueled the reactors and connected them to the grid, the electricity sales generated could have funded a program to scrap the submarine fleet properly. Instead they are still sitting around and everybody is just hoping the UK does not face a serious environmental disaster one day.
Rubbish.
Power reactors and submarine reactors are built with very different priorities. Whats efficient to very quietly propel a submarine isn’t the same as what’s efficient to produce the full rated power of the reactor 24/7/365.
This is before the cost of all the infrastructure needed to set up and safely operate the reactor you’ve just removed from a 30+ year old sub. You’re also forgetting the cost of the fuel. Highly enriched uranium is one of the most expensive materials on earth, it’s vastly more expensive than commercial power reactor fuel.
If afraid to say this is about the most idiotic idea ever seen on this site!!!
ATH
What you have forgotten to mention is that Russia – yes that right, the evil empire being run by Mr V Putin and his gangster mates – has just stopped the sale and exporting of uranium out onto the world market
Russia was, until last week, by far and away the worlds largest supplier of uranium (note 1)
That is very likley to cause a shortage of reactor fuel….
Regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note. Not be confused with Ukraianian, as my spell-checker has just tried to do: twice.
This will undoubtedly destabilise the market in the short/medium term. Longterm either things will change in Russia of the other suppliers will increase production or some of both. Suspect over the next decades western governments will “encourage” firms to reduce their reliance on Russian (and Chinese) suppliers of critical materials.
Not correct
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production
Russia is well down the list. And Canada, Namibia, Australia are aligned with who ?
Maybe an impetus to transition commercial power reactors away from Uranium and to something like a Thorium cycle which is far more readily accessible in more parts of the world than Uranium (there IS a ton of Uranium, but few places where the concentration makes extraction financially practicable.
Fast reactors which can use recycled fuel might also be a good option, the problem is nuclear power isn’t the most popular topic with politicians as it’s (arguably needlessly) controversial, so getting any government to make the adequate investment is tricky.
HMNB Lessons Learned, the countrys oldest naval base
Babcock…Superglue 2.0
Deferring the procurement of the Dreadnought class went hand in hand with the same approach to the support infrastructure for our submarines, which has been disastrous for boat availability and the true costs of this shambles is being hidden. The impact on the crews have either been extended deployments or long periods doing nothing, which is not good for retention.
Another mess caused by the clowns Cameron and Osborne.
If we can’t afford to be in this game then get out.
Yes the issue is budget, why keep picking the most expensive options?
The name of this website ought to be changed, to “Save the Royal Navy, from Itself”
SJB1968
Not for the frst time when reading Navy Lookout, I find myself 100% agreeing with you….
Without good – and that means properly-designed and properly-equiped nuclear-licenced infrastructure, the RN’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet is simply doomed to fail…and fail again…and fail yet again…and fail yet again…
So yet again, as this article rightly says, the MOD & RN are once again guilty of throwing in wads of good money into a very deep hole: and getting very little for their (i.e. our) money.
The ariel photo of Devonport, posted by the editor directly above, sums it all up very nicely.
However the editor put up the wrong caption. This is what is should have read:
“The nuclear licenced site at Devomport is, as seen here, “A S***tip”
regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
STOP PRESS
This key topic, submarine infrastructure,(or rather the lack of it….) is in this week’s edition of Economist magazine
The Economist even quotes (and names!) Navy Lookouts editor
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Harland and Wolff only has enough cash on hand to last until the end of the month according to the GMB union, the company is trying to get its US creditor Riverstone to loan it enough for another month after it had already extended its credit by £19.5m in August to give Rothschild bank time to examine strategic options. The H&W has received 21 private bids for all or part of the firms four yards while the Government is still ruling out a nationalisation or £200m loan.
I wonder what the lost-tax cost to the Treasury will be if H&W don’t build the FSSS and it defaults to Cadiz. Probably less than the extra cost of getting BAE to do it in the UK — of the order of £400m to £500m? Yet the Treasury called the export guarantee of £160m irresponsible.
Off topic or what!
Audacious commissioned April 2021, some 41 months ago during which she has been ‘alongside’ for 17 months awaiting dock down in 15 Dock for refit after being in commission for just 2 years takes some explaining to my mind.
From the sounds of it, some minor repairs, but that required drydocking… But there’s a queue for the 2 drydocks we have available.
The Navy press release made it sound “routine” but I got the impression they’re playing things down… If subs needed drydocking after EVERY deployment, we should really have more than 2 available drydocks for the 7 SSNs.