Almost a year ago we reported that none of the RN’s attack submarines (SSNs) were at sea. There has been only limited SSN activity since but here we summarise the current situation and look forward to improving future availability.
Of the RN’s six SSNs currently in commission, only one has been to sea in the last 3 months. HMS Ambush has been alongside in Faslane for two years with HMS Artful last going to sea more than 15 months ago. Some work has begun on HMS Audacious but she has now been in Devonport for 16 months awaiting a dry dock to become available. HMS Astute conducted patrols in 2023 but has not been to sea for 7 months.
Brand new HMS Anson completed sea trials and successful test-firings of both Spearfish and Tomahawk missiles at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Centre (AUTEC) in the Bahamas between March – April this year but has not been to sea since her return. Astute boat 6, HMS Agamemnon was formally named in April and she is expected to be rolled out of the construction hall soon and be put in the water to begin the test and commissioning phase.
By the time the last boat is delivered, the Astute class programme will have cost over £10Bn in construction costs alone. While they are fine boats, their maintenance demands appear to be high with not enough attention paid to through-life sustainment during their design. This has been compounded by a lack of foresight and investment in submarine support infrastructure.
The underlying cause of this very serious constraint on the Submarine operations is the lack of docks to conduct underwater maintenance and validation work. Of most immediate impact was the sudden unavailability of the shiplift at Faslane. This was because the steel hoist ropes used to raise and lower the platform supporting the submarine failed a certification inspection. The original manufacturer that supplied the ropes when the shiplift was constructed in 1993 had gone out of business and it took time to find an alternative supplier of these safety-critical specialist parts. The shiplift was out of action for just over a year but has now been returned to service. With no alternative dry docks available, this created a backlog, upsetting the delicately balanced submarine maintenance schedules with Vanguard boats always having priority.

In Devonport, the work to convert number 15 dry dock from supporting Trafalgar-class to Astute-class boats has been ongoing for more than 18 months and it is hard to understand why this has taken so long. In the long run, RN submarines are set to benefit from far better infrastructure as work is now underway to make 10 Dock at Devonport into a modern facility for SSN and SSBN maintenance. The MoD has also initiated the Additional Fleet Time Docking Capability (AFTDC) programme to acquire two floating docks and associated infrastructure at Faslane. (Submarine support infrastructure issues are covered in more detail in our previous article here)
Despite her age, HMS Triumph has been the most active operational boat in the fleet this year, likely having been involved in tracking Russian submarines detected off the Irish coast in the spring. She arrived in Gibraltar on 21st June with some assuming she might be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean. Instead, she was observed offloading weapons and returned to Devonport in early July amid speculation she would be paying off for good. However, the RN has confirmed HMS Triumph will remain in commission for the rest of this year at least.
In December 2022 HMS Triumph completed a refit that lasted more than 4 years (technically a Revalidation and Assisted Maintenance Period – RAMP). Although prolonged by COVID, the cost and effort expended on this refit to get about 3 years more service out of the boat looks somewhat desperate. In a parallel with the frigate situation, the RN has little choice but to keep old vessels going due to delays in replacements (and the exceptionally high value of even just one old SSN). It should be remembered that once the nuclear reactor has become life-expired there is no option but to decommission the boat. Life extension is not realistic as nuclear refuelling a submarine more than 30 years old would not be a sensible use of funds, even if there was the industrial capacity available to support such a massive project.

We do not need to spell out all the high risks associated with a lack of SSN activity which creates a large gap in the UK’s maritime shield. Arguably the nations’s most potent conventional assets, they are needed to protect the nuclear deterrent, hunt other submarines, hold adversary warships at risk and conduct intelligence gathering. To some extent, SSNs of the US Navy have helped fill the void in the North Atlantic but they are also part of an over-stretched force. From a submariner’s perspective, this lack of activity creates a ‘worst of both worlds’ situation where they have too much time ashore, lacking challenge and excitement with skills perishing without live training. Conversely, when boats become available, they can end up doing very long patrols with all the issues of extended separation from friends and family this involves.
The encouraging news is that the RN says Astute class availability will improve in Q4 of 2024. At least one submarine will be allocated to the CSG25 deployment next year and the official line remains that an Astute-class boat will be based in Perth, Western Australia from 2027 as part of the AUKUS agreement. For the security of the UK and its allies, the return of vigorous Royal Navy submarine activity cannot come fast enough.
When will the SSBN Drydock be ready, that has been under works for a while?
2027 – see: https://www.navylookout.com/trouble-in-the-docks-fixing-the-infrastructure-issues-impacting-royal-navy-submarine-availability/
Thanks, though was referring to Dock 9 for Victorious, but was mentioned there too.
*
Has anyone on here had an update regarding the software concerns that has been reported by the DT on Saturday?
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph-saturday/20240803/281517936395434
Reading the article, it was a staff intranet that was worked on by people in Minsk/ Siberia. So it’s not software that is used in the boats themselves.
That said, it’s possible that sensitive data, such as the identity of staff actually working on submarine software might be visible to someone working on the intranet. This could then lead to the SVR targeting these individuals.
Cheers.
It was more the approach that was worrying.
They knew it was wrong and were openly considering how to mislead MoD by using The Day of the Jackal method. BTW that doesn’t actually work any more now systems are digitised. That is the bit that takes my breath away.
Transparency to security audits is key to these situations.
Yeah I rarely see people being sacked for making goofs… but they always get sacked if they try and cover-up the goof. The attempt to cover-up what happened is the most disturbing part.
I agree.
Like Post Office Horizon really…..the initial error(s) was(were) awful but if it had they been surfaced and fixed the hell that has been created….
What amazes me about the Horizon scandal is, working in the IT industry, I knew the system was extremely buggy back in the late 2000’s. But it appears only to have really hit mainstream when ITV did that drama last-year!
The media reported on it decades ago, but then it goes out of the spotlight and the lawyers where able to milk the life out of it while the victims suffer fighting for justice. It’s really ended ant faith I ever had in the legal system of this country.
Can someone explain to me as I don’t claim to have any knowledge of these things , why 6 relatively new boats are requiring maintenance after such a short period of service
Some have been in service a decade, and regular maintenance is required for any vessel after deploying. But that maintenance has stacked up due to lack of facilities.
The USN lost Thresher back in the 60s.
One of the outcomes of that enquiry is you don’t scrimp and cowboy sub maintenance.
You do inspections including NDT on hull valves. You do the reactor maintenance. To do some of these you need to be out of the water.
Despite some apparent near misses the UK hasn’t lost an SSN/SSBN. Other nations have lost at least two or three.
Has anyone else other than USSR/Russia lost a nuclear Sub? I guess China could have but I don’t have any recollection.
The US has lost at least 2 to my knowledge. Scorpion and Thresher.
I recall when we knew that some at least of the Thresher causes had been figured out.In particular, NDT of all pipework and fittings exposed to external sea pressure was upgraded from sampling to 100%. I believe some of the maintenance on Thresher had been substandard, eg welding dissimilar (and incorrect) materials.
That’s a cool story from over 60 years ago thresher was it an almost new sub?. Your typical anti-us bigotry is showing. Try to do better
Amusing to hear the arch anti-British bigot complaining about anti-US bigotry. What’s the saying about rocks and glass-houses?
Thresher was less than 2 years in service. Loss due to brazed joint failures. Regardless of cause or age, a tragic loss of life.
About time.
With so few hulls in service it is vital that availability is increased.
I trust that the new shift lift infrastructure [try saying that quickly] is not so bespoke for the Astute class that when Dreadnought and the AUKUS boats come alongside for maintenance, the MoD does not say “oops need another 100 million for a new lift”.
I mean the ship lift will probably need replaced by then, sounds like it’s had enough issues recently
Just replace the mechanical equipment. Dreadnought is only 5 m longer and same beam as the Vanguards, the Astutues are much smaller
Unfortunately as each new class gets bigger, so comes the need for bigger drydocks.
This whole episode is perplexing to me. The Astute programme is roughly a 20 year programme from work on the first boat starting to work on the last boat ending.
Why have the infrastructure requirements appeared to come as a surprise? It cannot be down to money, a dry dock and a ship lift pale in comparison the cost and complexity of a single SSN.
Is something classified going on behind the scenes that we are simply not aware of, or is this pure incompetence from the MoD and RN?
Infrastructure absolutely might get put off for cost reasons, were building new Frigates but have very few Drydocks to service them in. And no dedicated facilties.
Batch 1 Astutes have definitely required reworking though.
To say nothing of Drydock facilities for QE class! After the Defence Minister said in 2019 – When justifying not investing in dry dock facilities in Portsmouth) Prince of Wales will not require dry dock facilities for another six years….. Shows you how absolutely clueless our politicians are
Presumably Williamson. Six years away would have been another government’s problem as far as he was concerned — in 2019, six weeks away could have been another government’s problem. However, it shows how isolated ministers are from reality when it’s the job of the MOD to make sure that isn’t true.
Different projects, different budget holders. Assuming that the budget holder for the submarines was – at the time of project order – the same as the budget holder for the infrastructure is to ascribe a level of joined up organisation to MoD that probably doesn’t exist.
It was probably a known that had to be kept under the carpet if it becomes another reason not to order new ship/submarines etc
The infrastructure projects where cut because it was an easy bucket of money to take from by successive Govts.
Its massively delayed.
The link below doesn’t have any sugar coating on it although the source does have an agenda. Get through that and its pretty damning.
Makes AJAX look like a well-run project delivering a first class product!
Davenport-briefing-Final-Web.pdf (nuclearinfo.org)
This is a classic example of the MOD short sightedness, putting all their eggs in one basket with the reduction in available docks suitable for nuclear submarines. The issues and requirements for the upgrading of docking facilities to meet the reqiired safety standards has been well known for decades.
Where are all the crews for these submarines?
A good number will be doing land based training I suspect.
Isn’t the facility at Chatham worth looking at I remember working on dreadnought warspite and valiant either side of th God block and everything worked fine,
even changing the u.s. engine unit on dreadnought to the first British one
There hasn’t been a “facility” in Chatham for nigh-on forty years…..
It never was properly nuclear certified for starters.
If you see any of the historical photos of refuelling with the ancient dockyard cranes you understand why it was shut down so rapidly.
Did a nice tour of Ocelot……
The dry docks there are tiny compared to what would be needed now. A 2,000t WW2 destroyer fills one of them so useful for Rivers at best.
You could never nuclear certify that facility for a load of good reasons.
If a second nuclear sub repair base was needed Barrow area stands out for the good reason that if Scotland left the union and Faslane didnt become a UK sovereign base area like Cyprus then a new main base would be required.
And for all the naysayers about it not being a ‘deepwater’ port , nor is Kings Bay Georgia. Tidal estuaries are fine
Any “second repair base” would need to go to the new sub operations base. Barrow is the last place you would put that. The Town is just to small to add a naval base with all its people, both military, civil service and contractors to.
Not to mention that the channel width, maintained depth and tidal range are very challenging to put it mildly.
Kings Bay Georgia has around 2000 people.
The same sort of tidal estuary[below] as Barrow. Those Dutch super dredgers 20k to 45k displ. would make short work of any channel deepening
Barrow is of course a sub build industrial town. perfect for the routine maintenance – not full overhaul
If you could do any dredging in the UK.
It is very, very hard to justify doing it and getting rid of the arisings is also very hard as they will be notionally contaminated (it is a joke but not a funny one) so you cannot just replace at sea.
Dredging trade publications disagree
https://www.dredgingtoday.com/2024/02/19/meuse-river-to-dredge-london-gateways-new-berth/
There’s also land disposal
Land disposal….I will try and stop laughing.
These days I’m in construction so I can give you a good insight into how difficult and expensive that will be.
– The waste will be nominally contaminated
– the waste therefore has to be disposed of in contaminated approved landfill ££££££
– there isn’t a lot of landfill capacity
– after you have licensed the dredging
Mostly nonsense as other developed countries do it in a heartbeat. However, in UK we listen to noisy environmental lobbyists (often no qualifications) and not scientists.
Good luck with all of that. Oh, and think £££,£££,£££ for that project.
You may have noticed that SNP did rather badly at the ballot box recently?
As none of the other main parties are interested in devolution the moment has passed.
If you wanted a second location then Rosyth is the best option.
Now it is getting so built up round there licensing it would be close to impossible.
Scotland isn’t seceding from the United Kingdom, Duker.
There are more pressing defence needs than mitigating for something that is never going to happen (certainly not in our lifetime).
They are all still on said submarines. Despite being alongside, you still need the crew to run the systems/routines on a daily basis.
The elephant in the room is Rosyth. A political decision was made to send the boats south for RAMP instead of in Rosyth where the Swiftsure class RAMP was carried out. A better workforce than Devonport but I guess the government didn’t want the money spent north of the border. If they have the dock space for 2 aircraft carriers, I’m sure they could squeeze in an astute class boat. Maybe I’m just biased.
The skills for subs at rosyth are gone. And there’s only 1 carrier dock.
The is a dock for subs but it has one in it being dismantled.
There were 2 docks at Rosyth which were used for submarine refit work and the entrance lock was upgraded ad an emergency docking facility. Rosyth was originally the. proposed refitting facility for Trident refits and over £100 million spent in the construction of new purpose built refitting facilities prior to the decision to move submarine refitting to Devonport.
Yes, a lot of money was spent preparing the facility and then the plug was pulled.
Rosyth got Invincible refits, QE build and refits, and now T31 builds with refits tbc.
Hunterston jetty is only about 30 miles from Faslane . Why can’t this deep channel area be re- purposed for Royal Navy maintenance?
They need a dock not a pier
Yes. As a NL image showed for sub lift
They are also ordering 2 new floating docks which are different again, but they just need a jetty and a sea wall plus the supporting repair yard on dry land
X and Z berths.
Only certain berths in the UK can be approved to take nuclear vessels for short periods.
If its longer and requires maintenance then you start getting the nuclear Regulators involved and the price for a berth skyrockets.
“In Devonport, the work to convert number 15 dry dock from supporting Trafalgar-class to Astute-class boats has been ongoing for more than 18 months and it is hard to understand why this has taken so long.”
To be perfectly honest the Irate Taxpayer and I are in full agreement on why this is:-
– historical structures abound
– access restrictions
– security delays
– restricted one way system
– hidden historical issues
– shortage of skilled construction labour force
I’ve no idea why this was constructed on fresh ground.
Any construction PM will tell you that the inherent restrictions and complications will multiply the bill by a large factor.
Was supposed to say
“I’ve no idea why this was not constructed on fresh ground.”
Probably because there isn’t any “fresh ground” in Guzz – 15 dock is probably nearest thing to it. It may also be because its within the existing nuclear licensed boundary.
“It may also be because it’s within the existing nuclear licensed boundary.”
Almost certainly.
But that drives cost up for all the other reasons….
Wow! Dirty laundry all around… But, here in the States, we’re SURE “the South will rise again!”
Talking about a lack of dry dock capacity; has there been any further development on upgrading the dry docks at Devonport for the class 26 and class 31 frigates, which are larger in the beam than the outgoing class 23?
https://www.navylookout.com/the-future-of-surface-ship-support-at-devonport-dockyard/
This may be of interest to you.
The manufacturer of the steel wire for the hoist goes into Administration in 1993 and no-one at the MOD has the foresight to see a potential problem down the line? Incompetence of the highest order from the MOD and successive governments.
What is the point of building new vessels without the infrastructure to maintain the current or future vessels.
Maybe it’s time to consider a small tier 2 fleet of 4 diesel subs to compliment the tier 1 SSNs and free them up for ops further afield? And build another sub/smaller ship base (neer Edinburgh?) on the eastern seaboard for quick access to the North Sea and far North.
What would you cut to free up the money that would be needed to build a Naval base and design and build a new class of submarines?
It’s clear to me that any money the MoD gets towards the 2.5% GDP aspiration will be needed to fund the extra personnel cost needed to properly staff defence. Any new projects that aren’t in the outline plan will need to be funded by cuts or delays to other projects already in the outline.
Monies, personnel are always an issue, agreed. But I’m curious as to why diesel subs don’t even seem to get a mention in the “submarine conversation” by the experts? Even an additional UK sub/uuv base to complement Faslane. It’s location advantages are kind of obvious.
I don’t see where the extra money would come from, as a modern SSK is not a cheap exercise.
The role the low end SSK used to perform can now be done by an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) for a fraction of the cost. No surprise modern navies are looking at UUV’s to deliver the quantity of underwater sensors deployed they used to get from larger sub fleets.
True but you can get 2.5 Gotland class for the price of one Astute. I don’t think it’s just a question of sensors, it the ability to evaluate and prosecute contacts / targets isn’t it?
The North Atlantic is a big place. The promise of the UUV is the ability to cheaply deploy thirty or forty of them. So you get sensor coverage of a large area, giving unprecedented situational awareness.
Now once you detect your opponent, you have options for prosecuting that target. You would probably dispatch your Maritime Patrol aircraft, as it will get their the fastest of your options. You could also direct your one SSN on patrol to your target as well. Your surface fleet units have the advantage as they now know where he is too. Knowledge is always a winning edge.
Nobody is arguing that an UUV would replace the manned sub, but by handing over the ISR role to the UUV, your smaller force SSNs can prioritize the mission of actually prosecuting targets.
Does anyone know how this situatiom compare with the availability of French SSNs?
The French SSNs have high availability, with 2-3 SSNs always at sea. They currently have 5 operational SSNs (2 new Barracuda, 3 old Rubis*), a 6th sub in sea trials, and 10 crews.
In March 2024 there were 3 French SSNs known to be at sea, 2 on NATO exercises (Joint Warrior off Norway and Dynamic Manta off Sicily) and 1 deployed to the Caribbean. They surged 4 SSNs at sea during the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The running joke in French defence circles is that if you see an SSN coming in or out of Faslane, it’s more likely to be French than British!
*The interesting footnote here is that one SSN (Perle) was gutted by fire in 2020 and repaired in a rather remarkable way… they cut the sub in two and replaced the entire forward half of the hull with an identical section from a decommissioned sub! Took about 3 years to get the sub back to sea… and despite this they were still able to surge 4 SSNs to sea in 2022.
I am concerned with one thing, No 15 Dry Dock in Devenport. it is being made ready for the Astute class. These boats are about 7,000 tons, the new SSN-A is expected to be about 10,000 tons. Would it not make sense to sort out the dry dock capability to accept the future boats rather than the ones we have now. Otherwise in 15-20 years we will have the same issue again.
We always seem to be building ships and subs to fit the dock, what we need is the future proofing of docking to fit the ships and subs. Don’t forget a back up capability in the case of one of the docks being out of operation or in case of unexpected damage to a vessel.
That sounds very sensible. If, as we have been led to believe, there is to be an increase in the size of the subsurface fleet with SSN-A, the back up wouldn’t even remain a back up.
Id argue theres plenty of ships weve built bigger than existing docks like the Frigates or carriers. But there is actually a dock which will take the Aukus subs, Dock 10 is being modified to take SSNs/SSBNs and has Aukus in mind
Could do with a 2nd dock obviously but the floating docks if they come to fruition will help
Hmme
Then back to all eggs in one dock basket?
I mean the ship lift became a single point if failure as soon as the SSBN dock was occupied with a 7 year refit…..the SSN refit dock was being upgraded….all being planned in a nice cosy peace time environment.
You don’t build ships in docks you build them in slips. Otherwise you would have to make a lot of drydocks.
We don’t even build them in slips anymore.
The saying was once ‘All fur coat and no knickers’. Forget the fur coat.
Abysmal planning.I’ll wager no one will be to blame for this embarrassment. Fortunately we have no near at hand wars to worry about …
The sooner we transfer at least 2 of theSSBN missile silos from their submarines to permanent land based Installations to be operated there the safer we shall be.
Hang on mate, run that by us again ? the Boats in the article are SSN’s not SSBM’s, what are you saying exactly ? Two missile Silo’s equates to just two Silo’s with one missile each. I’m just not getting what you are on about.
RAF did have land launched nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles in the early 60s, the USAF Thor missiles from memory. About 50 of them. Not in silos but used erectors to stand up for launch.
Don’t need 12500 km missiles to reach targets from Britain, but that intermediate range would be done nowdays by nuclear cruise missiles in mobile vehicle
Launcher’s.
It’s certain that this option won’t betaken
You mean the safer Putin would be…
There is more to silos for ICBM’s than is readily apparent.
Far more to it than digging a hole, lining it with concrete, and Bob’s your uncle.
Fixed land base nuclear missiles have become anachronistic and vulnerable to nuclear blast shock waves since the late 1970s preventing them from being used as a second strike option and that was the reason for submarine-based nuclear missiles,
Any land-based nuclear missiles must be mobile à la GLCM at Greenham Common.
Besides this article is not about SSBN, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Please excuse a potentially silly question but what are those 4 antennas for in the background?
Floodlights and security/coms is my guess.
Thanks.
Towers for floodlights but the poles above are likely lightning protection
Interesting, thanks mate.
All
N-a-B said above, and I quote verbatium:
“…………is to ascribe a level of joined up organisation to MoD that probably doesn’t exist.”
To be 100% factually correct, N-a-B should have omitted one word – “probably”
—————-
The ship-lift at Falsalne – rather like its “bastard cousin” down at Barrow – was always, and I am going to be very polite with my next phrase – “a technically-interesting; very-problematic and somewhat-challanging project to work on….”
Accordingly, it was known thoughout “our” design office, as the “Shitlift”
Soon afterwards, I believe some very junior engineers – those fresh and bushy-tailed newbees just out of university – referred to their posting up to the Fasalne / Coulport site works as “being sent to the Gulag”
(On the grounds the winter weather was foul; they were surounded by barbed wire and armed guards; the canteen food was awful and the natives were unfriendly).
When it was (eventually) featured in the specialist trade press, the Institute of Civil Engineers magazine called the shiplift’s foundations:
“by far and away the most expensive foundation system ever built anywhere in the UK”..
I believe the shitlift still holds that record today…….: if, for no other reason that – over the past few decades that nobody else has ever been quite stupid enough to “try to do it all over again”…..(At least ,… not until now….),
These days, the National Audit Office (Note: which did not exist back then) would have used accountants double-speak to call the entire shitlift project a complete and utter cock-up……
Cables Replacements
Floating Docks
If……,as Navy Lookout seems to imply……, the RN now genuinely thinks that ordering two floating docks (remember children: all designed and built throughout to the latest nuclear certification standards)…..they are being astonishingly naive
If the RN genuinely believes that both of its two new floating docks for its submarines are going to be designed, built and certified on time and on budget, then I can only assume that statement is being made by a senior flag officer who:
Conclusion
PLEASE…can somebody persuade the RN to a build one proper old-fashioned dry-dock at Falsane: one made of the proper stuff “heavily reinforced concrete”
regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
The hint was in your reference to the ship lift having the ‘most expensive foundations in the UK’. This indicates to me its one of those drowned valleys where the glaciers advanced and retreated over millennia.. Prehistoric climate change is the au fait term…and left the glacial moraine on the sides and bottom of the valley. Not a piece of solid bed rock or consolidated sediments to put normal foundations into.
The floating docks is the only choice as any sort of concrete graving dock would required ‘even more expensive foundations’ than previously
The last Scottish glaciers perssisted into the 1700s and the Little Age Age
Duker
The glaciation at Falsane shiplift was the movement (or rather- the lack of movement) of the “tracking arrow” on the master design and construction programme….
Its progress – from left to right across that critical path programme – completely redefined the OED (note1) meaning of the word “glacial”
And of that type of very big project = “time is money”
Those foundations took a very long time = and therefore cost a hell of a lot of money.
regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note 1 – TLA translator. OED = Oxford English Dictionary
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/faslane-11-11-1999/
The glacial history of the valley was the cause
There were two projects not one
and
The piling issues were because of the glacial material as I first said before I found the project story in the trade press
‘Piling tolerances were very tight because design criteria for nuclear submarine facilities said they should withstand an earthquake measuring six on the Richter scale. This created problems for piling specialist Cementation which hit unpredictable ground in the boulder clay on the loch bed. It had to extract and replace 70 piles after they had been thrown off line.’
two facilities emerged at £1.7bn cost- this 1990s dollars. Each pile – averaged- likely cost £1 mill
Estimates well before challenging contracts are let are best called guesstimates…ask any home owner who needs unusual house piles /foundations
Duker
As N-a-B has told you before, “the internet is not knowledge”….
I am personally “more than aware” that there were two projects up there = mainly because many of the design team (little me included) worked on both projects concurrently (i.e. the loading jetty and the shitlift)…
Glaciation had nothing whatsoever to do with the cost overruns – mainly because the glaciation had existed for millions of years beforehand, and was well known when the sites were selected…
—————–
The key isue was, once again, this one – which I quote verbatium from NCE
“The Public Accounts Committee criticised the Ministry of Defence and the Property Services Agency for mismanaging the project. It said that cost overran by £800M as a result of poor project management by the MoD and PSA”,
——————–
Until the MOD get their act together – and they need to start to employ professional and properly-techically qualified persons in responsible senior management and key leadership roles = then we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past (repeatedly)
Frankly, in my own very humble opinion, all of the MOD nuclear-projects really ought to be given a common codeword: GHD.
……GroundHogDay
Regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
yes it did .
A special trade media doesnt publish nonsense—- like 90% or what you do with capitalisations all over the place
“This created problems for piling specialist Cementation which hit unpredictable ground in the boulder clay on the loch bed. It had to extract and replace 70 piles after they had been thrown off line.’
it does mention poor management from Trafalgar House ( Cementation, John Brown Engineering , Cleveland and Redpath Dorman Long) and design changes after it started- maybe your area.
It was still an extremely challenging glacial valley, which is why they are going for floating docks next time
people will read the review from the New Civil Engineer and make their own minds up that there was a range of factors …see no capitals
Duker,
As one of the people involved at the time, I will now have to “strongly agree to disagree” with your assessment….
(Note. I was one of three who actually briefed New Civil Engineer magazine for much of the the content in the article which you have just posted above).
The previous floating dock at Faslane – RN pennant number AFD 60 – had been built in the 1960’s for the Polaris boats. It was, by the late 1980’s, “quite-obviously” at the end of its life (“knackered” would be a very fair description).
Furthermore Admirality Floating Dock AFD 60 (and also its “smaller sister” AFD 26) cost a “very large bomb” to run and maintain; not least because “six-zero” required no fewer than 67no RN crew to permenantly man it (365/24/7) – so it was always ready, at just 48 hours notice, to lift up a submarine.
—————-
Very early on in the Faslane project, a conceptual assessment / initial design was developed. That exercise had been done simply to see if a large floating drydock could be efficiently designed and whether (or not) would comply with the 1980’s nuclear engineering design codes. The final answer from that desktop study – whether a floating dock could be built in either steel or concrete (or a mixture of both) – was definitely a quite a quite-emphatic “NO”.
——————
Then the MOD themselves decided to build a shiplift – or a Syncolift as it was then properly called………….. their decision was based on the fact that a much-smaller one had just been built elsewhere: and that one appeared to them to be working very sucessfully….
. ……………However, in the considered view of my boss at the time, the two MOD civil servants who had made that one key decision had made it after having had too far much vino at lunchtime and then they had also been out in the midday sun for far far too long…..
(Important note: neither of the two civil servant on that overseas tour had any engineering qualifications, nor indeed any technical expertise whatsoever….. furthermore, and quite unbelieveably, they had decided not taken any technical experts with them = as a cost saving measure! (i.e. a few extra flights would have been expensive….))
So, soon after their hangovers had worn off and they had both returned to Blighty, those two aforementioned senior MOD civil servants then promised their own very-senior minister that this brand-new foreign technology of syncolift would be much quicker and cheaper to build than any other possible type of drydock…
So they then “went large” – specifying new-fangled syncolifts at both Barrow and Faslane……
However, those two lifts – a first for the UK! – were to be far far larger and more sophisticated than the one they had just seen (i.e after the lunchtime vino on that fateful sunny afternoon) …..
……..so, when he was told what the MOD now had in mind……….the manufacturer who had, just six months earlier, very proudly showed MOD all around his wonderful new syncolift system = immediately got very cold feet – especially when he realised, to his absolute horror, that the MOD were now seriously talking to him about raising up thousands of tons of nuclear powered submarine.
(Note: being a “Jonny Foreigner” = he had not at first been told the real reason, by the MOD, for that first visit i.e. about why the MOD were looking into his syncolift…….its called in the trade “being hoist up by your own petard”)
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The design of the huge syncolift was commenced…..which, it has to be admitted, for a very long while was “not going too badley at all”.
However what really “put the cat amoungst the pigeons” was when CALTRANS ( California State Highway Department) released their technical results of their own structural investigations into the big 1987 earthquate, which ripped the ground open all along the San Andreas fault (i.e. when several of their big freeways had spectactuarly collapsed – several squashing many poor biologicals – many of whom had been sheltering in the precise spots where Caltrans had told the general public to wait when the earth moved….. )
That CALTRANS investigation resulted in many very major changes to all worldwide structural / sesimic design codes (in particular for “lateral sway” – what you may like to call “very heavy lumps of concrete moving sideways, very quckly”..
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Then the actual ground conditions at Faslane itself were found to be have been severely under-estimated, by an utterrly-useless site investigation.
The excuse note which was later written by that SI contractor basically read, over about two hundred and fifty pages of court documents, as the following five key points:::
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Only then was the entire Falsane site found to be extensively riddled with asbestos waste (i.e. it was realised, but only far far too late, that the WW2 shipbreaking operations on the site had been far more widespread than had previously been assumed).
That key discovery was made just a few days after Mrs T’s conservative gvernment had – entirely coincidentially – passed into UK law its first-ever Environmental Protection Act. That brand new law required all UK land owners to clean up all of the contaiminated sites they owned……… .
Accordingly, because MOD had just brought up large parts of the site (using their really draconian compulsory purchase laws!) – MOD (as the registered landowner) was now required, by UK law, to clean up its very heavily contaiminated site…
(Even in the often bizzare world of UK defence procurement, that one just has to be one of the all-time classic “own goals”; = “Yes Minsiter: we have just brought a very big rubbish tip: and yes, we had to pay top dollar for that land …….Now then, moving on, as the next item on the agenda, can we have some more pocket mney, to go and clean up the mess … and in answer to your question minister, yes this is the very same site that we have only just brought…)
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Last and by no means least, you will not find very much of what really happened at Faslane – and especialy about nearby Coulport – anywhere on the internet.
This is because:
therefore ……….it will not see the light of day for many decades……..at least, not until those two civil servants – who had very severe hangovers whilst out in the midday sun – are long dead and buried
As I have said before – and I will say it yet again – the RN really needs its head examined if it goes for building any type of shiplift or floating docks for maintaing its future fleet of nuclear submarines.
Regards Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
The Civil Service promotes and appoints on the basis of core competencies. These competencies score highly on “agreeableness”, really rate you if you have devoted oodles of your time being a diversity champion and totally ignore any technical knowledge or experience you might have had making tough reality based decisions.
It’s a mechanism for promoting the careers of a particular sort of person…unfortunately these people aren’t the deepest of thinkers or the bravest of souls.
Why do we need to keep HMS Triumph running, noted on the time and costs of the refit, when as the article says we have brand new boats sitting alongside. “HMS Ambush has been alongside in Faslane for two years…”
Commissioned in 2013, so its 10 yrs of service refit period where a lot of maintenance is done
Britain no longer has a functioning Navy
– which is disgraceful and dangerous.. Will the utter take over by Muslim nationalists in Britain government help this situation???
What I am about to say is my individual idea of a submarine build strategy that could have avoided the current ‘state-of-chase…’ and could be considered for future build programmes. When the Astute class were put on the drawing board it should have run parallel with a plan to have a diesel boat squadron; for every Astute class completed there could have been maybe two diesel boats completed for a fraction of the cost and not encumbered by maintenance issues. In recent times the diesel boats have more than proved their worth in their capabilities; Australia, Sweden for example. These boats could relieve the pressure on the Astute class by taking onboard a hefty percentage of the workload and let the ‘A’ boats work further afield.