HMS Audacious has conducted NATO maritime security patrols in the Mediterranean on her maiden operational deployment.
Before deploying, HMS Audacious carried out operational sea training off the coast of Scotland. Following her operations in the Arctic, HMS Ambush joined her sister HMS Audacious in the waters off Scotland to conduct head-to-head underwater tactical training in a range of warfare scenarios. During this period several of the boats’ crew also earned their dolphins. This involves an intense period of development and tests for trainees as they learn how to safely operate hundreds of valves and pieces of equipment on board in order to qualify as submariners.
After loading Tomahawk missiles in Gibraltar, the boat headed into the Mediterranean and participated in NATO exercise Dynamic Manta with Greek, Turkish and US allies testing the submarine’s ability to evade, track and engage surface and subsurface targets. It also provided a rare opportunity for NATO navies to test themselves against an Astute-class boat.
The Commanding Officer, Cdr Jim Howard said: “These exercises helped HMS Audacious to demonstrate her prowess as the newest, most capable SSN that the UK has to offer while also strengthening NATO capability and interoperability and demonstrating our resolve towards NATO Missions”
Following the exercises, Audacious then was deployed on what the RN describes as “a period of NATO operations to provide security to the region”. This likely means an exciting patrol closely monitoring Russian submarine and warship activity in the Eastern Mediterranean during a period of increasing tensions.
I always wish we could see how these exercises pan out but for obvious reasons, we will not know…. would be nice to see a “She done good” though. What are we looking at here £2 Billion as loaded ?
Hi Capt, the exercises are generally structured so that all parties get some trg value from them, except the last serial normally, as that’s pretty much a free for all everything goes sort of affair. Gloves off serious stalking mode.
Oh absolutely mate…..nothing changes does it……….
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That £1.49 bill ‘investment’ cost , as released by MOD isnt really the build cost. They have such ridiculous numbers thats its more like build and sustainment cost
eg in the same document the 14 A330 Voyager tankers (leased) are given as £11.4 bill.
You literally could get 10 Asutes ( at their MOD cost) for that price and we know that a converted airliner into a tanker doesnt come at £0.8 bill each
The figures are just nuts aren’t they………. I’ve yet to find a definate unit cost for the Carriers either.
Operational insight: FSTA (Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft) – Babcock International
There’s some insight. Your £12Bn gets you the aircraft and a bunch of support for 27 years.
yes. I knew it was private finance deal, but we can see for the P-8s where the USN is required to give the actual contract price from Boeing for each yearly block buy of a dozen or so inclu8ding for allies.
The UK MoD cost is roughly 2 1/2 times that paid for the planes from Boeing. Of course RAF is getting EIS costs and training, simulators, and even a large covered hangar with a long maintenance contract with Boeing for the project cost disclosed. Which is fine , but many confuse the project price divided by the number bought as the production cost. Ministry and defence officials love a big project price as they can hide cost overuns and such by moving costs around – although the usual approach when its gone to far is to reduce the unit numbers
Bow planes are larger than I thought. Excellent class of SSNs though. The RAN would be wise to invest to continue production for their use. Move the tooling for the forward end to BAE’s facilities in Australia and produce the aft/reactor end in the UK. Equip the sub with their preferred US Combat Management System and weapons. Everyone wins!
The rumour mill has it that they are leaning towards your Virginia class. But then again that could be spin/politics talking?
from what I have seen, you ain’t probably far off…..
Thats attributed to Dutton the former defence minister who doesnt have a reputation for telling the truth and his PM who had even less integrity ( said by his colleagues , not the opposition)
Ha ha….. A Politician who doesn’t tell the truth….. I thought that was the main requirement for the job !!!!
Yes because the ones that tell the truth never get voted in….sorry but we are going to have to raise the pension age to 70 and your all reall going to have to sell your houses for social care……the truth just does not win Votes
As much as I love our Virgina class, they’re overkill, IMHO. There’s no way that the RAN needs a Block V Virginia. Maybe a smaller Block IV, but the problem is there is no capacity at either HII or Electric Boat to build additional boats for the RAN while providing for the USN, who wants to gear up from 2 per year to 3 per year, which in itself is a challenge.
Building in Australia actually makes sense, as it relieves the capacity issues completely in the US and partially in the UK. Continuing to build the aft end of the Astutes in the UK actually could allow for the yard to continue fully staffed before the Successor SSN for the RN begins production.
We have the same issues WRT capacity at this end too, albeit on a smaller scale then the USA. We are already looking at some form of Lifex for Astute from 2035ish, which doesn’t include having to re fuel the RC, which will be the problem (Vanguard!!!). I believe SSN(R) will follow hot on the heels of the Dreadnoughts, as it’s needed before 2040 lmo.
So, not sure how they are going to square the circle WRT AUS requirements?
I heard UK hull with US reactor, but not sure that would even be possible…?
Well there are about 20 Hulls sat around doing nothing !!!!!
I think it could out turn a Virginia class but does it really matter?
Brilliant boats though their introduction into service has been at a glacially slow pace.
What amazes me is the number of folks who think that they can be in several places at once. The reply to any challenge to capability gaps is to say that they are taken care of by the 5 boats in our SSN fleet.
No sonars on 60% of the planned escort fleet (those on T45 are reportedly mothballed) and no ASW detection gear on Wildcat; don’t worry because we use our SSN’s for ASW
No SSM’s on our escort ships or heavyweight ASM’s on the F35; don’t worry because we use our SSN’s for ASuW.
No land attack missiles on our escorts or stand off air to surface missiles on the F35; don’t worry because we use our SSN’s for land attack.
And in their spare time our SSN”s do intelligence gathering, nuclear deterrent protection and tracking of Russian SSBN’s.
It’s best not to stir people up. No one important reads our posts, so one can only hope people in high places have worked out a slow long-term plan for improving sub numbers through infrastructural/personnel/budgetary/whatever improvement.
Hopefully we might one day get an 8-boat order of successor SSN, with drones alongside that. Emphasis on “hopefully”.
At least we have good kit. That is a decent palliative.
I believe the current plan (1SL) is to have 8 SSN(R) hulls. Of course that number could change given the 15 odd years before we get the first into service!
That would be impossible to have even more in service for a future class. In flies in the face of all the services having less hardware every time theres a new buy.
Then the SSN force will be extinct in 2 generations.
After that we’ll be told that “smarter” use of intelligence and the shrinking UUV forces will solve everything.
Ya know, it wasn’t that long ago that the RN built conventionally-powered submarines. They are still in service today as the Canadian “Victoria” class. The answer to the RN’s shortfall in submarine numbers is breathtakingly simple and it would not be particularly expensive as such things go. Just put 6 AIP “boats” in the water and make them primarily responsible for home waters and North Sea – Iceland – Greenland patrols. This would relieve the pressure on the SSGN’s and free them up for blue ocean duties (particularly in the Pacific with AUKUS), which gives the most bang for the buck with the unlimited range of nuclear power. Everybody goes home happy.
Sadly the skills required for building them, and the needed crew numbers make that currently unworkable. I’m sure there are other reasons as well. ALOT of work would be required to get that going and it would be non-trivial.
UUVs should take on that kind of role though. Maybe some SSK-esque craft will be available as well at some point in the future. Possibly.
That’s probably realistic, if you look at the pause in building nuclear subs (that cost the nation a lot) we would have got an extra hull from the pause I’d it had not happens. So if SSN(R) is built without an expensive pause we should get 8 before switching to a theoretical ballistic missile sub.
As I posted above, I believe SSN(R) will be a continuation build after Dreadnought, negative pauses. Astutes core is scheduled to last till 2035 without a re fueling! SSN(R) will need to be with us well before 2040 if numbers aren’t going to dip significantly.
You are nearly there you forgot escorting the carriers and our SSBN’s the 5 boats must be good to over see all of that at the same time and still give the crews some time off.
If the Australians are going to build there own boats with tech borrowed from the UK and US then may be we could get them to build a few extra boats for us (just a thought.)
erm, what, for free ? or for some other rediculous fee over and above the already rediculous fee we have paid over the last 20 odd years bringing the 7 rather slowly into service…… not that we yet have all 7 yet…………
Nothing is “for free” the UK government seem very reluctant to step up production or indeed open other boat building yards so maybe the Australians could help fill the void by building our much needed 8th boat.
We can only hope !
HMG can’t “open up other boat building yards” for the very simple reason that neither HMG nor the companies involved can recruit suitable people from scratch.
Apprenticeships are all well and good, but it’s the people above them that impart the knowledge that are in short supply.
Here we go again, according to you nothing can be done, if there is the will, we can find a way, the current set of politicians do not have the will and I guess you alongside many others on these drip site’s fall into that category as well.
One of us works in the industry and is actively involved in trying to ramp up the skills base. One of us is also aware of the actual difficulties involved, particularly given the current state of the industry.
One of us isn’t.
Well it’s going to be 26 years for the whole seven boats, which means if we want 8 SSNs in the future, they are going to have to get a bit more efficient as the U.K. boats have a life of 25ish years and we need 4 Balistic missile boats and 8 SSNs, that’s a build rate of a boat every 2 years, if they keep on the way they are at a build rate of one every 4 years or so it would take 16 years to build the Ballistic missile subs, so by the time the last astute is paid off we would only have 2 SSN (R)s in the water.
And clandestine insertion of ground troops. Good job there are 8 days per week.
great post – goes against the grain of group thinkers who somehow intellectualise that having no ASuW or sonars is actually a good thing! they’re fortunate to make these daft assertions knowing they won’t be the ones suffering the consequences of negligence. keep up the good posts!
It’s cuts,cuts,cuts everywhere, has been since WW2…. why build two 70 thousand ton carriers and send them out with no FWA’s, so far “we’ve” managed to only embark 8 and one of those fell off ! What’s the point in having so much capacity yet so few aircraft, they are often described as the most powerful ships in the navy but in what way ? a max of 22 F35’s is all we could hope to embark at present….. I remember chatting to a bloke who was working on the Metacentric calculations and loading capacity some 20 years ago….. and here we are with two huge Carriers “Built for but not with” the very things they were designed for…..
Funny thing….. two F35’s just flew over ! noisy buggers they are too…..
Lucky lucky
Indeed, We get all sorts down here in Cider Country….. Hawks, Typhoons, F15’s, Atlas, Hercs, the odd Tanker or two and lot’s of stuff that is too high to see or not visable on Flight Radar….. not to mention all the Choppers….. we can even hear the engines being tested down the road on the night shift…….Spotted a Wessex a few weeks back and we still see the odd Seaking at times….. Oh and a Seafire was doing it’s thing recently and the mighty Griffon sounded the Dogs !!!!
Very nice, when I was a youngster we lived next door to HMS Heron and I spent most of my formative years sat at the end of the runway with my mates plane spotting. We would sit right on the flightline, under the harriers and so on as they came into land. Best one was a Vulcan, all you could see was Vulcan bomber, felt like it was arms length away…
I grew up near Chivenor, we saw lots of stuff and the airdays were amazing…. We would stand dead centre of the end of the runway and play chicken with all the crazy stuff….. Vulcans, Tonados, Phantoms, Lightnings the list was a lot longer back then…….. I also visit Heron at times, at the back gate and watch all the Historic flight goings on and managed to stand at the same point as you, to see the last flight of the Vulcan………. amazing experiences all of them.
Problem is, many on this site cling to the past like the proverbial sloth. We are not at war with anyone, we carry out exercises in conjunction with NATO allies, these are planned years in advance, assets are shared and Co-ordinated. So we don’t have to be everywhere and we don’t have to operate alone. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, everyone has fewer subs & boats and planes than they used to, that’s just how it is.
Exactly I don’t like it but even the USA are shrinking forces as the western way is high tech but more capabilities. However U.K. has gone to far. 3% gdp and sort military purchasing
Do the Chinese really have fewer subs and ships than they used to, or almost anyone in SE Asia for that matter? We aren’t at war, true, but you have to fight a war with what you have, and the idea that you can predict the outbreak of war in time to ramp up supplies is nonsense. Building new ships takes years, not to mention training personel to use them. Our ability to predict conflict seems to be on a far shorter order.
The final point is that possession of military capability discourages war. Reducing capabilities encourages it. And it doesn’t have to be war we are directly involved it to cause direct effects on us. Or haven’t you checked your grocery bills lately?
Exactly…… every War finds us in the same situation mostly……. apart from the two World Wars where we could at least boast to have the largest Navy…….That Largest navy also probably managed to save this small island from a fate worse than death truth be known…… I see what you say OkamsRazor but please don’t dismiss the importance of numbers or the power of this little island.
We are at war (only by proxy for now, but tomorrow who knows) with Putin. A man with even more power than Hitler. All it takes is one stray missile on Lithuania, and Article 5 is invoked.
We have done well, so far, stepping up to the plate with donated weapons for Ukraine. But only at the expense of leaving nothing with which to defend ourselves. We need Thatcher era 4-5% defence spending, procurement on a war footing, call up of reserves, ships taken up from trade, etc. etc.
This seems to be Turkey by the name in the tug, but the warship is Italian,
Yes. Its seem to be Freem class frigate
Is that an extended FREM ? …………. lol. (sorry, couldn’t refrain !!!!)
I think you will find it is Souda Bay in Crete.
With the ghost of HMS York and the amazing Italian attack on her in1941.
Ermm….. She was pretty heroic though……just like Exeter in a way….Ships built for another age and war.
The future of warfare came early for HMS York. The Italians used 6 small speed boats which were released from their destroyer motherships about 9 nm from the harbour. They had a large explosive charge in the bow and could skim over protective nets and such. They werent autonomous in the modern sense as the single sailor would steer towards the intended target and jump overboard before impact . 2 hit the York.
Thanks David.