The Ministry of Defence has published its tenth annual summary of the defence equipment plan.
According to a statement:
“Building on the 2020 summary, it sets out our plans for the next 10 years to deliver and support the equipment our armed forces need to do the jobs we ask of them.”
The document contains a great deal of technical information about the projects and the management/funding side of them and you can read that for yourself here but below I’ll try and present the most pertinent information relating to the project in question.
Dreadnought – Equipment Background
The project is described as follows:
“The Dreadnought Class is the future submarine platform of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent. Replacing the Vanguard Class, they will be the largest submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy. Dreadnought is a new design with a number of new systems and equipment improvements which will provide the necessary increase in capability and
performance to address the advances being made in the underwater battlespace by the
UK’s potential peer level adversaries. The Defence Nuclear Organisation is delivering
this complex programme through the Dreadnought Alliance, a joint management team formed in 2018 comprising the Submarine Delivery Agency, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.
The Alliance has rapidly developed the capabilities required to develop and deliver the Dreadnought submarines. When they enter service from the early 2030s, the Dreadnought submarines will ensure that the UK can maintain a credible, independent and capable nuclear deterrent out to the 2060s and beyond. The four Dreadnought Class
submarines have all now been named: Dreadnought, Valiant, Warspite and King George VI.”
In Year Progress Update
“The Dreadnought programme remains within the £31 + 10 billion limit to funding
established at SDSR15 and on track for the first of class to enter service in the early
2030s. Given the impact of COVID-19, the Delivery Phase 2 framework was extended
to deliver the required scope until March 2022.
Work is underway to move to new delivery framework, Delivery Phase 3, in April 2022. Over the past year there have been significant successes in the programme: the delivery of the Missile Tubes for the first boat, including integration into the Pressure Hull, platform design maturation, significant material procurement and redevelopment of facilities within the Barrow Shipyard.”
You can read the report here.
I’m guessing that the first of class will undergo a significant trials programme which would explain a significant portion of the “early 2030’s” in-service date. A part from the fact the Dreadnought will be first of class it is an SSBN, so kinda important it works and that we know it works..!
So would that mean in the water say late 2020’s with a 4 year(ish) trials programme?
I am just wondering about how lone the build halls will be occupied before we can get on with the SSN(R) programme. Believe or not HMS Astute was commissioned in 2010 and (frontline?) in-service since 2014. So the oldest Astute class boat will be 20 years old in the early to mid 2030’s depending on which date to take. Give 10 years to build the first SSN(R) and we are looking at 30 year boats by the time the get to OSD.
Hence my interest.
Cheers CR
Afternoon CR, an interesting conundrum is it not!
You are correct in that Boat 1 will be conducting 1st of class trials, but I would imagine only for some 18-24 months unless something goes seriously wrong. They need to get them in the programme pretty sharpish to relieve the V boats.
I think we can expect to see work commencing on SSN(R) hull one between Dreadnoughts hull 2-3. DDH will take 4 SMs in various states of build, particularly if you are starting with a new smaller build.
Astutes PWR2 is designed for 25 years without re fueling, so unless we want to start re fueling them (not a good idea – look at Vanguard), SSN(R) hull 1 would need to be in service say 2037ish at the latest as Astute will be some 27 years in commission by then.
To my way of thinking, there is a mismatch between PWR2 core life and expected in service dates (early 2040s) for SSN(R), unless the Astutes get re fueled…..
Late reply, but you’re quite right the facilities at Barrow are worryingly small now and working rather too slowly even for the 11 boats we seem to want to have.
Frankly I think that if the government and its successors intend to take Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet seriously, they will have to expand both it and the shipbuilding infrastructure that supports it. Bringing SSN(R) up to nine boats with shorter build times should not only provide some much wanted redundancy for our beleaguered attack subs, but also encourage enough expansion in the facilities and workforce to prevent this bottleneck from happening again.
otherwise, we might as well give up on independent construction entirely and start working with the French to get boats in the water together. That would be a sad day
I would imagine that when the RN take delivery of the Dreadnought and her 3 sister boats, they will all in turn after their various sea trials they will go to the US so that the US Navy can oversee an unarmed missile launch. The final trial each of our missile submarines and their crew’s undertake before they can go out on patrol with their missiles armed with their ballistic payloads
I think I can safely say thatoutside the usual suspects there can’t be many people out there who don’t think these are the most important defence assets we will possess.
I don’t understand why instead of reducing the ballistic missile tubes from 16 to 12, keep the other 4 but configure them to carry 7 tomahawks each, like what the US did to four of the Ohio class.
It’s one and only job is to hide and launch nuclear missiles if WW3 was to kick off. It’s far too valuable to use as a mixed use strike platform.
And given our conventional forces will be quite small our nuclear umbrella needs to be bullet proof.
I guess, I just thought for a conventional conflict they could be useful, given that they also can launch torpedoes, e.g. in an Iraq invasion scenario or a falklands war scenario.
Edit: to increase numbers of subs in these scenarios, especially as there are only 7 SSNs
The can fire torpedoes to defend themselves, if they are being hunted. But they wouldn’t be going out of their way to attack surface ships.
Was not the Belgrano sunk by a nuclear launch sub?
Nuclear powered sub, HMS Conqueror
A nuclear powered attack sub, not a nuclear deterrent boomer sub. Two very different types of submarines.
Ah right it was attack sub then. Cheers.
Hunterkiller was conquerors Label and that’s what she did Ps Vs and the new Dreadnoughts circle like unseen sharks never given their location away ready for one job and one job only that’s all they do
Yes, but an SSN, not an SSBN.
The torpedoes are for defense and purely to increase the odds of them being able to get their nuclear missiles off, or evade enemies after launching and getting back to a base to reload (as unlikely as any capable bases being left would be).
As many gave pointed out the SSBN should stay hidden. But your thinking of how do we increase capability to launch land attack and hypersonics from subs is not.
US already has a new launch system for hypersonics as the standard vls tubes will not take the larger diameter rocket motor needed for a hypersonic weapon. We can launch a handful of Tomahawks fron the torpedo tubes.
I believe the US are modifying the Virginia class to give it additional larger vls tubes.
It may make sense for us to build 1 or 2 more Dreadnoughts for cruise missiles and hypersonics.. Most of the design cost will have already been sunk it the first 4 boats. Otherwise we’ll need to wait for Astutes successor.
Other than cost, there is no reason why the new class of SSBNs couldn’t be fitted out as SSGNs like the USN did for four of their Ohio class boomers. At present, the larger Virginia block 5 boats with their VPM are a smaller alternative to SSGNs. It will be interesting to see a Columbia class derivative SSGN comes about.
Afternoon Jay, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of a crew reduction compared to the V boats. There is already lots of automation on them, and SMs go to sea 100% manned, even if they have to drag people in from elsewhere.
As they don’t call in anywhere, what you sail with is what you’ve got available. It needs to be able to sustain the fight whilst dealing with potential DC &FF issues and fix what might be broken, no AA or RAC out in the deep blue.
They are not designed for speed, but stealth, so I would guess that the top speed will be similar to the V boats, which is around about 30% or so less then an Astute dived.
It will not carry more missile, or larger ones so why such an increase in size.
Dreadnought is a new design with a number of new systems and equipment improvements which will provide the necessary increase in capability and
performance to…
Maybes an ability to stage submerged much longer if required? More food and supplies stored on it.
Or maybes they might carry some sort of drone assistance in the future to act as various decoys or scouts, who knows!
PWR3 and Habitability Standards are the two main reasons.
New systems, improved habitation, also the bigger the hull the more space there is for noise suppression and insulation. Stealth being the priority for these subs.
Better hurry up with all the current plans before Russia moves onto the rest of Europe. Since most European countries will fold with out a fight especially the French as they did in the world wars. Instead having just one sub carrying nuclear missiles the UK better Try and get another on patrol.
That’s unfair on the French. In ww1 they held the line while naval orientated Britain generated the numbers to field the ground forces needed. It wasn’t until 2016 that British forces had built the numbers to go on the offensive.
One asks is four boats to protect this country with the Russian bear and the Chinese Dragon breathing fire in their regions.
These boats will be the most advanced in design and capabilities.
When these come into service the the next design boats will be on a cad cam system crewed as always by the best navy on the seas.as of present and past.
Great something seems to be working well, is it I wonder because the Americans are involved. HMG cannot afford to play the let’s throw money at the defence firms game promoting delay and extra cost because the Americans take defence seriously and our lot do not? Plus is minimum nuclear deterent sufficient given Putin’s actions- surely M.A.D means we have to be able to completely destroy them. Putin will only sit up and take notice if his life is on line. So we need 8 boats plus other means to retaliate ? He could just nuke the UK only ? Why should the US put New York, Washington etc on the line for us in those circumstances? Many Russians will tell you they have a history of a bad leader being followed by a real tyrant !
Lets hope the boat’s computers run on a bullet-proof Linux/UNIX based OS.
Some thoughts and observations on the new Dreadnought class…
1. A huge boat…over 17k tons, 500′ long…will be very hard to hide in seas and oceans that aren’t getting any bigger but which can be surveilled 24/7 by satellites, drones, underwater hydrophones, passive and active sonar.
2. Cost…extremely expensive and unlikely to come in on cost…they never do.
For the same number of billions we could have other options…smaller subs armed with hypersonic cruise missiles, air launched hypersonic or a mix of the two for greater flexibility and survivability (and more units).
3. Uses existing missiles so no range increase. All the existing ‘hiding places’ will be known by now and well used. Greater range will allow newer firing positions to be uncovered and further from enemy detection.
4. Existing missiles presumably also come with ‘strings attached’…not a true Independent deterrent whilst the US has so much influence and control over missiles. We ought to be designing a completely UK missile and warhead.
5. Has the diving depth of subs increased? Assume currently about 2000’…need to be able to go much deeper…maybe 3000-3500’? Missiles need to be able to be launched from much deeper as well otherwise the boat may be destroyed before the target.
6. Could be obsolete before they even enter service if no huge improvement in efficiency/ capability. Many nations now developing undersea hunter killer drones
which being robotic can be made smaller, faster, deeper diving and cheaper. These drones can be sub/ship or air launched over a likely patrol area and swarm an SSBN.
7. Too few boats…Four is not enough to guarantee more than one on patrol and one is not enough to guarantee its mission can be carried out. A minimum of five really…but subject to caveats above.
8. QUANTUM COMPUTING…possibly the biggest threat to our existing boats and certainly to newer ones especially when combined with hunter killer subsea drones.
Canadian company D-Wave in 2019 released press releases claiming it had already sold QC to Lockheed Martin, Go-ogle, NASA, Los Alamos, USC so inconceivable by now that our MOD doesn’t have them…but also likely that
Russia, China and other nations have the technology also.
Current machines are reported to be at least 2048 qubit machines which means they can break military grade encryption up to and including 2048-bit. far in excess of what the banking and security industry advertise as being their standards. Even your bitcoin is not safe which might explain the large increase in Bitcoin ‘thefts’ over the past 2-3 years.
Quantum computers like this can apparently solve complex problems in 15-20 minutes that would take existing super computers a thousand years or more.
In military terms this would mean that a suitably outfitted ASW ship or sub given a few live detection parameters could compute every conceivable position of the underwater target in a few minutes and direct the weapons to the most likely target area with a almost 100% chance of success every time.
So…