Rolls-Royce Submarines is progressing work across seven new SSN-AUKUS attack submarines at various stages of manufacture, according to James Lowe, Director of Future Programmes at Rolls-Royce Submarines, speaking at UDT 2026.
“We’re at various stages of manufacture with seven boats,” Lowe said, describing the level of concurrent activity now underway across the UK’s submarine enterprise.
The work spans long-lead activity through to active production as the UK moves from the latter Astute-class boats toward the future SSN-AUKUS programme. Reactor production at Rolls-Royce’s Derby site is aligned to what Lowe described as the required programme “drumbeat”, intended to maintain consistent delivery across multiple hulls.
“We have long leads up to the first seven boats, and then we have manufacturing production at our site in Derby online for the first boat and the subsequent boats aligned with the drumbeat requirements of the programme,” he explained.
The scale of activity is being driven not only by UK requirements but also, as readers will know, by demand from Australia under the AUKUS partnership. That combined requirement is placing significant pressure on skills, infrastructure and industrial capacity.
“The AUKUS programme is a generational opportunity… we need a lot more skills to support that, both in the UK and in Australia,” Lowe said, pointing to the expansion of Rolls-Royce’s UK-based skills academy and collaboration with Australian partners.
To support this demand, Rolls-Royce is preparing a major expansion of its Derby facilities, alongside the use of satellite sites to increase engineering capacity.
“The scale of the programme… has meant that we’re effectively doubling the site in Derby to deliver those reactor plants,” Lowe added.
The company recently completed the critical design review of its PWR3-based reactor, establishing a baseline for future UK and Australian submarines.
“We now have a design baseline that we’re going to optimise into the future to meet the needs of the UK and Australian Navy,” Lowe said.
Will they be as reliable as the Astute ie only one working,
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Astute class, your Daily Mail inspired perception of lack of availability is everything to do with maintenance issues caused by a lack of infrastructure and nothing to do with the ships.
These have been caused by COVID delays, Vanguard refit taking way longer than expected and a fault in the ship lift at Faslane caused by broken ropes that could not be quickly replaced.
Yes, the Ropes. A major blunder from those in ABW. Before all this was centralised, there would have been someone with responsibility for this type of critical spare, who would regularly contact the “sole” manufacturer to check on whether they still produced the product and what was the potential lead time.
Jim, they are called Boats!
The first part of your post is very disingenuous, the lack of availability is partly down to a lack of spare parts being ordered and ships in build were robbed to keep boats in service in… service.
Further delay in new orders has also impacted on boats now in service approaching their OSDs and basically being knackered and further knackered by putting them out on long term patrols. Both colours of Govt are now to blame.
Can you outline which spare parts are robbed from nuclear submarines under build and transferred to others.
As the security classification is way beyond my pay grade, no. However, UKDJ has written on the subject that in build Astutes were robbed to sub in service boats.
👍👍👍
I never read that anywhere before.
So, you’ve never read about Albion subbing Bulwark and vice versa?
They’ve been sold or decommissioned so it can come out into the open.
Subs in build have substituted boats in service and this has caused delays to commissioning with the knock on for new builds.
Then, there is the lack of maintenance docks with which to deal with both SSNs and SSBNs.
I think you are confusing “in maintenance / refit” and “in build” the former does happen far more often than it should and is usually down to the lack of spares ordered by MOD due to Treasury pressure.
The underlying issue is our political and civil service masters are essentially completely ignorant of how engineering, industry or business functions (only one mp has a degree in engineering and worked in industry). JIT ordering is a cursed expression that has been used to just not buy spares as the muppets assume the manufacturer actually funds making them and some take years to make.
As for STOROB from an in build boat that would be extremely problematic as HMG / RN don’t technical ly own the boat till it’s delivered ! Besides which the builder will charge for all the costs of the rrsulting delay.
So the conversation goes something like “we won’t to borrow Part A from Boat 7 to repair Boat 2 as a spare will take 18 months”, “OK you are the customer but it will delay Boat 7 whilst the part is built so we bill you for 4,500 staff twiddling their thumbs for 18months”. Stunned Silence !
Rodders, according to those in the know, that is exactly what happened; being family and having both been in HMCG, no reason to doubt the veracity.
His Majesties Coast Guard ?
The obvious comment here is there are 7 boats here in total, has it taken robbing them to keep 1 active?
i do get that the ‘planning’ was lacking on how much refit capacity the 11 SSBN/SSNs required, but the spares?
i am pleased the RN/MOD have not invited me to a drinks evening at a beer production facility recently.
What have you said that makes Jim’s first paragraph disingenuous, indeed you seem to be almost entirely supporting his view that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the ‘boats’ just the support structure around them. Don’t see anything positive about organising a fight in a phone box for the sake of personality over substance.
As for ‘ship’ and ‘boat’ of course you are technically correct in modern usage but for most of their historical existence, as these words simply have different origins, they were used interchangeably, only in modern times specifically when passengers became an important factor have they taken on somewhat different meanings (based mostly around size and cargo) as classes of vessels unknown in the past led to the pursuit of new concepts of understandable but subjective clarity, as like most words changing over time they are often nit as logical as intended. Ironically in this case, in terms of the generally accepted modern differentiation of the words, ‘submarine’ used as a ‘boat’ is one such outlier that just caught on, certainly the idea of a submarine in modern terms as either a boat or a ship seems rather odd and illogical anyway, submarine or arguably as the Germans prefer Unterwasserboot seems far more logical, so perhaps best not to get too anal and Victorian about such inconsistencies in language, it all gets dictatorial style over substance in the end.
What and Victorian?
I thought I got on with Jim, no problems with his politics just the leaders we have leading this country, and Jim might share some of those concerns.
Have you now achieved a certain ease of seating, having eased your springs and thereby releasing a massive amount of bilious, noxious, flatulence via your sphincter muscle?
Having a certain affinity to Barrow in Furness and having more than a passing interest in the English language, early submarines were carried on ships, hence they became known as boats. Cheers, easy.
Any time one of you far left looks comes out with that ,Daily mail crap you get instantly ignored.
Tit
👍👍👍
Hence the core problem – an unwillingness to listen and consider the “other side’s” views, leading to an increasingly partisan and divided society, government flip-flopping from one extreme to the other and achieving nothing.
We should all listen to other viewpoints and consider them against available evidence.
Well said. The boats can only be as good and the structure that maintains and deploys them. I my humble opinion there is where much of the unsatisfactory performance is situated.
🤡
Martin.
It’s the long term failure to update the shoreside infrastructure, not the Boats themselves!
This includes Dry docks at Devonport, the infrastructure at Faslane, and the loss for some time of the Shiplift facility.
I totally agree, but to have 4 bouts out awaiting work is in its self poor fleet management and parts have taken off one to fix others thst again is poor spares management. Who is blame for that? The blunder or people using the subs boses who simply can not manage a piss up in brewery
I think the spares thing has been ongoing for decades, and not just in the Silent Service.
Bits are taken from non deploying assets to those about to deploy.
Tthat in its self is disgraceful, but we all know money saving etc has lead to this, thats why when people say oh we such a number of ships or tanks or planes we know many awaiting spares and some have been stripped for spares. And yes not a toatl of 100% of any thing ever works is deployable but real numbers would shock people its normally well below 60/70 %.
Hi M8 the basic problem is MOD procurement, they are completely clueless when it comes to Industry and lead times. JIT ordering may work in the car industry but not in high end engineering !
Very few MPs are any better equipped with one very notable exception no one has done much else industry wise before getting into politics. Lots of Lawyers, Doctors, Social Workers, Health industry and some bankers, the rest are mainly professional politicians who know Sweet FA !
FYI the notable exception is the present Leader of the Conservative Party who has a MEng to her name, unfortunately she also did a Law degree (she could possibly be the smartest person in Westminster).
Hello mate.
Yes, I’d noted your detailed explanation to another poster.
So, our political class is obsolete. Who knew!
Seems like in essence we all tend to agree then, let’s leave the phone box.
Has anyone asked Starmer before Rolls Royce take the initiative on ordering parts for 7 SSNs. I’m not sure he will ever make up his mind when to start bulding seriously and how many we need. On the actual order dates I am reasonably sure it will be after the next election. As Far as numbers are concerned his thought patterns suggest he will be saying to himself; ‘We have got away with it with just one so far. Figures crossed meaning you can only have one! I’m off to Mauritius on my first Summer Holiday. Come back to me in September on that will you. And please don’t let it come anywhere near my desk. Bye.
Jonno these are reactors that are in build and don’t just get ordered up by RR, they are all iMOD funded and all part of the AUKUS joint funding and not even Starmer dares touch that (a lot of it is Australian). Here in Derby we already have Atlantic House in the Raynesway site and maybe one of the new ones will have an Australian name such as Perth, Sydney or Osborne House.
To have long lead items for seven boats on order is astounding. I doubt even at the height of nuclear submarine building in the 60’s and 70’s that we reached much beyond that level. It’s even more impressive when you consider just how large and capable these SSN A boats will be.
I just hope we soon come up with a class name so we can stop calling them SSN A.
I really hope we don’t just move to the B names but instead go back to the old battle ship names,
Conqueror, Majestic, Hood, Revenge.
Or many of the light fleet carrier names were great too
Leviathan, Colossus, Triumph
These boats will be the modern capital ships and their naming convention should reflect that.
Aha, a naming debate! Let me pull out my Jane’s Fighting Ships of WW2.
Battleships seem to be reserved for carriers and SSBNs but I like light carrier names, the Colossus class and the Majestic class together make up 11 shps. We could add in Hermes too to give
Glory, Ocean (too soon?), Theseus, Triumph, Venerable, Vengeance, Colossus, Hercules, Leviathan, Majestic, Powerful, Terrible
That’s a pretty good list and as SSNs they’re unlikely to get jibes about Powerful not being powerful etc, etc.
Additionally I would suggest that the T83s get given battlecruiser I-names. Indefatigable has been a cruiser name ever since Captain Pellew’s razee so that makes a good first of class, then Invincible, Inflexible, Indomitable are the remaining WW1 battlecruisers. If we need more (fingers crossed) then Illustrious and Implacable were WW2 fleet carriers.
🗳️+1 vote for the I series of names.
Got my vote too
Personally I’d like to see a HMS Ramillies be added to that list
Ah, Ramillies something of an unsung hero during the D-day campaign. She closed the shoreline to bring a bridge on the flank of the British advancing on Caen into range. There was a German Panzer div heading for it to out flank the British. Ramillies started to drop 15″ HE shells onto the approaches to the bridge and the Germans thought better of it. The British Army had time to move units into place and eventually use the bridge for themselves if I remember rightly. Ramillies came close to grounding I believe.
So yeh, an honourable name to add to the list.
Cheers CR
I’m sorry to disappoint you on Ramillies. You do realise it was one of those terrible British victories over the French? Agincourt, remember what happened when that name went over his head. That’s right it was a NO NO and changed mysteriously to Achilles but easily deniable as it was named by a Tory. Bad luck to change a boats name I hear you say? Quite right it was half burnt in that fire and is now running 2 years late for completion.
Seems like a bad omen given what happened to the last submarine to be named Ramillies.
If we’re moving away from the defined alphabetical names with Dreadnought, then perhaps this class of 12 SSNs could be the ‘Olympian-class’?
Just a thought for something a little more unusual.
Zeus, Hera, Ares, Hades, et cetera. A submarine called HMS Hades would be awesome.
HMS “et cetera” ?
😁
Eh I don’t like the themed naming system very much, even the City class were a bit of a stretch except that it follows the Town class. I also don’t like the Inspiration class because of the scattergun origins.
The Leander class were nice because they had vaguely classical names but weren’t just named after gods. There’s an excellent Wikipedia page which includes every RN ship name in alphabetical order and how many ships had each name, when I’m doing fantasy names I usually just use that and we have enough names of the common letters that you can do themes within them.
Could do Colossus, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Cyclops, Caesar, Caledonia, Calypso, Campania for example.
Nah. The Type 83’s should be the new big cats: Lion, Tiger etc.
Lion, Tiger, Leopard, then what? The big cats were only three ships even including Queen Mary, and apart from Tiger were flawed and ill-fated ships.
HMS Panther was a destroyer in WW2 IIRC, so there’s that. Same with HMS Jaguar. HMS Puma is available, too.
So, hypothetically, Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Panther, Puma and Jaguar. The ‘Furry-class’ 😀
There’ve been six HMS Panthers: three 4th rates, a sloop and two destroyers. That and Jaguar sound slightly French though, not to mention that Puma and Jaguar are new names since WW2.
Not to mention that as you say they would immediately get called the Furries 🙂
Another one I’ve thought of is a Battle class. Trafalgar is too recent but there are lots of others which would be sure to annoy our European allies.
Matapan (RN-Italy), Gravelines (RN-Spain), Camperdown (RN-Dutch), Saintes (RN-French), Falklands (RN-German), Navarino (RN-Turkey), Copenhagen (RN-Denmark), Lyngor (RN-Norway).
I can’t think of anyone else in Europe we have fought naval battles against, but if I do I’ll add them because 8 SSN-A won’t be enough.
Panther, Cougar, Ocelot, Lynx, Jaguar and, of course, Princess Royale
Forgot Cheetah
Jim, the Battle Class of nuc attack boats:
Barra (Barrow in Furness) where every Friday is fight night
Bromwhich – run for your life
Birmingham – there, I said it
Brixton – petrol bombing the police brings new meaning to the meaning of Light. Bristol can put on a good night show as well
For a gentler future life – Blackpool (Illuminating), Brighton (feel the ghey and paint it rainbow), Bolton (as in Bolton on the spare parts) and… Bradford – the optimum target zone!
That’s a very English centric list 😂
Glasgow has a prison called Barlinnie that might fit. 😀
Should we deign to open it up to off-comers, you risk Dumpf wanting HMS Bronx in on the action – be careful what you wish for.
I only enjoyed the paid for accommodation of the above ground, MP barrack block, atop Edinburgh Castle – although an Australian MP flooring a Brit LT in the below ground MP bar, had it’s moments… HMS Bar, perhaps? Where even MilPol have been known to brawl!
HMS Wasp Snorter
No no, we decided that would be the name of a missile.
Though I could see it as a rotary winged UAV somehow.
Yes indeed, they did end up building a batch of 500 wasp snorter missiles from your suggestion, not sure where they were exported to. I will also pass on the name suggestion for a new rotary winged UAV for export.
Now this seems a far more purposeful debate on ship, sorry boat names 🏴☠️ 🚤🛳️. Would love to see Hood reused and what better way than as a submarine 😇. Sadly because of its fate it was obviously a name felt best avoided, though there seems no problem using Prince of Wales for example, so considering Admiral Hood’s brilliance in spanking the French and even the pesky Yanks what better name to resurrect.
Love Jim’s and Torpedo’s names, just so many to choose from when we actually had a proper navy so should try to represent its renewal. Be a nice change from naming Committee projects with killer names.
HMS Hoodie would be more up to date !
A new Admiral class to appeal to tradition would be nice. We could add in Woodward and Cunningham as the two most famous as yet un-honoured admirals, though I can imagine the nickname the latter would be given.
Hood, Beatty, Woodward, Cunningham, Rodney, Pellew, St Vincent.
Anson, benbow, collingwood, drake, frobisher, grenville, Hawkes & jellico.
Hi Jim slightly higher actually in late 60’s / early 70’s as they were churning out boats, but to be fair they were smaller but in many ways more complex. It’s still pretty impressive but then again if they do actually want a 15/18 month drumbeat that’s what is required.
Roll on DIP and then can all cheer or cry !
PS I’m still betting on 10 for the RN ! (but it may be at the cost of something else being reduced) simple fact is if you want to conduct ASW in the Atlantic and High North the best way is an SSN.
Nothing wrong with them, really? one out of 6 works, how can say there is nothing wrong with them? They do not work, they are not getting fixed fast enough thet have a 16.5% avaliabilty. Strange how 5 all need fixing at the same time if they are so great.
If say out of when we had 700 warriors 540 need fixing at the same time that would mean there is a problem, I want them fixed and at sea but simple fact is 5 of the 6 are not at sea and are broken. If you think thats good then i hope to god you do not wotk at the MOD or are in charge as its deluded to think that is any thing to be happy about.
I have to agree Martin.
I’m afraid I don’t. When you build a car for instance you know at the start that it will need servicing roughly once every 8000 miles give or take. That’s fine as long as you can find a garage to service it. However in this case the garage doesn’t have the capacity to service it for another six months. Is that the fault of the garage or the car?
The Astute boats have a maintenance schedule that absolutely must be kept so that the boats are safe to sail and it has nothing to do with being broken. It isn’t their fault that their garage is running three years behind on doing routine maintenance. If you want to blame something then blame successive governments that kept kicking the funding for the garage down the road.
That is a fair comment and that is where most of the problem lies, but if that was just the only issue then fine, but there seems to be lack of fleet management, no fleet vehicle owner has all his cars in for a service at the same time.
Unless they are CalMac…
The garage also needs parts bins to be filled otherwise the mechanics can’t do much.
As nobody was filling the parts bins several suppliers stopped making those bit and/or move production abroad to non secure locations.
It’s the old 3 P’s. Piss Poor Planning leads to Piss Poor Performance!
Don’t you mean the 6Ps? Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Something multiple consecutive governments have not understood
I have always known it as the 7Ps, add Preparation after Planning!
🤡
One was only launched just over a year ago and is on trials.
Is that the boats fault too?
Must be a bad design if it needs sea trials, sorry my mistake 🤦
😂
Stupid comment. Pointless, and yes it’s about the sub fleet management four needing services at the same time is poor management, as always though the higher ups never get blamed for any thing always the Government’s fault.
I don’t think it was planned that way. As far as I remember some of the boats have been waiting for the refits / maintenance periods for so long other boats in the fleet have become due as well. Basically a queue formed… Madness to be sure.
Cheers CR
Agreed not planed but it’s still down who is key manager, some inexperienced gas take the blame and oen up. No one ever does they just pass through buck or keep quite. When will leaders lead and stop being weak.
Well Martin if there was no facility to maintain Warriors (an incomparable comparison of complexity by the way) then one presumes over an equivalent time period then an awful lot of those Warriors would be out of action or running with in-field temporary string and glue fixes holding them together. You might get away with that on a Warrior because especially in peace time, the risk is minimal, but seriously you really can’t take chances with nuclear submarines and hundreds of sailor’s lives in similar fashion.
I am not saying risk lives or cut corners, this has being going for years with nothing done about it like most things wrong its been long term, why did the head of the Navy never bring this up and show some leadership. Thosethat lead men sould show leadership rather than keeping quite and just putting up. We have had many weak leader in CDS and idiots who always say not their fault not on their watch but they put getting to house lords above leadership.
Yes its lack of investment and penny pinching but its also years of weak leadership and self interest, a leaders job is look out for those in his commantdsas well as getting to job done or it used to be when i was in charge. Now its sort out your own future and keep quite.
Martin, are you aware that the design might not be the issue, but the crippling lack of place to maintain them could be?
yes
“7 new UK Submarine builds”
Can this be clarified to confirm these are actual UK Boats ?
Does this number exclude the 5 “In-builds” already under way that are not AUKUS Specific ?
How many are Australian ?
So many questions.
I suppose it’s not entirely clear, but my understanding there will be two production lines with one in the UK and one in Australia. The UK production line will build boats specifically for the UK. Both production lines will be identical. This means that the seven AUKUS boats under construction then should be for the Royal Navy. I’m not sure what the 5 “in-builds” relate to here. But we do have 4 Dreadnoughts, and 1 Astute being built if that’s what you meant.
RR will build the ‘motors’ for all of them.
Yes true, that’s why it’s not clear. I would hope its seven UK boats.
Yes, It’s just not clear as to what these 7 “UK Boats” actually are due to the vagueness of the wording.
And, Yes, we have the 4 Dreadnoughts and 1 Asstoot already “Inbuild” so the cynic In me thinks RR might just be deflecting slightly.
Hence my asking for clarity.
I think the RR part of the build, i.e. the reactor, is such a long lead item they are talking about the SSN A reactors. It takes years to build them so the Astute and Vanguard reactors will have been completed by now (with the possible exception of the last V class reactor), as I believe all of the Astute boats and the first three Vanguards have been ‘laid’ down at Barrow. My guess is that it is mostly the reactors for the SSN A boats they are talking about but they will be someway off completion – given RR are still building the expanded factory space.
Cheers CR
Sorry meant Dreadnought class. Oh but for the edit function..!
Astute uses the PWR2 reactor. AUKUS users PWR3. So does Dreadnaught. There are 4 Dreadnaught’s. That leaves 3. So is that 3 for UK or 3 for UK/Australia?
Note: UK is supposed to build 12 AUKUS. Australia is supposed to build 8. Total (Dreadnaught = 4) is 24. After that I presume PWR4?
UK builds up to 12 lol
Can’t the 7 AUKUS subs mean 5 for UK and 2 for Aus? Or 4/3? What’s built in Aus you’d think would be before RAN? This must be then its taking more Defence monies from the budget sooner.
“UK Submarine builds” to me means parts for both the RN and the RAN, as has been long reported.
I’ll still be amazed if we end up with more than 8, but whatever, this area of UK defence industry will be resourced for a long time with all the extra recruitment and expansion of facilities ongoing at Raynesway and elsewhere, all detailed here before by ABC.
Yeh, one of two bright spots, the other being Tempest…
Starmer needs to get a grip.
Bright spots, yes, but also two big ticket items draining Defence along with the DNE.
I disagree that they are draining Defence. We still have to have a mix of current and future projects, even with conventional capability front and centre. If we baulked at that, we would be leaving our future selves as impoverished as past governments have left us today.
Compare and contrrast the relative urgency being given to AUKUS subs against the T26 ships…Even the T31s are skipping along compared to the T26s.
What the hell went wrong on that project I’ll never know.
Answer: Geo Osborne
The gearbox of the first T26 was not up to the expected standard. With the result, the gearbox was delivered late, so a hole had to be cut in the hull to fit it.
If any part of the fleet was to see a major increase in hulls, the SSN fleet is absolutely the best choice. Gives me hope that someone in the MoD knows what they’re doing.
Agreed, the battleships of their time, and one of our Aces.
The Russians respect what an SSN can do, that’s all we really need to know in regards to there power as a deterrent. Russia knows these can reach out and hurt it and that’s all putin really cares about, he does not give a shit how many Russian men die out of sight out of mind, but an SSN launching 30+ cruses missiles into core Russian infrastructure or a city or sinking Russian ships at leisure… That he would care about.
12 is really the minimum credible number.. considering how the Russian SSN and Chinese SSN building programs are going
Whether the RN get 7 or 12, it is still a tiny number compared with submarine forces of the past. By 1945, the RN had 230 boats in service, the USN even more.
Japan, using only non nuclear propulsion now has 22 submarines and is looking to expand.
With all the additional costs and maintenance challenges, is a nuclear only submarine fleet the best choice for the UK?