HMS Victorious will be modernised under a new £560 million contract following an agreement with Babcock.
As one of the Vanguard Class submarines, the submarine is a key component of the UK’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said:
“In an increasingly dangerous world, it is crucial that we continue to invest in one of our most important assets, our nuclear deterrent. This is another UK partnership with Babcock, that will help keep the UK safe, while boosting the local economy and supporting 1,000 jobs. On my recent visit to HMNB Devonport it was a privilege to speak with sailors and staff whose work directly contributes to our national security.”
Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Martin Connell said:
“The Royal Navy performs no more important mission than Operation Relentless, the continuous at sea strategic deterrent patrols which have been performed by our submariners uninterrupted since 1969. The overhaul of HMS Victorious will allow the boat to carry out deterrent patrols until the next generation of submarines, the Dreadnought-class, enter service.”
Babcock CEO, David Lockwood said:
“Babcock CEO David Lockwood said: “Delivering the programme for this vital and complex defence asset is our top priority. We are proud to have been awarded this complex defence programme which will use our deep engineering expertise to help keep the UK safe.”
Commissioned in 1995 at a (unit) cost of £3.7 Billion….She had a refit a few years back including new Core H reactor….. Re joined the navy in 2009 and I read somewhere earlier that this latest work will extend her life by up to 15 years… Assuming a 4-5 year contract, by my reckoning that would make her @ 50 years old.
Any one know the Through life Costs of these Boats ? I bet it would be quite an eye opener especially when you factor in the Decommissioning costs……
Until they successfully finish the first dismantling of a nuclear sub (Swiftsure?) it’s hard to figure decommissioning costs.
Hell yes mate…. The Queue is getting longer… is it something like 18 N boats sat around waiting for the next Government to pass the buck … or am I just being cynical ? ….
But it’s not just the UK that have these submarines sitting around. It will the world’s first when they dismantled a nuclear Sub. Hopefully its a success then we can sell the expertise to other countries except Russia they subs were dangerous when first made let alone the ones they have had sitting around for decades they have their own method of just sinking them.
Don’t the US and France already dismantle their subs?
Not fully dismantled, it’s easy removing the core it’s self contained. The US have tried they’ve cut the middle section out that housed the reactor then welded the front and back together and put them in floating storage, they’ve even sank some. The UK with be the first that fully dismantles the complete sub. As I said before removing the core is easy. It’s totally removing every bit of metal down to the smallest bolt that has never been attempted.
The Sealed up US Reactor sections aren’t stored on barges, they are barged down the coast and up the Columbia river to the Hanford storage site, where they are stored in massive open air trenches.
The Russians used to store their compartments afloat but now have a similar storage trench at Saida – Guba near Polyarny.
Never said the reactor sections were stored on barges I said they removed that section welded the front and rear section together and it’s that which are kept in floating storage.
My understanding is that the core could have value. In theory the decaying radio-active material could be used in minute batteries encased in (if my memory serves me correctly) diamond and inserted into human bodies to regulate pace makers etc. Yes – it was a shock to me as well.
Le Redoutable had its Core section removed and Is worth a visit to Cherbourg. I haven’t a clue what they do with the Core though.
The Fishermen in Vladivostok Do Not Use Rods They wait and catch the Glowing Ones as they Come Up !
😂
The Russian answer is just appalling… I can’t ever see them being able to sort it all out…. Just how many N Cores are there ?
Russia doesn’t even admit when they have an accident on board and the sub sinks, let alone how many they intensely disposed of by sinking them. Combining the Soviet Union (before communism) and Russia ( after communism even though Putin is trying to bring a dictatorship back) they have lost 7 nuclear subs and the US have lost, these are the ones we know about there is no information on if they had nuclear missiles/ torpedoes on board. Even though submarines reactors are small compared to on land reactors they are still a risk due to corrosion at some point… Read more »
They’re actually still working on the dismantling process. Defuelling is going to begin again at devonport this or next year then Swiftsure will be disassembled.
The USN are doing it for between $25 – $50 million per boat. Other than the reactor it’s all high grade scrap metal.
Because they are not fully dismantling. the UK will be a world’s first to fully dismantled a nuclear sub. Just because the US removed the reactors doesn’t mean the rest is not a environmental disaster waiting, they’ve got pipe work which has low level radiation, they got flame retardant materials which are hazardous even the insulation on the cable and wiring can be toxic over time. The true cost to dismantle a sub has not been calculated. The US has a reputation for contaminating the ground with for ever chemicals.
Would be very interesting to really know how long the vanguards can be extended, they are still relatively new compared to Ohio class, with the Republican Party threatening to pull out of NATO or at-least water down article 5 it may be that the UK and France have to step up their nuclear weapons capabilities. Britain and France each operating 5 SSBN would allow 3 to be permanently on deployment in North Atlantic replacing the USN SSBN in North Atlantic.
Re a Trumping I think the weak point there would be maintaining the missiles. I hope the RN have a plan for that as developing a British or Anglo-French alternative would take some time.
The M51 missile program cost France about €4 billion. It’s not an unreasonable cost these days for the UK to develop its own possibly using the M51 design as a basis.
Longer term I don’t see that our deterrent should be quite so linked with the USA.
So far I’d say there’s no plans to swap from Trident.
Sadly I think that needs to be the case generally. Just listening to some MAGA attendees at conventions almost praising Putin and making statements like ‘he only wants what’s his’ even as usual my cynicism never seems cynical enough and I have been concerned about US stability and support for many a year now. As an aside I would love the interviewer to have reminded those useful idiots that Putin has just signed off his rejection of the Alaska agreement so now openly claims Alaska as his. I suspect their reaction might have been a little different on that one… Read more »
The USA has told Europe it needs to spend more on defense for 20+ years. Most European countries have boutique military capability that is nearly useless. Instead europe continued to flaunt its social welfare programs. Now it’s coming to a head.
European countries are still buying Russian Oil and Gas. Why should the US spend money defending them?
Almost no one in Europe is buying Russian gas now, of distillates coming from Russian oil this US is a significant customer. Oil is not a clear cut case.
No one in Europe is asking for America to defend them, they asking them to pull their fair share in supporting Ukraine and the western democratic system.
Their is no amount of defence spending that Europe could do that would satisfy MAGA republicans. Point in case Europe is massively outspending the US on Ukraine currently yet Donald Trump still harping on about NATO members not paying their “bill”
I doubt they’ll keep the Vanguards on, because for what you say to work they’d eventually have to build a 5th dreadnought which isn’t going to happen
It might if the US pulls out of NATO.
Allying itself with France to the exclusion of the US really worked out well for the UK in the 20th century.
Yes genius ally ourselves with the US when if it pulls out of NATO. NATO is the only physical security agreement we have with the USA. So please tell me how we would ally ourselves with the USA? You think the Donal would coming knocking on our door to sign a separate defence agreement?
Everything other than NATO that we have with the US is just intelligence and technology sharing.
See my first post above… @50 years for Victorious if I’m reading it right.
You need to check your maths it’s 40 years.
You need to read it again…. Victorious was commissioned in 1995… she will undergo a 4-5 year refit which will extend her life by another 15 years….. 20 years from now = 49 years….. My maths is good thanks.
These boats are absolute works of art. The level of design and engineering that goes into nuclear boats is off the chart. They make the old space shuttle look practically basic in comparison. By some way, the most complex machines ever built by mankind. And only us the Americans and the French (just 😆) can make boats of this level of quality and capability.
I remember the system cost £13 billion in the 80’s that was some money. Amazing boats even now, they still look very advanced compared to Russian or even US boats.
I had the opportunity to go on-board one at Faslane. They are still pretty tight inside. Hats off to submariners for spending months under the waves on these things.
The cost is still eyewatering though.
Here is another example of where the money goes.
How much OTS kit could that buy? Medium Heli Blackhawk and Archer, K9 OTS buys for example.
Definitely mate. The nuclear deterrent is the ultimate insurance policy. And until the day comes when nuclear weapons across the globe are a thing of the past. We need it.
I read a very interesting article a while back about the staggering cost of Decommissioning the N Boats… can’t remember the ins and outs but there is a serious concern that It may be unaffordable….. What then ?
The process has already started in Rosyth.
There where Boats up in Rosyth back in the 80ts Dreadnought and Churchill sat in the Bason whilst the V boat Bason was being dug and constructed and then Rosyth got the chop
“Already Started ” you say ? …. Well Good, it’s only taken some 30 plus years…..
Yes took them a while to figure out, clever engineers in rosyth, now one else has ever done this before.
North Atlantic trench and sink them. Down at 6-8000 feet the radioactivity will be safely dispersed, not sure how practical or not that idea is?
i think it’s a great Idea …… 😂
It’s actually one of the most stupid ideas going. Why do you think Russia and America don’t do it these days. Most really deep water is in the bottom of Trenches they are usually on fault lines and quite active.
I read it as Humour…. 😄
That’s true but not much point in playing in the big league if you don’t have the big boys toys.
Indeed, my issue is the money pit where that outlay comes from. Not having the capability.
You assume the MOD would get to keep the money if nuclear deterrent was scrapped.
You assume I want rid of it. I don’t, i commented on the sheer cost, such as this one, when posters constantly ask on this site why we don’t have 200 escorts, 1000 planes, and 4 Armoured Divisions for a 50 billion outlay, one of the world’s biggest.
CASD replacement of the boats and associated infrastructure is one huge reason.
Will the upgrade include getting the Trident missiles to launch correctly? Asking for a friend, Vladimir.
Your friend might want to email LMSS…. They might just be able to help.
Considering the Americans just semi crashed their lander on the Moon because somebody forgot to apply a pencil sized bolt I think we can claim to not being alone in such matters. As for Russia well they do by their own admission keep shooting down endless numbers of their own planes as it’s an even greater humiliation to accept others have done so. Oh and they overturned their most advanced mobile radar system this week when the driver took a corner too quickly though too quickly seems to be about 15 mph as it’s so dangerously top heavy.
To be fair, the lunar probe was private, not a NASA built.
Can that money, which is an awful lot not go to speed up Dreadnought, it also looks as if we will need 5 not 4 due to penny pinching coming home to roost again. i would like to see one of these built constantly with one launched every 7 yrs and the SSNs built alongside, we really can’t let our nuclear fleet age like this, if we are serious about it. we are simply spending too much on life extensions that frankly do not cut it. would you want to go under for 3 months in a 30-50yr old vessel?… Read more »
It’s not money holding up Dreadnaught, it’s a massive industrial process. But given the cost of building an SSBN life extension even at these cost makes sense.
I don’t agree, all the ship builds can be accelerated if we wish them to, nowhere on the planet builds ships as slowly as the UK, that is a fact. most times it is due to release of funding, not the quality of the workforce. Yes they are complicated, but BAES knows what it is doing and I believe can get Dreadnought into service quicker if the desire is there. thats the problem with the UK, we don’t have a can do attitude. for £560m for a single boat I would even consider gapping it. as Daniele points out, this… Read more »
The UK very much has a can do attitude. No other nation except America can build nuclear boats of this size, quality and capability. Other nations do not build, them vastly quicker than we do, and if they if do it’s because they are not as complex as say a T26. T31s are coming together pretty quickly. If they UK didn’t have a can do attitude. We wouldn’t have the capability to build nuclear boats in the first place.
Gapping it is a terrible idea. There’s still nearly a decade till the first Dreadnought comes online.
I agree, but if we can accelerate dreadnought and successor generally I would.
does this money really have to be spent is the question?
I prefer to spend on new or midlife, not knackered kit
This money would hardly be able to accelerate the Dreadnought program. So yes this sub needs refitted.
This is a lesson already learned. They absolutely could build the boats faster but if they do that the yard runs out of work for a time, the skilled workforce all leave for greener pastures and the next time you need to build one you almost have to start from scratch. If not for heavily leaning on Electric Boat in the USA we would be out of the submarine business already for this reason previously.
Correct if you want a faster delivery, you need to understand that you need to fund an infill order. The bloody stupid thing is that virtually everyone in the industry knows that if HMG committed up front to a force level of 5 SSBN and 10 SSN it would over a 30 year life cost less than this BS.
Are you logging in from two different devices? That might explain the on/off y.
Also, letting such important capability degrade to this level is really the terrible idea.
we can’t do basic fleet management on our most important assets
What do you mean? It’s an older submarine. This is just what it costs to refit.
This ship is nearly 30 yr old with a design lifespan of 25yrs, it’s not old it’s end of life and should be retired we do this all the time which causing disruptions to the drumbeat, diverting costs to lifex that should be spent on replacement assets. With a finite budget you need to stick to your replacement strategy or this will happen. likewise, the carriers T45 and T26 were delayed due to HMG financial interference that resulted in both being over cost, resulting in 2 T45 and 6 T26 being cancelled. so both ends of the supply channel are… Read more »
Well said, the first person to actually understand the underlying issue. It’s cheaper if it’s a continuous production process SSBN followed by SSN, design one whilst building the other and so on.
Bugger it up to save money while it’s your turn in power costs a fortune in the longer term.
also Ensures you always have a new one instead of having all 4 on their last legs. This is political failure burning the candle both ends then wondering why we get so little VFM.
ultimately SSNR is taking lessons learned from dreadnought and vice versa I am sure when the time comes.
the way we do it is simply wasteful.
It isn’t wasteful if the Politicians keep their bright ideas to themselves and let industry design and build sufficient boats to make it cost effective. Apart from the very first SSN (Dreadnought) all our boats have had huge crossovers between the SSBN and corresponding SSN follow ons. As for SSN(R) yes it will have a very high crossover of design content from Dreadnought and most noticeable feature will be size. The PWR3 is a big beastie so that dictates the pressure hull size, which then for Hydrodynamic reasons (and VLS) means a longer hull. Which explains why Babcock are lengthening… Read more »
We have received a lot of assistance from the US to design and build our submarines. Long service lives with expensive refits are a feature of both navies. France, building without US help, produced much smaller boats that so far have all been stricken within 25 years of commissioning. The US/ UK refits deliver a boat that is as good as new at a fraction of the cost of a brand new one. The same approach isn’t necessarily appropriate for ( comparatively) cheaper surface escorts. It might be better for these to be built for a 15 year life, then… Read more »
RN boats generally follow a very different design ethos to USN ones and we do not mimic their designs. Which others than the original Dreadnought and Valiants ours look rather different to theirs. Its a very interesting process as both have strengths and weaknesses but it is vey much a respectful relationship. The cooperation on the Reactors is very close but again it is very much a 2 way process, but we both use HEU and that dictates a common direction. Where we did absolutely need the assistance of the US was when HMG gapped our design process during the… Read more »
Each generation of French SSBN have been pretty well the same size as ours, the size is dictated by their reactors and tube length of the missiles just like ours are. I think their new ones may actually be slightly bigger than our Dreadnoughts due to them going for Electric Drive rather than Geared Steam.
I have to say that is a very interesting choice to make.
You are slightly wide of the mark in your belief that ‘refits deliver a boat as good as new at a fraction of the cost of a brand new one’. What you are getting for your large amount of money in this case is a 30yo tired hull with tired systems that have had elements replaced and or refurbished. Not everything is replaced with new bits of kit. For example whilst getting a new core, not all of the associated machinery/equipment (main coolant pumps,turbines, pipework etc) is replaced, indeed bits might well be, but not a entirely new propulsion system.… Read more »
Yep and I actually believe that a fleet of 5 SSBN and 10 SSN would have a lower overall full life cost than the 4/7 we have now.
Same tasking spread over more hulls reduces reactor use so you could go 30 year full life and replace on a set drum beat.
Yes, the 4 BNs we currently have are certainly being pushed to their absolute limits, and makes a good case for the fact that we should have always gone with 5…
7 SSNs was always far to small a force given that on your absolutely best day you might just have 4 available. Personally I believe that we will get between 8-10 Astute replacements and if really fortunate as many as 12, but that’s it. Unfortunately I just can’t see HMG ever going for an extra BN, as some 6 decades of CASD has set hat requirement.
Nothing to do with desire, nor will, nor anything else to do with U.K industry. It is actually delivering on the schedule that HMG is providing funding for. As for gapping an SSBN in a force that is already the bare 4 boat fleet to provide CASD cover is quite simply dangerous. FYI when Polaris was 1st mooted the minimum number of boats considered to cover was 5, the Government of the day asked if it could be done with just 4. The answer was yes but only just with zero wiggle room. Same with Vanguard and now Dreadnought the… Read more »
No it doesn’t as it was never supposed to happen, it’s a monumentally expensive exercise to extend a boat beyond its designed life. And as no one ever thought we would have to do it, sometimes it really causes issues. To build boats efficiently you need to stick rigidly to a schedule of design, order and build. Each class overlapping with the next in a continuous repeating process so none of it has a gap. What caused this issue was that when the Vaunguard class started their build HMG dithered and didn’t decide to order the follow on SSN to… Read more »
I originally had two questions but you may have answered one already. First what is the optimal number for cost efficient builds? You suggest 5 and 10. Is that optimal or the minimum? Second question was going to be ‘I thought it was 4 boats to keep one at sea, usually with the ability to rush another out for a while, 7 boats to keep two at sea almost always with the ability to rush another out briefly’. So why five? You may have already answered that in providing a safety margin. If so were other comments I have read… Read more »
You are I believe referring to @Jims post further up the thread? Ref your last paragraph, the ratio is 4:1, so 10 boats doesn’t quite work on a continuous basis, it would be more like 2 and then a third one occasionally. As an aside, if the US were to step back from NATO, they would still have their NA SSBN at sea, so their would still be 3 boats in the NA, and we would still be running our joint SSN programmes with them. Unless of course they also decided to sever all mil/intel programs with us, which I… Read more »
Ŵould be good if they could actually launch a missile
Seems expensive but… USN Boise, a Los Angeles class SSN, is to have a $1.2b refit that will take until 2029. At that point, it will be 37 years old, having been inactive since 2015. So a service life of up to 50 years from commissioning is quite likely.
The equivalent Ohio class were commissioned from 1981 to 1996 with all 4 SLCM conversions over 40 years old, and many of the remaining SSBNs approaching that age, it does make you wonder whether a land based system might offer adequate deterrence at a lower cost.
The experts felt that especially with gps and modern tech it would give the risk of the enemy thinking it could first strike with bunker busting accurate nukes and take out everything on first day. With subs there is no way they would risk this
France has a similar budget and aspiration to us. Unlike us they developed the full Triad of Land and Sea based BM’s with an Airborne sub Strategic capability.
First bit they ditched were their silo based IRBM. Simple reason is that theirs were way closer to Russia with very little warning time to use them than the US.
I just wished we had maintained and Airborne capacity with Nuclear Storm Shadows.
And Tempest to carry them.
You can use Typhoon.
Typhoon has not got the required Stealth……. That’s why I said Tempest…. It’s a better option.
Why have you dropped the “Y” from your Profile Name ?
Mmm hadn’t noticed !
I did…. 😉
Why not just build a new replica of this boat? Surely wouldn’t be more expensive and then everything will be new.
Playing “catch up” again!