The UK government has highlighted the AUKUS partnership’s role in creating jobs and driving economic growth, with Defence Secretary John Healey speaking of its importance during a visit to Sheffield Forgemasters.
John Healey, along with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, toured the Sheffield steel production plant, which supports hundreds of local skilled jobs and will supply components for future UK and Australian nuclear-powered submarines.
The AUKUS submarine programme is expected to generate 7,000 additional jobs in Britain, with over 21,000 people working on the SSN-AUKUS programmes at its peak.
“Working with allies and partners is fundamental to our security and so it is a pleasure to host my Australian counterpart within my first fortnight as Defence Secretary. The UK and Australia are the closest of friends and our work through AUKUS is testament to this,” said Defence Secretary John Healey, quoted in the news release.
He added, “Sheffield Forgemasters is a shining light of UK industry that helps boost global security and employs skilled staff from the local community. This is just one example of how our hugely important partnership with our Australian and American partners can help drive jobs and growth across Britain.”
The AUKUS partnership, a trilateral defence and security agreement between the UK, US, and Australia, aims to enhance regional security and cooperation. The visit to Sheffield Forgemasters follows Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reaffirmation of the UK’s commitment to the AUKUS partnership during discussions with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles praised the enduring relationship between Australia and the UK: “Australia and the United Kingdom’s relationship is enduring and forged in deep history. Be it under the defence and security cooperation agreement, or the work we continue to achieve under AUKUS, we are modernising our partnership.”
Sheffield Forgemasters, fully owned by the Ministry of Defence, employs around 650 skilled workers and has received significant investments from both the UK and Australian governments. The plant manufactures nuclear-grade steel components for submarines, including those for the SSN-AUKUS, the largest and most advanced attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy.
The Ministry of Defence says that the AUKUS supply chain presents substantial opportunities for British industry, potentially worth billions over the coming decades and supporting thousands of jobs in both the UK and Australia.
I still think we should open a second production line at Birkenhead and build as many SSN’s as our industrial base will allow.
SSN’s are the key to sea denial and ultimately sea control. They are the most complicated pieces of equipment the human race can build and ours are amongst the very best available.
No matter what happens in the future with Chinas rise, Americas retreat or Russia’s resurgence, having a strong British SSN fleet will probably be the most important capability we can bring to any peer conflict.
I totally agree!
This is worrying, we are agreeing too much lately mate! 😉
We all agree that the RN needs more SSNs, but the only way to get them is build them in the most efficient way possible. That enables mass, continuity of build and reduces the unit cost.
UK SSNs are built at Barrow by BAe. They have the land available, the massive DDH. Ring assembly halls and now have all the resources needed to expand to provide all the Submarines we need and parts for RAN as well.
BAe at Barrow and the rest of the supply chain are not at full stretch yet, nor do they need to be, as nothing is on order. The investment is fully funded, expansion planned, in progress, recruitment & training ongoing and everything moving at pace.
I get fed up when folks suggest we can just wave a magic wand and just come up with imaginary solutions to a non existent problem.
FYI CL launched their last SSN in 1969 and back then it was built outside on a slipway. No one builds like that these days for very good reasons and CL site hasn’t the space.
You like researching things so just go onto Google Earth and compare the BAe site at Barrow and CL, then compare Barrow with GDEBC at Groton in Connecticut. You might get a surprise 😉
Just a small correction: it’s not BAe anymore. It’s its successor, BAE Systems, with BAE not short for anything.
Hi mate, sorry for late reply, just seen this.
I will, never heard of GDEBC at Groton. I do love GE though as you know.
So, increase builds on site then, and no need for another site.
What am I looking at mate? I’ve looked at Barrow many times, just compared it to the GDEB place at Groton, and, what am I missing? Their facility looks a lot bigger than ours. Do you mean the build hall or the overall site?
The build halls at Groton and the one used at HHI at Newport News.
What I’m getting at is that when you compare ours to the US ones and consider the size of the RN to the US it’s fair to say we don’t need another yard. Ours stacks up well against either.
Barrow DDH is bloody huge and they have lots of land to expand further onsite (in fact they are).
FYI between 1973 and 1999 Barrow and the UK supply chain delivered 13 SSN, 4 SSBN and 1 SSK. So once all the investment bears fruit it’s perfectly capable of delivering everything we and Australia require. The US yards are sized to build a fleet of 66 SSN and 12 SSBN but their Assembly halls aren’t exactly impressive.
Great minds 😀
We’re still not going to build that many Aukus subs, and Barrow certainly isn’t going as fast as it could, so unless we want another starvation period after Aukus the builds will have to be stretched out.
Camel Lairds, Birkenhead. Submarines. How many subs have been built at Camel Lairds?
I am sure that Barrow has plenty of capacity to build more subs quicker over time… it just needs the guarantee of increased orders to start the expansion process…
The US might even be pleased if we built the first SSN-A for Australia in lieu of a Virginia.
Don’t laugh but if Tango man gets in that may have to happen. A good project manager always has a Plan B.
Read an article in Defense One that says the US just awarded Deloitte a $2.4bn one-year contract to accelerate production to 3 subs a year.
I was glad of the translation as the contract opportunity notice states it’s “to establish an Enterprise Integration Partner to deliver systemic, holistics solutions to regional and braoder [sic] submarine industrial workforce and industrial base challenges.”
And that “Cost type contract is being used as the requirement is difficult to define sufficiently for a fixed price type contract.”
The UK isn’t the worst at throwing money away.
Hang on a second aren’t they a firm of accountants ? So they are going to act as consultants for HII and GDEBC, the latter has been designing and building boats for 125 years.
Just read the Article 4 months to Train a construction worker for Nuclear Submarines. The 3 pa is 1+2 so 1 SSBN and 2 SSN so far average pa build on SSN averages 1.2 pa.
US Battleforce 45 requirement is set at 12 + 66 by 2045 and average build time from ordering has gone from 6 years to 8 and climbing.
Good luck to them on that one.
Exactly. Someone on K Street has engaged in some serious Congressional lobbying. Would be quite Interesting to track the trail of breadcrumbs. 🤔😳😱
🤔😳🤞🙄☹️ “Fools (including Uncle Sugar) and their money are soon parted.”
Almost a slam-dunk guarantee! A fleet of up to 66 SSNs is a daunting proposition from the current baseline. 🤔😳
The expansion plans are already in motion at Barrow, Derby, Rosyth, Clyde, Plymouth and SFM. Hence the need for more trained bods 😉
Hi Jim, BAe and the supply chain are fully funded to carry out the present plans and then the RN may well be able to afford more SSNs.
Do you seriously think that an early part of the AUKUS project didn’t involve planning to be able to deliver sufficient boats or parts of them ? This entire article is about the planned expansion and modernisation of the exiting sites, to do precisely that. So no need for another site !
So far over £4.5 billion has been earmarked to fund all this some from BAe but mainly 50/50 UK and Australia. Can you see Peal Ports having that sort of money ?
I realise you must have a link with CL, I live in Derby just near the former BREL site and I wish we still designed and built UK Trains there.
It’s a natural thing to have a local affinity for “the good old days”, but fact is the last SSN went down a slipway at CL in 1969, tech, H&S and build methods have moved on.
Before you even got started you need US permission to use their tech on a 2nd site (double the security risk). And it would need a Nuclear Licence from the ONR so the reactor can be fuelled etc etc. Funny thing H&S and local population of Merseyside (1.4 million with 15 mikes) might make the risk assessment an interesting challenge 🤔
The last time we built Nuclear Submarines it didn,t end well and also you need a nuclear licence to be able to build them,something Camel Lairds does not have.The Barrow Shipyard is currently being expanded to be able to build the extra submarines,so I cannot see them being built anywhere else.
I agree , the Americans too are struggling to build what they require . We need to expand sub production or risk falling either further behind . Plus putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea especially if war breaks out .
I wonder why the MoD doesn’t own more of these niche but important firms? I know it costs money but if there is an absolutely certain need for something niche (for instance, high quality steel built in the UK) then why not bring it in house?
It’s not like a private company that knows it is the only possible supplier has any incentives to charge the MoD less, whereas if the MoD owns the company then they definitely do.
It really is down to being a Strategic One Source supplier and there aren’t that many in that category really. Most of them are commercially viable so it’s not an issue. Your comment about the High Quality Steel is interesting as it isn’t one, we presently buy a lot from France but now due to AUKUS that will probably change. Daft as it sounds they make very good high quality steels for ship construction of various specs at a reasonable price. When they built the Collins class certain hull parts were supplied from Sweden, however during assembly they had welds being rejected during QC testing. They found that they had no such issues with the local comparable product what so ever. 🤔
There is still a small niche production capability for the really small run niche steels required in certain processes in the U.K.
The UK and US are way more integrated in Nuclear Submarine components than many realise and it’s very much a 2 way process and includes some items that one or the other doesn’t / can’t produce.
SFM is in a little niche all of its own, hence it’s now MODS own nationalised industrial firm. It was a very sensible solution to a problem, to continue to do produce what they vitally do required investment that makes no commercial sense.
Barrow-in-Furness once had a huge pioneering steelworks of its own. Many of my family worked there. Imagine the opportunities if we still had that facility
Wow, you don’t say building things here creates jobs here, now that is a surprise. Those jobs will mean someone needs to supply the workers with clothes and food making more jobs. Now if we did more of this we might even grow our economy, if we built some mine hunters in that Ferguson shop yard maybe it would survive and employ some people, building a couple of missile cruisers in harland and wolf would secure that yard as well, some tanks amd howitzers could be built. In one of our many defunct lorry factories, maybe using British steel created with British mined ore and coke. So we could end up with a growing economy. You see sanctions didn’t kill the Russian economy they grew jt
Yes but you don’t need to build everything you need as in many cases we can’t build it cheaply due to the small numbers required, and at high prices you will not export.
Do we build SSKs just because we might find half a dozen useful ? No we don’t, other countries build very good ones and can sell to us cheaply, if we wanted the. But we don’t, but we build SSNs and that is beginning to look at lot like Xmas. As are the T26 Frigates and their various iteration’s. It’s quite clever really we sell them the a licence, get money for helping to adapt it to their needs but make damn sure the entire propulsion system is built by RR.
I genuinely wish we still had a plant that can build large calibre guns for Army and Navy but we don’t, what we do make and sell are Storm Shadow Missiles, which are more profitable.
I just think it’s a matter of getting the balance right but always ensure you generate wealth and growth.
Yes we DO need to build everything, as the Argentinians discovered if you dont build exocets you run out, if they had been able to build those missiles they would have won. The Ukrainians are learning that they cant rely on the west despite all the bullshit – and especially wont be able to rely on the USA (as none of us will) when (not if) the idiot Trump is elected – when they need bombs, missiles etc etc to fight the russians. If they were building there own they wouldnt need ‘permission’ to destroy the launch sites of attacks against them.
I am SICK of hearing we cant afford this or that, we can apparently afford money to put illegals up in 5 star hotels for years on end, provide them with NHS dental and other treatment, give them pocket money (to put in pockets with their latest mobile phones), clothes, food and legal aid. We can afford a ‘diversity director’ and several ‘diversity managers’ in every school, hospital and government office across the whole country. We can afford millions of spy cameras to check what motorists are doing, we can afford to repair MPs duck houses etc etc etc etc etc etc but we cant afford to defend ourselves? We do NOT need SMALL numbers – we need a lot! Russia is going to destroy most of our submarines long before they get to fire a missile, and frankly the last two tests suggest even if they get to fire a missile it will splash down a hundred yards from the submarine anyway. We need a LOT of weapons, planes to bomb russia, submarines to send missiles, land based missiles, armies, hundreds of tanks (look at the losses the russians and ukrainains are suffering 50 tanks is NOT enough), we need artillery, we need troops, we need ships and we need planes – and we need to build them ALL ourselves because the USA has NEVER EVER EVER been a reliable partner, not once in its entire history has it arrived at a war it didnt start within years and even those it did start it either loses or runs away from (Afghanistan being the latest). Its a loser of a country but we have a REAL threat with putin, a REAL threat with his plastic friend in china, a REAL enemy in north korea and a REAL enemgy in Iran, none of these are going to attack on their own and none of them are going to play nice and build us the weapons we want – or in the chinese case even the army uniforms we can no longer make ourselves.
Reading that Sh Forgemasters will be involved in barrel forging for UK military.
Another small positive.