The SSN-AUKUS submarine: A brief guide

The ice is gone and receding in a lot of places in the Canadian Arctic so the Korean Subs will be useful. They also have VLS with less crew per ship.

The Canadian Chief of Staff seems to be earning his paycheck in getting through to what Canada needs for future procurement with the gov. Not a liberal fan myself but this is all encouraging.

The left you talk of that dislike US policies is the NDP party.

The Canadian public is tired of Trudeau and the Liberals. It’s the typical ebb and flow of Canadian politics. The Cons and the Bloc Québécois seem to be getting cozy too. Faustian deal for a collation gov mayhaps.

Hope your right, would be very useful to bring Canada back in to the fold properly.

The number of subs in scope is 12 from all accounts on the matter

Canada is still proper but it can be more proper. 🙂

Twelve KS-III SSKs? 🤞👍 Although it would not affect the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, at least it could discourage Orc and ChiCom adventurism w/in Canadian territorial waterways. 🤔🤞

The Ice is receding ‘outside the arctic’. For unusual reasons the Artic ice *extent* also includes quite a bit in North Pacific outside Bering St and areas past Greenland down Labrador coast and some in Gulf of St Lawrence!

It sure is receding in those areas too.

Maybe not
“Glacier Bay was first surveyed in detail in 1794 by a team from the H.M.S. Discovery, captained by George Vancouver. At the time the survey produced showed a mere indentation in the shoreline. That massive glacier was more than 4,000 feet thick in places, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias mountain range. By 1879, however, naturalist John Muir discovered that the ice had retreated more than 30 miles forming an actual bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier- the main glacier credited with carving the bay – had melted back 60 miles to the head of what is now Tarr Inlet.”


The extremely long transit times to the Arctic are just as much a problem as the ice, perhaps more so, which is why SSNs would be preferable. Korean SSKs would be better than nothing but I doubt any future Canadian government here would order SSNs and if SSKs were ordered from Korea the number would be too small to be useful.

12 is the stead fast number of subs in scope for this potential deal with Korea. I agree that a mixed force would be preferable.

Vast distances indeed in the Arctic for SSK but there are a number of refueling and resupply ports of call like Iqaluit, Nanisivik, Resolute, Cambridge Bay and Inuvik. Churchill Manitoba on Hudson’s Bay is another port that could be utilized.

The Harry DeWolfe Arctic OPVs have a multi mission payload that can resupply these subs in remote areas as well.

I wonder about government commitment to keep stores in some of these Arctic ports. Any kind of crisis would make resupplying these ports difficult as land access is pretty much zero.

Two of those places mentioned are served by North American highway and rail links.

You are correct, resupply would be by air mostly up there.

Believe that Canada would join AUKUS Pillar 2 program, if invited, under a Conservative government. Very few believe that Pillar 2 programs are credible and/or important, but that tail will eventually wag the dog, especially when space R&D and ops are eventually incorporated. 🤔

It’s a goddamn mess and quite alarming. The part of Canada I live in was not affected by the wild fires directly but we had the smoke for over 20 days in my area. Could not see more than half mile in either direction

I understand the wildfire extent hasnt increased and was worse in 1950s and 1920s. Just didnt get the attention it does now.
Just as the 2023 North Atlantic hurricane season so far has been exceptionally quiet with no hurricanes making landfall at all.
Much hyped storm for Southern California instead but their worst year was 4 similar or worse in 1 month alone in 1939

Hmmm…according to Canadian officials, 2023 is indeed the worst year for total acreage destroyed by wildfires (25M acres and counting), eclipsing the previous total of 18M acres in 1989. Did note that some of the largest individual wildfires occurred during the 1920s and 1950s. 🤔

Plant trees in smaller plantations with wide firebreaks!

And choose drought and disease resistant species(a)?

…species…🙄 (Couldn’t access edit function for some reason.)

Thanks for the nuanced explanation, thought Corbin wing of Labour Party was both its past legacy and future destiny. 🤔

To be honest the British press (right and left) and party faithful go on about how awful the other side is and build the other side up as either communist insurgents or wannabe facists but in reality they are both centrist parties that are essentially identical in their beliefs on what the nation should look like and just disagree a bit on the exact method of getting to it..( pretty much the entire British political establishment is based around western liberal centrist views)…every so often you will get a party lurching away from the centre ground to appeal to their party faithful..but they always loose elections and move back to the centre..simply because the majority of the floating vote..those that move their vote around or withdraw
their vote are essentially centrist in outlook..the real socialists will never vote for the conservatives and the real right wing will never vote for Labour..so both parties know they have to stay in the middle to win….it sways about a bit..the thatcher government was more right of centre bouncing off the left of centre 1970s Labour government…the Blair government and Cameron governments were essentially identical in ideology…smack in the middle…the Johnson government who the hell knows what that was…the Labour Party of Corbin could not win because it was essentially a left wing socialist party and the present conservative party will loss because it is having an ideological crisis with the right trying to take over…essentially the bit of the British electorate that wins or losses an election cannot abide ideological politics and in the end rejects any party that shows the traits to much ( either left or right).

Very interesting, believe there are only three people left in the US who self-identify as centrists–and I haven’t had the pleasure yet of meeting the other two.

And you are not it…

Our Mexican Trolls back 😀

Not for long.

Hooray!

You can not tell people that Suella Braverman, Rees Mogg et al are centrists, that is a gross distortion, and one that should be called out.

The tilt to the rich over the last 13 years has seen the NHS divided up into parcels that can be sold – my own GP Surgery has just been bought out.

The railways are a waste of money but a money pit for investors.

Raw sewage pumped out but dividends paid out and the taxpayer called upon to fix the infrastructure.

Refugees weaponised by this appalling government and used as a voter recruitment tool.

And the Armed Forces, despite being the self styled ”Party of Defence,” slashed in capability with anything that can be, sold off to be managed by Corporate interests.

Mortgage rates v disposable income at an all time high
Private sector landlords buying up more and more property and charging unaffordable rents – tell me, why are second homes(+) not all charged business rates?

All the above is not centrist unless you have ultra rose tinted spectacles.

Jonathan, you normally bring balance to these pages but that statement would have been true in years past but today is total, complete, utter bollocks.

David..I did say that the Conservative Party will loss the next election because the right have taken over the party…as I described every so often a party will shift to the wings and ends up being punished…I tried not to get into the micro politics in the explanation but for confirmation I agree that a number of Tory politicians are not centrists…but sunak and hunt are….until the conservatives put the right wing back in its box they are going to have a string of lost elections moving forward ( the British electorate will act as a balance).

As I said our parties do on occasion stray to the right or left…but they get very significant punishment from the electorate for that.

You also have to remember that effectively any party that supports the NHS model, social security, state pensions, state education and free market practices is by its nature a centrist party…yes they may having different it levels of support for these and differing ideas for what they look like but none of them would step away from this ( even if the nutty side of their membership flirt with something else)…we in the UK don’t really have the same issues with say the alt right in the states ( infact we would consider the whole Republican Party alt right ) or far left and far right of European rainbow politics, where there is a party for every part of the political spectrum in some form of power( we would consider a lot of the southern European nations parties either far right or communist).

Re GP practices, the NHS since it’s inception has alway been a model that was mixed with a huge amount of it in private hands….all dental, optom , pharmacy and General Practice, more specialtist mental health etc which is the majority of all healthcare has always been private, infact the only state owned bits of the NHS at inception was secondary, mental health and community care) your practice was always a private business always has been…there was until a couple of years ago not such thing as an NHS owned General practice..every one of them is was a private business with a contract to provide NHS services ( the GMS contract or PMS contract or the APMS contract) the model was alway a partnership model the only difference is we now have a number of limited companies and public limited companies providing PMS, GMS and APMS contracts..also what we have seen for the first time is the NHS owning GP practices..due to the number of partnerships closing other NHS organisations hospitals and community services have created limited companies so they can take on the running of General Practices…This change was not driven by privatisation but the failure of the partnership model in General Practices…GPs stopped wanting to be partners ( with all the financial risk and stress) and instead wanted to be employees.

I don’t disagree that privatisation of key infrastructure was not great…(and presently the conservatives are a shambles as are their policies) if it’s a natural monopoly then the market forces don’t actually work and a private monopoly is actually far worse than a state monopoly….but in reality these are really small differences..both the UK parties are signed up to a basic set of ideas of where we want to get to…in reality it’s more about how we get there…it’s why we don’t end up with the political violence and hatred that we see in some nations…..the French national rally party ( far right fascists) or the PCF ( communists) truly hate each other and are both far right and far left..but they are main stream parties with large memberships and a shot at power and do get elected members…..the simple fact is we see a big difference and always think either the conservatives are very right wing or the Labour Party are a bunch of communists… but because essentially pretty much everyone in the UK mainstream is a centrist we are really only measuring the small differences ( the only real difference between camoeron and Blair was a worldwide financial crash) …but in most other countries when they talk about the right and left….they really are talking about the right wing nutters ( like rally party) or communist ( like the PCF)…we tend to be talking about a penny on income tax, corporate tax or if NHS funding is increases by 4% or 6%, making the social security system more or less accessible…all really important questions and I’m not reducing the importance of the difference….but your not talking massive shifts like MAGA etc.

👍 Spot on.

That was a good read. And others posts too.

The way I see it, these days both parties swing to the center to beat off the incumbent, then once they have been in power for a while their respective left or right factions eventually push them in that direction until they become unelectable, and then the cycle repeats.

I’d suggest it was Blair that started this strategy. Before then it was the other way around, so we ended up with polarized reactionaries like Thatcher who pushed things a bit too far, who then got toppled and replaced by the more moderate like Major.

So BoJo was actually a bit of an outlier here, being a bit too Tax & Spend for the Tory party faithful, resulting in a brief lunge to the hard right before we ended up with Sunak the nonentity. But Starmer is continuing the trend of moving to the middle to get elected, and the left wing of his party are already complaining.

It’s an unstable system that produces a lot of waste through changes in direction, but it’s arguably a bit better than the rainbow system of many Euro states that results in political paralysis and gives fringe ideologues too much sway. Germany’s suicide by Energiewende being a case in point.

And I needn’t mention the extreme polar swings of the US system, let’s not go there.

Good post, you have to remember that someone on the left or right will consider themselves a centralist and therefore normal centralist policies are extreme right or left to them.

That’s a good point we always see our own point of view as normal…even if everyone else thinks it’s way out there…after all flat earth types don’t think they are fringe tin hat types they thing everyone else are the idiots.

Good to see critical thinking but some misunderstanding here “Private sector landlords buying up more and more property and charging unaffordable rents”.
The Rental Reform Bill is abolishing half of the means to recover a property (Section 21) so that many landlords are selling out to avoid the incoming crisis that will cause. Also inflation and 15 consecutive Bank of England MPC base rate hikes have removed any profit.
The result is a worse imbalance of supply and demand so that rental costs increase as per traditional economics.
Government is responsible for RRB and MPC so a problem of their own making short term.
Long term the Thatcher Right to Buy was not matched with a Duty to Build so the Social Housing sector is broken. It’s not the function of the Private Rental Sector to correct that. As landlords are increasingly being punished for trying to run a property business they are leaving government to fix social housing which they can not. Toxic nonsense from so called charities is not enabling a rational approach just unrealistic expectations.

You’re quite right in your thinking but, I’d draw your attention to one item. For multiple years, Councils had to bank the proceeds of right to buy without being able to spend it.

I noticed Reading now has a project building flats near the beginning of the Oxford Road – they are sorely needed. However, in Cumbria with the demise of the District Councils, I do wonder if Town Councils can exercise any options to build social housing – that provided by some ‘Social Housing’ agencies can be pants.

Instead, County is pressing ahead with spending £20m on a glorification scheme.

Given one town council has land, could we not build houses and care for our own community with that £20m?

The problem isn’t just housing, every new family needs a % of infrastructure. The whole direction of the country had been wrong for more than 2 decades ie add people to increase GDP, more people means more of everything else is needed. Yes you get tax revenue from them but you need to invest upfront to provide the schools, hospitals, roads etc you can’t wait for that revenue to accumulate from the increased population so you have to borrow and then you pay interest. Not only that there’s limits, you simply can’t add wider roads for instance to take the increased traffic. Both parties are guilty and neither will fix it as they wedded to outdated ideologies from the last century.

Better strategy would be to increase GDP with the same amount of people = more tax revenue but no need to increase volume of services and infrastructure instead you can spend that revenue improving what you have making people lives better and raising living standards. We could easily afford more on defence by changing the way we grow the UK.

The railways are a waste of money but a money pit for investors

Worth a read to understand the topic beyond the headlines.

Rail Industry Finance (UK) – 2020-21 (orr.gov.uk)

If you want a good railway then forget nationalised rail and follow the best on the planet, the Japanese railways system, (private). Provide the best service and receives pretty much the lowest state aid on the planet.

Excellent summary folks tend to forget that some of the Biggest Defence cuts were made under Conservative Governments and some of the biggest positive Decisions have been made by Labour.
The floating voters tend to be right of centre on some issues and left of centre on others.
Essentially for the last 25 years we have had a succession of Centrist Governments. Blair got us into wars, but went ahead with the Carriers and Trident Replacements. Cameloon was a disaster and Bo Jo well he seems to have Nationalised half the Railways and the MOD now owns an industrial company.
Corbin followed in the Footsteps of Michael Foot and got absolutely thrashed, so now Labour is rapidly swaying right towards. Nearest person to a Socialist is Angela Rayner and she is working class, pretty plain speaking and comes from a fairly of rabid Royalists.
As for cancelling anything regarding Defence I just can’t see that happening.
There are 3 main reasons which are the SNP, AUKUS and if they were to do so the effect on the economy would be massive.

The real battle in British politics isn’t left or right, red or blue both sides are anti freedom. We’re seeing more an more erosion of our freedoms and choice no matter who’s in power. Its being presented as the only option we have to restrict where people go, what they say and think. We going to end up similar to China where we have a unofficial social credit system, adhere to it or pay a price financially or through revoking of service.

Cannot disagree we have seen a general reduction in freedom..education is a good example…the control of what children do and the expectations on parents to comply with what schools what is significantly more than it was before.

Excellent, the defence of the West’s ‘truly unsinkable aircraft carrier’ appears to be a little more assured. 🤔😊

Yes, just need you to send us the planes 😀

It’s not so much the UK is an unsinkable aircraft carrier…after all its was doing its thing….keep Europe balanced….well before the invention of the aircraft….simply put its the UKs ability to interdict shipping and hold at risk the key shipping lanes around Europe and into the Atlantic that make it so important….in the end it’s one of the doorways to the world from for northern and Central Europe….being able to close the door has been a major part of European security for a long time…..its lucky for Europe that Britains inhabitants are as a famous dictator put it a bunch of shop keepers more interested in buying and selling than world conquest…..imagine a UK that was not a western democracy….it would be very unpleasant for Europe.

For the same price, 2 carriers + combat group and planes and 12 submarines « classic ».
Well, at least, when we played Australia yesterday and won, we made it for one game, defeat is a bruthing that will last 2 weeks at most.
When UK and USA gang Australia’s bank, they do it for 400 Bn$ over 80 years and don’t deliver a sub before 2040, just to make them useless for upcoming tensions.
Good job, we would never dare to do the same to a country. Let’s call it a lack of ambition 😄

Traditionally the Conservatives used to be Army people if they were talking defence. Now they seem to be more rounded, giving the go ahead on Tempest and the National Ship Building Plan.
I dont think it serves any purpose blaming any one party for any of the mess we may be in on defence.
The Army seems to not know what it wants and they may be honestly forgiven in part, having fought desert wars for over 20 years. Unsurprisingly there has been little attention paid to a central European war apart from Brexit (Joke).
The one thing that looms largest is the threat of inflation on the defence budget as a whole.

love you honey bunny!

As a kiwi, I am ever hopeful, but the plain truth is that whatever amount we set aside for the NZDF, it will always be a pittance in comparison to most of our allies, least of all our dear friends next door.
Not helped by a likely need to replaceme our NH-90s!

Every little helps. Look at some of the small nations in nato, have a good stuff and help make nato stronger together.

Probably best not to buy ex-Army Taipans or Tigers. Your NZ NH90s seem to be going along okay. I think they came “ready to go” direct from France, not sure about the Taipans here. Hope NZ gets some decent helos to replace the Seasprites too. Some Wildcats anyone? Like to see a couple sets of NSMs for the two NZ Anzac’s. I’m sure Aussie bros will look after our NZ cuzzies if push comes to shove. Except in 🏉! World Cup soon.

Mostly agree with you but none of that changes the fact that the only way a ballistic sub stays viable, and in turn the security of a nation operating it, is in it’s ability to stay undetected. There is no assured retaliation without it. Stealth is the absolute cornerstone of it’s design and operating tactics.

That doesnt add up about RAN Oberons. They were able to be upgraded in Australia. HMAS Onslow became the first conventional sub equipped to fire sub launched Harpoons
It was also adapted the torpedoes from UK Mk8 to Mk23 wire guided and then the US Mk48

The Collins were designed for and by Australia and built there but were a shambles in that respect . too many issues which took a lot of time and money to resolve including throwing away the local IP and designed combat system and buying off the shelf American, which they have no control over other than heres the upgrade software just do it.

And UK shipbuilding 40% more expensive than Fr in terms of price per ton.

I am surprised the Oberons were a disaster. They were excellent in UK service.
The Australian Coontz DDGs were a disaster according to an engineer flatmate of mine in Sydney in the 60’s! They ran on very high temp steam and were a nightmare. Better than anything we had in other regards.

At present the work to enable the expanded infrastructure to build the number of PWR3 and expand the workforce here in Derby is going “at pace”. Same goes for BAe at Barrow you are looking at 4/5 years before we can start to ramp up the production rate.
As for 2032 for an inservice date of first SSN(R) is completely impossible. And it isn’t down to a lack of cash, resources, planning or motivation.
In all my years I have never seen Raynesway working at the present level of expansion, it breathtaking and damned impressive. If you want to see what I mean just look at the time taken to put in and approve the planning applications and then get the piling going behind the existing plant.
For a Government funded project nothing like this has happened since the 1950’s in my uncles day when RR&A had “Super Priority” status and pull on Treasury funds to get the PWR1 going for Polaris and Valiant.

Thanks for the info. I really don’t know much about the timescales, more wishful thinking

If they slightly speed up the dial on Dreadnought class, finalise the design in the next 3/4 years and order the long lead items, then maybe, just maybe you may see the 1st of class doing her trials in 2037/8. And then the fun begins because the U.K/US/Australian supply chains and treasury instalments have to sync in to deliver a 15/18 month drumbeat. That will deliver 16 boats in 24 years, which is a reasonable assumption for the class. The reason for that is we then get into the replacement of Dreadnought SSBN. Oh how time flys 😉

The suppliers will have to build ahead and parts kept in warehouses, and if that means we pay earlier, then we do. An overall supplier drumbeat for just in time is too much to ask for.

It actually works precisely like that and given the timescales involved it can’t be done any differently, and I’ll try and explain why.

It isn’t like building a car where it may take 2/3 years to design and then be in continuous production for maybe 6/8 years, JIT works fine for that as the parts are mass produced. And unlike a car we are slightly fussy about where we source the parts from.

The Drumbeat is based on the intended in service date and the concept, design, build time and the entire supply chain feeds into that pre determined schedule backward from that date.
The parts are nearly all bespoke, highly engineered, have different lead times and are rigorously tested and they are ordered years before they will be needed for each build. Hence the size of the storage areas at Barrow and here in Derby behind Raynesway.

The U.K. drumbeat is designed so that Barrow and Derby plus the rest of the supply chain have continuity of work. So based at present a 30(ish) year Cycle, divided into 2 products, SSN and SSBN. It also means that MOD knows how many crew / skill sets it needs, schedule training, refits, refuels (hopefully none) etc etc
After the fiasco caused by the gap between the Vanguard build and the Astutes no-one in their right mind will stray from it again. It cost Billions and years to get the system back up and running.

The treasury just provides the money in staged payments on a schedule which is based on the cost curves and contracts, with as little wiggle room as the suppliers can negotiate.

In practice it is far more complicated than that.

Agree, however with crewing level 3 times less than an Astute having a small fleet as an interim capability until SSN numbers increase is very doable and 4* A26 would only cost around £2 billion with a crewing level less than the River Batch 2 fleet. A little ambition is all it takes and we would have a force of 11 Hunter Killers and be able to forward deploy 2 Astute to Perth. That would give the UK a power permanent force in the Indo Pacific of two deployed frigates, 2 SSN’s and a Littoral Strike Group, easily sufficient to reactivate the old Eastern Fleet Haq if we desired.