The United States has approved a USD 1 billion foreign military sale to the United Kingdom covering submarine combat and weapon systems, technical support and embedded personnel to support the design and development of the next generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines being developed under the AUKUS trilateral partnership.
The sale covers technical assistance to the design and development of what the notification describes as “AUKUS-specific vertical deployment tubes; common weapon launchers; multiple all-up-round canister support service modules; network input output units; servers and switches and custom electronics, which are specific components of the submarine warfare federated tactical system.”
Also included are simulation equipment, engineering demonstration models, testing and installation equipment, software and source code, publications and technical documentation, facility support and personnel training, as well as “U.S. government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; test and trials support; studies and surveys; and other related elements of engineering services for associated equipment and program support.”
A notable element of the sale is the provision of “embedded U.S. and UK personnel located in both UK and U.S. facilities to support submarine design,” reflecting the depth of integration between the two nations’ submarine programmes under AUKUS Pillar 1.
The notification explains that the original Foreign Military Sales case, valued at $50 million, covered “non-recurring engineering support; design integration of U.S. equipment; submarine combat and weapons systems support for design and production of next generation, future class of nuclear-powered attack submarines developed for the Royal Australian Navy and United Kingdom Royal Navy, and developed as part of the trilateral security partnership between Australia, UK, and the U.S. (AUKUS)” as well as “delivery of software and technical publications for combat and weapon systems, and UK liaison office administrative support.”
The revised estimated total cost for the case is now $1 billion, a twentyfold increase on the original value as the scope of the programme has expanded. Do note, however, that this does not mean that this is what has been spent.
The State Department said the proposed sale would support US foreign policy and national security objectives by “improving the security of a NATO Ally that is an important force for political stability and economic progress in Europe” and would improve the UK’s capability to meet current and future threats by “providing an effective combatant deterrent capability to protect maritime interests and infrastructure.” It added that the acquisition would “enhance stability and maritime security in the northwestern region of Europe and contribute to the security and strategic objectives of NATO and the United States” and that “the proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.”
Principal contractors named in the notification are Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia; General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut; General Dynamics Mission Systems in Fairfax, Virginia; Progeny Systems in Manassas, Virginia; Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, Maryland; and Systems Planning and Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia.
Wasn’t this nearly a month ago?
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What halfwit created an image of a surfaced sub firing off missiles? Talk about defeating the object of spending billions building submarines!
A submerged sub firing missiles wouldn’t really get the point across, would it?
Looks like the author just used AI to modify the standard BAE image of SSN-AUKUS.
Where is Halfwit when you need them to comment?
I feel there are plenty of others who comment, I sometimes just hang back and observe 😁😁😁.
Seriously though, I only just spotted this, It’s a very busy article day, I must spend more time on here so as to keep up.
According to New Me you created the rendering! 🤣 it’s impressive!
God moves in mysterious ways !
Virginia SSNs with a Union Jack on the side
Cynical and wrong
Moronic and wrong*
That’s enough about you.
xxx
Next you will be claiming PWR3 is a genuine all British design. 🤣
Rolls Royce?
Nor is any USN Submarine completely US designed or manufactured ! The hint is in 2 words in the 1958 Treaty that set it all off “Mutual & Cooperation” and why it get revised periodically and AUKUS isn’t such a giant leap into the unknown !
This has definitely been explained to you before, lol.
Nope.
You know the Virginia class didn’t even see our astute class in wargames off the US it’s that stealthy.
Nonsense – you clearly have zero idea how these serials are conducted
But our astute class saw the Virginia class. 😂
As we have systems and designs better than the US already, why is this happening?
I know the vertical launchers and the reactor are based on Us tech, but the rest?
Is the US going in on the final design too?
The simple reason is when you have a 3 way agreement and 2 of those use US CMS, comms and weapon systems and will probably want 60+ boats between them to our 10 / 12 guess who gets that bit of the Pie ?
Don’t get me wrong I am 100% for everything we use being U.K. built but I am a realist and live in the 21st Century and not the 19th.
That Pie is huge and we are already getting a very nice share of it and there may well be far more to come, commonality of large buys enables our cost base to come down and “Treasury willing” be able to afford more boats than 7 and share a larger common supply chain, spares and maintenance.
Gosh we could even have more than one boat at Sea at the same time. WOW.
You ARE aware BAE rely heavily on Electric Boat for how to design and build nuclear submarines?
Just as Electric Boat rely on UK propulsion systems for the Virginia Class, you do know that the pump jet propulsor isn’t an American design, right?
Add Anechoic Tiles, sound suppressing rafting, acoustic dampers, photonic masts, some sonar tech and quite a few rather important components are built here as well.
Yeah, I was trying not to make his head explode. I mean that’s just subs, on aircraft carriers we have the angled deck, the steam catapult and the mirror landing sight not to mention aircraft carriers themselves. The list is epically long. It’s worth looking up on you tube “What have the British ever done for us?” It’s a mildly amusing way to spend some time.
And the Virginias can’t detect the Astutes but the Astutes can detect the Virginias.
They’ll have to fit the bigger, better British portholes to see out better. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
That’s just not true, the UK was quite capable of designing its own Nuclear Submarines (original Dreadnought was a hybrid), which is why they follow a very distinctly different design path. Our boats look very different as they are smaller, slightly slower with smaller crews and orientated more to ASW than the US GP model. We even have different handling requirements hence where the Hydroplanes were fitted (they now seem to have moved from the Fin / Sail to the hull like ours).
Problem was some Political idiot just thought everything would be fine to not order any New SSNs to follow on from the Vanguards as we had lots of S & T boats and the Cold War was over.
Result BAe, RR&A and all the rest of the DNE withered away and it’s cost a fortune to get it all back and running again. When the decision to build the Astutes was finally agreed the design teams were not only depleted but pretty well pre CAD orientated, after a series of issues Electric Boat were brought in to consult / assist with getting the designers up to speed and back on their feet. That is now well in the past !
As for tech it really is a 2 way process, a lot of the modern silencing tech is based on U.K and some very important parts of USN boats are made here as well.
What’s the margin for the slightly slower thing?
The US boats are longer and slimmer which must help, but I’ve never seen any comment on a difference in speed between SSNs apart from the Alfas.
Selling Ultra Electronics to the Yanks more or less threw in the towel. Churchill knew you always had to keep tech back from the Americans in order to get a good deal from them. Witness Clement Attlee, descent man, but he was too open to the US with the UK’s militray secrets after WW2 and as a consequence the US was able to take what it wanted and not write off our WW2 war debts. The consequences of which we are still living with now. Churchill would have driven a much harder bargain and never released our nuclear and computing know how unless the Yanks wrote off our war debt. We need to learn the lesson of histry!
history – smell checker pissed that one!
Me thinks the deeper the cross-pollination of our engineers with their’s, the less able will be stupid politicians to screw things up…
Great to see us giving away jobs to the yanks. Won’t be long before we see redundancies in the news as a result of this.
Most unlikely has both countries have a shortage of experienced engineers and skilled production workers. Even the dopey politicians in both countries are aware of the issues… well allegedly.!?