Very Astute in style, but I'm unsure as to the validity of that model. The renders are more round.
Ah huh. There are those who know, and those who don't, and those who do know aren't allowed to talk about it.
Yes that article took information from a discussion on this forum. They even used some of my data.
That 15,000nm range will be at a snails pace. Probably 6 knots or so. And that's a problem. It takes more than 100 days to travel 15,000nm at such a slow speed. No where near the performance of a SSN. A 5 MW microreactor on the other hand.
This Australian submarine fiasco has to be one of the biggest procurement disasters in history. It stems from Australia requirement for local manufacturing. They have now relaxed this requirement on newer purchases. Japan said this would be a big issue with the initial contract and is one of the reasons France won the deal.
This seems to be the wrong framing the cause wasn't the requirement for local manufacturing it was a complete lack of foresight by successive governments to commit to a continuous shipbuilding program.
I mean, that's how you're supposed to do it.
Probably won't be getting those nice new block VIIs after all.
Except that Aus companies are being tooled up to make those spare parts... Yes, production in the US right now, but you buy some spares when you take custody of the ships.
No the problem is that construction schedules and delivery dates are still trending in the wrong direction, with continued delays and no acceleration in sight. If the problem was being fixed they would be holding firm on the contracted schedules or even accelerating build times.
Yes, but we need the infrastructure and workforce that will provide to support the AUKUS boats.
SSN is a must, it's sure. But the cost have been so under evaluate... as the industrial capacity available. Add that Australia is a noob in nuc industry, so all to be built or nearly.
The main enrichers are URENCO and the Russians, so the options there are somewhat limited. It doesn't seem strategically wise to be reliant on Russian uranium for your SSN.
The Brazilian SSN is a homegrown development, so not really surprising that it's taking ages. The French tech transfer was not related to the nuclear propulsion.
Australia has no submarine building industry and building subs is pretty different than building surface ships. It just seems like 'grass is always greener'-ism? Suffren-class are running what, the equivalent of 3.5 billion AUD per boat without counting the money on the new facility at Osborne, training up the workers, etc which is budgeted at what, 30 billion for the work SSNA requires? I don't know, it just seems like there's no realistic comparison. Very much like the Canadian Gripen saga, much is being promised with little in the way of serious cost benefit evaluation.
Suffren unit cost is €1.6B ($1.8B USD) vs. $3.3B USD for the last Block IV Virginias... a little over half the cost. That's as apples to apples as I can make it (production unit cost excluding R&D, similar production batches and inflation adjusted in constant 2025 currency). Overall not a bad deal.
The problem is that you're stuck with a significantly lower capability SSN with roughly similar capital investment into facilities, training, shipyards, workforce etc etc etc vs SSNA. My guess is that if you broke down the $325 billion headline number into development vs procurement vs capital investment vs sustainment vs operations, you're looking at upwards of 75% of that (maybe even over 90%) being the same whether you go with a home grown design, a French design built in AUS, or the mix of US built and AUS built subs that they chose. The actual procurement cost of the three VAs and 5 SSNA is likely well under 50 billion dollars, and probably around 35 (depending on SSNA costs). So even if equal numbers of Suffren would be around 20 billion dollars vs 35, you're losing a LOT of capability and interoperability with the USN and RN and direct access to their technical base and production chains in exchange for saving 4.5%.
That's what a proper Analysis of Alternatives would evaluate.
There is apparently a good amount of non-obvious details in US reactor design. Some of them can be found quickly, they were identified in the late 1950s (and are why the US flipped on the idea of selling Skipjacks). Others get into the design of life-of-ship reactors and how to burn up your neutron poisons while carrying a very high load of fissionables.
1) most naval nuclear propulsion requires HEU. Weapons grade HEU, 95+% U235. Good luck getting approval to enrich that high in Oz. Also, once you are enriching that high, you know someone is going to seriously look at making nuclear weapons.
There's the French firm Orano as well which, given the nature of a deal we're talking about, would be a more logical choice. But as you point out, it's a global industry and there are multiple service suppliers.
That's if Australia wanted to develop it's own enrichment capability and nuclear industry, and yes, that would cost a fortune and face a massive uphill political battle, but I wasn't talking about that.
Not completely true, the US opted for HEU reactors in order to avoid expensive and dirty mid life refuelling. Moving to HEU removes that need and instead moves the expensive, (and now really) dirty job of reactor removal and disposal to the boats end of life. The French K15 reactor uses LEU enriched to less than 6%. Refuelling is typically scheduled to coincide with the boat's ten year major overhaul schedule.
70 vs 90 days isn't really a 'significantly lower capability' unless they're operating extremely remotely or far from resupply, and the Barracuda's sensors, systems and stealth are all state of the art.
