MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Just been reading about this. Very interesting. She's due to enter service in 2011 and is one of Britain's new Astute class submarines. Looks like a big fish.
Here's it's head making it's way from one workshop to another.
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It makes less noise than a baby dolphin, could (with enough food), circumnavigate the planet without resurfacing, will run for 25 years on it's existing reactor without refuelling and if it's sat in the English Channel, it can detect ships leaving New York Harbour with sonar.
If you want one you'll need deep pockets though, roughly a billion pounds each.
Fantastic 🙂
I was reading about the change of rules to allow women to serve on submarines. Some comedian on a navy forum said 'well there goes our reputation as the silent service' 🙂
It could detect ships leaving NY assuming the water conditions are correct. Big bugger though isn't it?
Makes you wonder. Why is a 2nd rate world power buying 1st rate world power toys?
Jeremy Clarkson voice 'HMS Ambush'
I did some FE analysis on parts of the Astute class vessels - can't say any more/be less vague than that, but very interesting stuff....
My BIL is one of the guys working on that. I went to one of the launches of the Trident when I was a kid, they make one hell of a splash when they reach the water.
they appear to have employed International Rescue to deliver it.
I design/code the Simulators for the Astute Class submarine.
thesurfbus - does the simulator include a realistic/real SCC? I know the 'real thing' very well 😉
Yay, submarines!!
That is all.
Whats with all the polyfilla on it? I'm no expert but that looks like shoddy workmanship to me.
they make one hell of a splash when they reach the water.
I thought they were meant to be quiet?
if it's sat in the English Channel, it can detect ships leaving New York Harbour with sonar.
you still believe in Santa Claus dont you.
Fantastic. I bet someone somewhere has the real capability to hunt and destroy that Submarine already.
[i]you still believe in Santa Claus dont you. [/i]
No but I know **** all about sonar so I've no idea how true it is or not.
I thought they were meant to be quiet?
lol, it was in fact the last of the slipway launches. They launch they boats with much less style these days.
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beats eveyone else's shed into submission... IGMC.
If the biggest threat to the world is Osama Bin Liner and his cronies, WTF do we need to know about ships leaving NY Harbour? Can we detect if Obama sneaks out a cheeky poop after lunch too? 😕
Nice to see they've fitted it with a balcony where the Captain can play his pipe organ. RIP James Mason
ARe they going to have an
'HMS Sneaky Boot in the Spuds'
too?
'Ambush' doesn't sound like it upholds the valiant traditions of the Senior Service?
Regarding listening to boats leaving NY - they were peddling that line in the 60's when my father was involved in sonar upgrade trials on one of the RNs frigates
MY beliefs
Father Christmas - what a crock
Tooth Fairy - pull the other one
Easter Bunny - laughable
The Sock Monster - REAL you and me..
Sonar contact across the Atlantic ocean from the English Channel.. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (even on the West Coast of Ireland on a good day would be doubtful)
I thought people with satellites could track them now by watching the plumes of heat rising to the surface of the sea?
So no matter how quiet it might be, the Chinese, Russians and Americans will all know exactly where it is.
Jeez soulrider have you been googling "radar"? You clearly don't know anything about it.
Whats with all the polyfilla on it? I'm no expert but that looks like shoddy workmanship to me.
Looks like white paint on the welds to help check for cracks when they NDT (non destructive testing) it.
I dont know ANYTHING about sonar but I am surprised they are still using it. When LIDAR and RADAR have come so far...
So no matter how quiet it might be, the Chinese, Russians and Americans will all know exactly where it is.
I wonder what the Chinese, Russians and Americans-counter capabilities are.
I wonder if someone, somewhere has our hardware constantly tracked around the clock. Or if there are more Philby, Burgess Mclean in our era doing damage?
Lidar and radar - do they work underwater?
@some_rich - sonar can be passive - a good thing when you want to find without being found.
She's due to enter service in 2011
There seems to be quite a lot to finish off if that's a recent picture...
wwaswas - Member
...'Ambush' doesn't sound like it upholds the valiant traditions of the Senior Service?
Tell that to the crew of the 'General Belgrano' 🙂
The Ambush is going to be an impressive piece of kit, but why we are building it, and what we are going to do with it are a mystery to me when we have nothing for it to do.
I still can't get over how much it looks like a fish myself. It's got eyes and a big mouth.
why we are building it, and what we are going to do with it are a mystery to me when we have nothing for it to do.
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Why do you ask that?
samuri - Member
It's got eyes and a big mouth.
Sounds like my MIL 🙂
It's disguised as a fish so that it can ambush unsuspecting fishing boats.
Round 2 of the Cod Wars is going to be a big surprise to those pesky icelandics.
The Ambush is going to be an impressive piece of kit, but why we are building it, and what we are going to do with it are a mystery to me when we have nothing for it to do.
After the sinking of the belgrano the Argentinian fleet rushed back to port. By having submarines, you deny an opponent access to the sea and to try and counter a sub will cost a huge amount of money.
HMS Astute is already in the water:
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Sonor - Member
After the sinking of the belgrano the Argentinian fleet rushed back to port. By having submarines, you deny an opponent access to the sea and to try and counter a sub will cost a huge amount of money.
You're dead right. I retract my thoughtless statement.
Forgot we still need them as a deterrent for the defence of the Falklands. That sub could save quite a few lives if we don't have to have a shooting war with the Argentinians again.
I do think they ought to put something more than a pop-gun on modern warships.
You can't beat a few proper turrets with three 15" guns on them for 'don't mess with me' aesthetics.
epicyclo
We need it because the French have them.
On a serious note, the UK is still a Great Power able to influence events on the world stage along with France, Russia, China. The USA is the only superpower & Germany and Japan are Economic Great Powers. Considering how much of our economy relies upon imports & exports across the oceans we would be mad to give up a 1st rate submarine fleet.
Yes I'm sure the Russian's etc could detect & destroy one of these boats but that really would depend on the crew sailing her and Russia (or whomever) having the intelligence to know where to start looking (once she is at sea!)
wwaswas,
They pretty much gave up on the big gun battle-cruisers/ships when so many of them were sunk in WW2 by submarines and carrier borne aircraft.
IIRC the UK's last battleship was scrapped in the 1950's but the USA kept hold of a couple for a lot longer. The USS New Jersey saw action in 1991 softening up Iraqi coastal defences.
I did hear a rumour that there were plans to fit a 155mm gun to some RN ships as shells are considerably cheaper than missiles. It was probably just a Lewis Page story though!
hms waste of f-in money
LIDAR and RADAR
why not use all 3?
new technology doesnt mean the older tech just stops working or being effective
SONAR is passive, and highly effective!
comparable to being in a dark room with an enemy.
why flash a light around looking for them?
much better to just sit, and listen. (and then come at them like a spider monkey, obviously)
Not particularly relevant but kind of interesting,one of the very few battleships present at Pearl Harbor, that survived the bombing undamaged was the USS Pheonix, which was decomissioned at the end of the war.
In 1951 she was sold to the Argentinean navy and re-commissioned as "General Belgraneo"
A WW2 warship sunk forty years after the war, by two WW2-vintage design torpedoes(Mk 8 mod 4) - fired by a nuclear submarine.
SONAR is also Active, but like you say once you have pinged them, they have found you. Although for a positive contact sometimes listening isn't enough, and you have to Ping to confirm a contact, but by then it would be too late for the pingee (is that a word?).
bristolbiker - SCC give me a clue, its not in any documentation that I can find, although we probably know it as something else.
one of the very few battleships present at Pearl Harbor, that survived the bombing undamaged was the USS Pheonix, which was decomissioned at the end of the war.In 1951 she was sold to the Argentinean navy and re-commissioned as "General Belgraneo"
Why does everyone, including the dumbed down media, insist on calling all surface warships "battleships"?????
Belgrano / Phoenix was a light cruiser - another class of warship that became largely extincy after WW2.
What a waste of money!
I dont know ANYTHING about sonar but I am surprised they are still using it. When LIDAR and RADAR have come so far...
You don't know much about radar either - as well as the lack of a "passive" mode radio waves are strongly absorbed by seawater.
Conventional modern radar eg air traffic control systems mostly operate in the microwave band. Now what else are microwaves used for? Hang on a minute... maybe I'll just go and reheat this cup of coffee in the kitchen while I try to remember... 😉
Reheating coffee? You clearly know nothing.
Unfortunately the back of the sub will be cancelled by the ConDems. Anyone want to buy a front?
waste of money?
It's kept a lot of british people in work and companies doing cutting edge engineering, R&D and manufacturing. In this country. Slowing down the rate at which GB becomes a 2nd rate financial services supplier rather than a first rate engineering provider....
Can't see the UK giving up a submarine force - especially while there is a long list of other navies operating submarines... some of them potentially unstable or hostile to UK interests (Iran, North Korea, China, Indonesia
The North Koreans have (allegedly) been making use of theirs recently...
£1 Billion ....... and I bet it will still get tangled up in trawler nets,
thesurfbus - sorry, SCC = submarine control console. Seeing the pictures reminds me I've also had a hand in the contoured dock support blocks and the restraint system of the service jetty that's being built to support the Astute boats.
EDIT : supersessions9-2, +1
I find it funny when people call stuff like this a waste of money, £1bn a pop? Small price to pay to maintain control of the seas upon which billions of pounds worth of trade sail over to and from the UK.
bristolbiker - OK I asked a colleague and yes, its part of the Command Team Trainer which I don't work on, I just do the smaller systems SONAR, COMMS, ACMS, Optronics etc.
If they closed down the Barrow yard tomorrow, as well as launching an entire town onto the dole, which I witnessed in the 80's, the big problem would be finding all those specialist skills again in a few years time when the economy picked up and the orders came back in. They also do a lot of work in that yard for the other allied forces. They were doing specialist work for the Spanish Navy not so long ago, as they didn't have the people, skills or equipment to do it there, they had to come to us.
thesurfbus -
its part of the Command Team Trainer which I don't work on
Wow - some when you say 'simulator' then you're not just talking about simulating the dyanimcs of submarine, but modelling enough of the ops area to model chain-of-command decisions between the crew? Chapeau - very impressive 😉
Whilst I understand the need for these sorts of things in the whole "geo-political" landscape sort of way. The idea that whilst stuff that we all of need on a day to day basis is going to be squeezed until the pips burst, that this sort of thing is still being funded by my taxes still grates somewhat.
and agree entirely that HMS Ambush seems to go against the grain...what's next? HMS Sneaking About? HMS Furtive? HMS With My Reputation?
reminds me of the Culture nomenclature;
[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_%28The_Culture%29 ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_%28The_Culture%29[/url]
HMS What Are The Civilian Applications?
HMS All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff
HMS Lapsed Pacifist
HMS Lacking That Small Match Temperament
the possibilites are endless...
Well it already looks like it's a victim of budget cuts as it would appear to be stuck together with gaffer tape in that first picture 😉
Quite like HMS Dont****withus
When LIDAR and RADAR have come so far...
LIDAR - light attenuation in seawater is very high, you'd be unable to see very far even with trout lights. And you're blindingly obvious if being hunted.
RADAR - Seawater again is rather hard to pass radio waves through, and it makes you something of a target.
SONAR - Fairly easy to make a system that can just listen in passively from stupendous distances due to the nature of water. With the advances in sonar sensor arrays it's possible to determine a 3D map of the area in question down to the cm and identify exactly what is making what noise.
Spare a thought for other animals who communicate/navigate with SONAR in the worlds oceans. Think what high powered SONAR signals do to their sensory organs etc. ****ing humans and their pointless little pursuits. Hopefully the thing will end up on the ocean floor killing all the idiots onboard.
What high powered SONAR signals?
"Why does everyone, including the dumbed down media, insist on calling all surface warships "battleships"?????"
Cos they are ships and they do battles? you do realise it's a generic term and those of us who don't float about for a living, by and large don't really care about the correct identification of a class of boat that became obsolete decades ago ?:)
Spare a thought for other animals who communicate/navigate with SONAR in the worlds oceans. Think what high powered SONAR signals do to their sensory organs etc. ****ing humans and their pointless little pursuits. Hopefully the thing will end up on the ocean floor killing all the idiots onboard.
Indeed active sonar can cause problems. That said we cause the destruction of millions of animals and insects, both endangered and not, by accident (birds flying into windows/wind turbines/radio masts etc) and on purpose, so sonar is likely to be a very small pimple on a very large duck egg.
"wwaswas - Member
reminds me of the Culture nomenclature"
ROU Neccesary Evil But Still Cool 😉
SUnday BBC2 9pm - How to build a Nuclear Submarine.
Hopefully the thing will end up on the ocean floor killing all the idiots onboard.
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Enough submariners of all nations have been tragically killed in peacetime accidents to make that one of the sickest comments I have seen on STW.
JCL, I can only assume that you are a cold, selfish, mean spiritied little tosser who needs to get out more.
Particularly with Ambush being an RN boat, you are talking about British crews and grieving relatives...
... do you lie awake at night wishing for UK troops in Afghanistan to be killed and maimed to satisfy your own twisted perspective????
If you are making an immature comment in honest ignorance, then I suggest you scout out a copy of "Few Survived", by Edwyn Gray
I would love to stand in the dry dock in front of that once its done to get a sence of scale!!
I can remember sailing past USS enterprise in a 21ft boat the thing was massive!!
JCL bad form that comment mate.
wow they are great.
There are strict guidlines that the RN have to follow when using the Active Sonar when there are large mammals nearby. From memory its the really low frequency sound waves that the oil exploration companies use to map the ocean floor that causes the most distress to mammals.
JCL - as much as I empathise with the "spare a thought for marine life" comment, I can't believe you'd wish for it to kill "all the idiots onboard". Surely human life is of more value than that?
There are massive restrictions on where we operate active sonar now, plus consider that a submarine doesn't really want to use active sonar, after all, it emits a noise that can be detected and tracked by other ships/subs operating a passive system.
JCL - totally unjustified and immature comment, obviously you have no idea about how a modern sub works with sonar, go and do your research before making daft comments like that.
The irony is thousands of 'idiots onboard' have died so JCL can sit at his computer unmolested and spout sh1te 👿
HMS Ambush will be completed. Boat 5 (Agememnon) long lead time items are being worked in the supply chain. Smart money is on Boat 7 being cancelled though.
JCL - totally unjustified and immature comment, obviously you have no idea about how a modern sub works with sonar, go and do your research before making daft comments like that.
"Military-sponsored tests now suggest that low levels of sonar, which do not cause direct damage to whales, could still cause harm by triggering behavioural changes."
"The UK military report details observations of whale activity during Operation Anglo-Saxon 06, a submarine war-games exercise in 2006. Produced for the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, it states the results are “potentially very significant”.
The study used an array of hydrophones to listen for whale sounds during the war games. Across the course of the exercise, the number of whale recordings dropped from over 200 to less than 50. “Beaked whale species ... appear to cease vocalising and foraging for food in the area around active sonar transmissions,” concludes the report.
It notes, “Since these animals feed at depth, this could have the effect of preventing a beaked whale from feeding over the course of the trial and could lead to second or third order effects on the animal and population as a whole.”
My comment stands. A huge waste of money and resources and that's without even going into the ethics of the navigation system. The morons who man these things deserve everything they get. 80 million more of us are added to the global human population annually and you lot are actually arguing for a bunch of idiots in a giant nuclear powered/armed metal tube. Now that is ironic...
Oh well at least we'll all be able to sleep at night knowing that an extra 1000 square miles of Iranian desert would be incinerated in a potential future nuclear conflict thanks to the sub and the 'brave lads' onboard.
Epicyclo the pop gun is for stopping and searching, the business arsenal is in the square section behind it. Lots of missiles that the radar in the globe uses to attack multiple targets all over the show. Windows for warships crashed when it was on sea trials according to the documentary that the BBC showed recently.
JCL - stop being a c@ck and get yourself better informed...
Whilst you might be well informed about impacts on marine mammals, you allow your specialist knowledge in this area to justify ignorance elsewhere.
As pointed out by coffeeking, pretty much all human activities impact on the natural world, it's resources and biodiversity.
Do you drive??
If so you are directly complicit in the current GoM oil spill and the geo-political tensions in the ME. You have a stake in the US (+ UK and others) military actions in Iraq to protect furture hydrocarbon resources and supply chain.
If you don't drive, fly or use other hydrocarbon fuelled transport then you still have a stake in our collective impact on the planet - perhaps, as you are on this forum, you ride a bike??
Aluminium frame? I've been directly involved in the environemntal assessment of aluminium processing sites - pretty unpleasant. Bauxite mining is opencast, with huge areas of despoilation. Aluminium smelting is highly energy intensive, and typically uses mercury electrodes. Mercury and fluorine contamination often result.
Ohh, and the Astute class submarines are "hunter killers" - not ballistic missile submarines. So whilst they will undoubtedly have a nuclear capability (via sub launched cruise), they are not lurking around in the ocean waiting to trigger nuclear armageddon.
BUT, their use to track and keep tabs on Soviet missile boats during the cold war would have been one of a number of succesful strategies that maintained peace during a prolonged period of tension between nuclear armed super powers.
I am environmentalist myself, but lets have some context??? Spouting off about killing British submariners is hardly likely to advance the protection of biodiversity and the planet's resources is it?
After studying environmental science (studies) at a level i can whole heartedly agree rkk01.
I plan to be joining the navy and if i were to be around anybody saying what you have had jlc they would be in a wheel chair. Yes the armed forces go to war and often have to 'kill' people. Its part of the job description and it is done on the word of royalty, politicians and the high state officers.
I for one would fear a sailing upon a submarine because of the potential risks involved during combat. You have the nerve to wish they would die. Lets whack you in a submarine with a crew whom you know to the very limits and then place you in a combat situation.
Chances are you'd be the first one to bottle, heck I know i could break under those circumstances i have only taken part in land exercises with the cadets and small camps with the armed forces.
If you feel you should die I dare you to walk up to any person of the armed forces even those at headly court and say it to their faces! I for one know you would get the sh*te kicked out of you repeatedly and locked away for
in sighting hatred!
and it also used to be treason for wishing any of her majesty's armed forces death. on a side note causing any harm to personal in armed forces uniform is a high rated offense!