Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0

[StevoJH]

Refuelling required every 7-10 years.
With RAN use, it could be just 7, that’s 3-4 refuelling cycles.
Would it still be worth it?

That would depend on cost of refuelling, whether it could be done *in Australia* (politically as well as technically), and how much additional time refuelling would add to the refit time.

Oh, plus the sheer loss of face of returning to a French option at this point, even if they would consider it.

The Suffren also has about half the weapons carrying capacity of an Astute class.

 

[SammyC]

That would depend on cost of refuelling, whether it could be done *in Australia* (politically as well as technically), and how much additional time refuelling would add to the refit time.

Oh, plus the sheer loss of face of returning to a French option at this point, even if they would consider it.

The Suffren also has about half the weapons carrying capacity of an Astute class.

To clarify, I think the Virginia and AUKUS options are way better than the Suffren.

My point was that I don't think, refuelling or not refuelling was a core decision in the selection of the USN/RN subs over the French ones. Good for publicity, but that's all. I actually think contractual relationship breakdown, American combat systems and access to strike missiles were all more significant.

I think a refuelling, given every other complexity with owning an SSN could have been managed. It comes out, goes into a container, and then gets buried in a desert. Maybe I've over simplified, but it's not like landing on Mars.

If Suffrens were magically our only option, then I think we would have made it work, and it would have been better than what we are currently forced to do.

 

[Todjaeger]

To clarify, I think the Virginia and AUKUS options are way better than the Suffren.

My point was that I don't think, refuelling or not refuelling was a core decision in the selection of the USN/RN subs over the French ones. Good for publicity, but that's all. I actually think contractual relationship breakdown, American combat systems and access to strike missiles were all more significant.

I think a refuelling, given every other complexity with owning an SSN could have been managed. It comes out, goes into a container, and then gets buried in a desert. Maybe I've over simplified, but it's not like landing on Mars.

If Suffrens were magically our only option, then I think we would have made it work, and it would have been better than what we are currently forced to do.

Inarguably though a decision on the ability/need to refuel a reactor would be absolutely a core one, though I too suspect that it was not the primary reason why USN/RN sub options were chosen in place of French ones.

I agree that Australia, if absolutely necessary, could establish processes and facilities to actually carry out refueling as well as storage and disposal of spent fuel. However, all of this would add extra costs for new/more facilities and infrastructure, require more time for the processes to be developed as well as infrastructure built. Perhaps even more problematic is that it would likely require even more trained personnel to both handle the refueling, as well as manage, transport and monitor spent fuel. This burden of needing extra trained personnel would further increase costs to both raise the capability initially, as well as sustain it, and perhaps even more problematically, even more time would be needed to recruit and then train these 'extra' bodies.

When one factors all the above in, plus the problems Australia had encountered with getting Naval Group to adapt the Attack-class for Australian service from the Suffren-class SSN AND get sensitive US systems like the AN/BGY-1 fitted (with the sharply restricted access to system specs and reqs), it is not hard to imagine that Australia would not see value in trying to push things further.