I can tell you point blank without fear or favour that we will not get a nuke.
Unfort there are some who still thinks its possible - ditto the 3rd LHA.'No hope' for fourth destroyer
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Quick everyone, act surprised!
we could build Virginia sized boats now and run them with some of the newgen conventional engines. The technology is here how. I've been lucky enough to see it when I worked in the US a few years back"I can tell you point blank without fear or favour that we will not get a nuke.
we will also not get modified Virginias."
Well yes- but one can dream
It does however highlight the problems with both plans- you know something is wrong with the idea when you end up paying more money for inferior boats. Australia really needs to role down the anti-nuclear stigma that prevails in current society. When Clean fusion finally becomes viable the gov or anyone else will have to spend years correcting dozens of sterotypes and preconceptions about it before they can actualy do anything with it.
Sorry, thats just plain wrong. My first major project was with Collins, I worked on the project at a govt level, worked on it as a contractor for an acoustic signal management developer, and at one stage was a supplier when I had my own company. I provided some of the systems used in the sim programs by the initial design teams in canb.
you'd be surprised at what the US provides aust with. Aust and the UK are provided access to tech that other NATO parners could but dream about. We have people embedded in facilities that no other nation has access to.
I read the full thread before replying so gf has already corrected most of your assumption. That said; your Aus$2.1billion does not include support, servicing and infrastructure. Nukes cost money and - sadly - are difficult to dispose off. I am scared about UK liabilities and wonder if Brazil or India are clear-headed enough to understand the responsibility that they are about to attempt. [Or would they call on our Septic-cousins to bail themselves out...?] :help
Any chance they'll be put onto AP-3C Orions if MH-60R gets up, in light of the MU-90 debacle? And would this weapon given it's probable compatibility with AP-3C (given it's Mk 46 heritage) and definite integration onto P-8A, be important enough to tip the balance in favour of MH-60R?Hopefully...
They're a nice little torpedo, and there is some commonality with the Mk48 ADCAP at a circuitry level.
There's more CPU power on these torpedoes than there is on some navies skimmers combat rooms..
they're no Typhoon killer, but they'll do a hell of a lot of damage. We should never have bought the MU's IMO, it just didn't make sense and cost us in integration terms and in long term logistics. It's been a while since I was able to see the real data behind them, but what I saw a few years back in the US was fairly impressive.
Yes to all of the above. edit: caveat. with the way that we've ferked up all of our recent helo purchases and their integration due to different systems, any logical assumptions about flow on benefits for the romeos is optimistic. it makes too much sense to get its legs up.
Shame, real loss of capability. In terms of surface vessels the 4th AWD should have been a priority and decided when we chose the F-100 design.Unfort there are some who still thinks its possible - ditto the 3rd LHA.
Its not happening, everyone inside knows it. the desperate and dateless haven't worked it out yet though...
we've already had $20bn removed from future budgets.
You can’t lose capability you never had in the first place. The AWD and the LHD – assuming they work – will totally transform and boost the RAN’s surface combatant and amphibious capabilities. An AWD or LHD will be hugely more capable than a DDG/FFG or LPA/LSH that they replace.
SEA 5000 does offer a chance for more than just a fourth AEGIS ship for the RAN. But AEGIS is very much the cooperative networking heart of a naval task force capability. If the SEA 5000 future frigate has a high powered phased array radar like AUSPAR it will be similar in radar coverage to the AWD. The SEA 5000 will not need the AEGIS combat system itself if in a task group with an AWD. Such a task group with 1 AWD and 3 SEA 5000s armed with SM6 will be just as capable in anti air warfare as a task group with 4 AWDs.
Thanks to the law of dimensioning returns such a beast would be not that much more capable than a 3,000-4,000 tonne boat and suffer a range of significant drawbacks. The reason you can build ~9,000 tonne submarines is the very high power density offered by nuclear reactors. You just don’t have that density in diesel-electric so would have to fit a huge engine room (6 big diesels) to charge the kind of battery needed for such a huge motor (30 MW) needed to move it.
9K tons is one hell of a big conventional sub. If Aus selects to go down the road of converting a nuclear design to diesel I would of thought they would opt for either a Barracuda or Astute variant. Both capable, very modern and cheaper than a Virginia Class.
Well we will have to sea what animal emerges from sea5000. We may be better off and more attractive politically building these (perhaps more of them). I don't think it will be quiet the same, (what happens if the AEGIS AWD is missioned killed?) but certainly a very strong regional Navy.
Hence why Im suggesting gas turbines. Make the subs longer and less beamy to reduce drag (I think this would be an issue in using nuke designs as a conventionals). Then a conventional turbo or super diesel to run during snorkellings.
BMT did a concept design of a gas turbine sub and found that it actually isn't a submarine. It’s a semi submersible. Turbines require so much air to run compared to a diesel that you can't feed them via a snorkel. Besides what’s the point of all this? With the 2020 tech available for the SEA 1000 you can build a diesel electric with a lot more transit speed and less indiscretion. If battery tech gets so power dense that you need a gas turbine to charge it you will have the capacity for a generator free, all battery ship anyway.
hwellOne area that has not been discussed are the future alternatives/improvements in propulsion systems (not necessarily nuclear).:duel
The Collins is an essentially rare boat type. It is the largest conventional submarine in the world, and among a few that attempt to fill the roles of a nuclear hunter killer submarine while running on non-nuclear propulsion and power source. It's a design that no other country in the world uses, or even uses something similar- it spends a lot of cash in maintaince (some 330 million dollars per annum as of 2008) and a lot of time in drydock.
So far the discussion has leaned towards bigger boats, potentially conventional clones of nuclear subs such as the astute. However i fear as the boats get bigger the problems with running them off diesel engines will only mount- even nextgen conventional engines can not be an adequate solution for boats that will be far larger than any other conventional subs in existence.
At the end of the day though the gravest threat to the current plan isn't the boat itself but the people to crew it. the navy faces manpower shortages attempting to crew the 6 subs they have now. unless something changes drastically they'll have no more luck in 15 years time attempting to crew 12.
The other major problem is it depends a lot on technology which may be obsolete by the time it comes into service (not technologically obsolete but rather politically obsolete) replaced by nuclear fusion. While nuclear fusion is unlikely to have the benefits of Diesel-electric, smaller size, less noise and cheaper price (which considering we aren't really utilising this in the first place is largely inconsequential) it will viably replace the nuclear fission reactor by the 2040s or so (if the ITER is anything to judge by)- and since it carries none of the political quagmire that fission has).Australia could use it to power the long range, long endurance, large boats that appear to be what many people here are considering.
I apologise if i overshot myself in my previous post. I have no where near as much experience as some members of this forum.
Cool. Didn't get any external pics you could share?