The first Astute class nuclear submarine is brought out of BAE's Devonshire Dock Hall
The handover of the first British submarine to provide every crew member with his own bunk might seem like an excuse for noisy celebration on board HMS Astute, but a nuclear submarine's raison d'être is silence and stealth. So by the time you read this, she may well have slipped silently from her moorings at Barrow-in-Furness and be heading for her new home at the Faslane naval base on the west coast of Scotland.
The exact launch date for the start of Astute's sea trials depends on the weather, and is not disclosed for security reasons, but the submarine was being loaded up with fresh food at the end of last week, and her departure seemed imminent.
The captain of Astute, Commander Andy Coles, was champing at the bit to see what his new vessel will be capable of on its voyage up the west coast, but he acknowledged the delays which beset the project in its early years and led to the long gap since the Navy took on a new class of submarine.
Astute's specifications are heaven for lovers of big numbers – it is 97m long, the equivalent of 10 London buses, and weighs 7,400 tonnes compared with the 5,000 tonnes managed by its predecessor, the Trafalgar class. It has the biggest "ears" of any sonar system in service today, with the processing power of 2,000 laptops. The nuclear reactor which drives the propulsion system is roughly the size of a dustbin but will last the 30-year life of the boat without needing to be replaced.
But there are some other big numbers to bear in mind – the first three Astute class submarines (HMS Astute, Ambush and Artful) cost the Government £3.8bn, according to last year's National Audit Office report, compared with an initial contract for £2.58bn. That report also showed the project was 47 months late, with an original in-service date for Astute of May 2005.
What caused this four-year delay? The end of the Cold War and the gap between designing the Trafalgar class submarines meant a lot of nuclear submarine-building experience had disappeared, and contractor BAE Systems struggled with Astute's computer-aided design. Eventually, in 2003, the Ministry of Defence had to promise more money and help was enlisted from US submarine builder Electric Boat, owned by General Dynamics.
So finally in November 2009, Astute is starting 18 months of sea trials. Rear Admiral Simon Lister, the Navy's director general of submarines, insists Astute will be an "asset" before the end of that period.
The Astute class submarines are being built at BAE Systems' huge yard at Barrow, which employs 5,000 people in the Cumbrian town. The company and the Navy have an order from the Ministry of Defence for a fourth boat, HMS Audacious, and are in negotiations over numbers five and six.
Seven Trafalgar class submarines are due to be withdrawn over the coming years, and seven Astute vessels were planned to replace them.
"It's our intention to purchase seven Astute class submarines," said Rear-Adml Lister. Like all large defence projects, the Astute boats not yet under contract could be at risk from the outcome of the Government's planned strategic defence review. "They will be a huge improvement in capability," said Rear-Adml Lister. "The issue in the strategic defence review will be which capability this country wishes to fund."
With the Army at full stretch fighting insurgents in landlocked Afghanistan and the Ministry of Defence's coffers distinctly empty, what would be the justification for spending billions on nuclear submarines?
"The surveillance capability is very important in carrying out anti-piracy and anti-terrorism at sea," said John Hudson, managing director of BAE's submarine business. "The key thing is stealth. A submarine can go in, do something, then leave, and you never know it's been there." During the Cold War, submarines were used to tap telephone cables, and at present, there is a British submarine somewhere "east of Suez" every day of the year.
HMS Astute has the capacity to send out a launch and recover personnel, although for security reasons neither BAE or the Navy would go into detail. There is also an access hatch for special forces troops.
The "quantum leap" in Astute's capability also has a more human side. One of the benefits of the submarine being so much bigger than its predecessors is that her crew of 98 men will be the first in the Navy to have their own beds. Submariners at present work round the clock and have to "hot bunk", or share a bed with someone on the opposite shift pattern, one sleeping while the other one works.
But conditions are still hardly luxurious. The captain is the only man who has his own room and wash-hand basin. The bunks for everyone else are stacked three high, with the middle bed the favoured choice – the top one is harder to get in to and the bottom one means being close to people's feet, which after 90 days without fresh air is not a desirable place to be.
Each submariner has one small locker to keep all his worldly goods in during the three-month tours. The invention of the Sony Reader electronic book has transformed the life of one bibliophile submariner, who previously filled his tiny locker with novels and kept his clothes under his mattress. There are five showers and five toilets for the sailors. Astute is a huge improvement, but it will still be a special kind of person who can live on a submarine.
A final piece of information that might disappoint devotees of Second World War films – the Astute is the first British submarine not to use an optical periscope. Instead of using what one of Astute's submariners described as a pair of glasses on the end of a pole, fibre-optic cables will stream footage down to TV screens.
Source telegraph
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