New Fast-Attack Nuclear Submarines to be Named Arizona and Oklahoma

[Jared0425]

Eurofighter Typhoon is not cleared for the US B-61 nuclear bombs stockpiled under the NATO Nuclear Sharing Agreement;

They CAN carry, just not certified by the US to do so.

The Navy figures if they want to ruin someone's day with a nuke, the rest of the boomers carry a couple Tridents with reduced numbers/yields of warheads that can do the job faster and from farther away.

Wasn't there a country or idea wanting to use the SLBMs in a conventional warfare role? It might have been India testing conventional MIRVs or Israel. I read that in the 60s SLBMs were considered for mid ocean satellite launches per the Operation Paperclip book by Annie Jacobsen.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

They CAN carry, just not certified by the US to do so.


Wasn't there a country or idea wanting to use the SLBMs in a conventional warfare role? It might have been India testing conventional MIRVs or Israel. I read that in the 60s SLBMs were considered for mid ocean satellite launches per the Operation Paperclip book by Annie Jacobsen.

The certification bit is kind of critical; nukes don't just fall off the plane and go boom (if they did, we would be missing a few bits of the continental US plus some of Spain and Greenland). If Uncle Sam doesn't want the buttons and switches in the cockpit of a non-US aircraft to "talk" to a US nuke, it might fall off the plane but that's it.

The "conventional SLBM" idea has been kicked around a bit; most recently the US was looking at using a conventional MIRV (or simply a big lump of metal) for Prompt Global Strike, which was basically a War on Terror/insert Third World baddie-of-the-week thing where rather than taking the time to whistle up an airstrike, they'd take out something or someone in an underground bunker with a missile strike from 5,000+ miles away within an hour of finding out where it was. The idea is still kicking around, although someone pointed out that using a Trident for that might get other people who have lots of ballistic missiles and early warning sensors a bit excited when they see an unannounced missile flying in what might be their general direction. In terms of land-based missiles, a few people (most notably the PRC) have been playing around with the idea of conventional antiship ballistic missiles; they've tested them on mock targets in the desert but I don't know if there's been an end-to-end test on a moving target at sea.

Speaking of SLBMs, I hadn't read about the failed "Behemoth-1" test of 1989 previously; two years later one of the Typhoon-class boats also had a missile go kaboom before it left the tube. Definitely what LTC Moran would call "a significant emotional event."

Soviet Submarine Launched All Its Missiles In An Unprecedented Rehearsal For Armageddon

With the Soviet empire only months away from collapse, its Navy conducted an unprecedented test of its submarine-launched doomsday weapons.

www.thedrive.com

The Harrowing Tale Of The Nuke-Laden Russian Typhoon Class Sub That Almost Sunk In 1991

The quick thinking captain that saved the vessel and the world from disaster was never decorated for his actions.

www.thedrive.com

 

[Pressurehead]

So far, when all said and done, there is more said than done.
Anyway: Australia prepares to unveil AUKUS nuclear submarine plans in the United States

 

[Jared0425]

So far, when all said and done, there is more said than done.
Anyway: Australia prepares to unveil AUKUS nuclear submarine plans in the United States

Until the political winds in Australia change again and a whacky PM defunds the military. We don't have the shipyard capacity to build them here.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Until the political winds in Australia change again and a whacky PM defunds the military. We don't have the shipyard capacity to build them here.

Well, last I checked a) it's the "lefty" party in Australia that's currently going ahead with the nuke boat plans, and b) they want to build the subs mostly if not entirely in Australia. So most likely the hull sections containing the highly sensitive bits like the reactor and powertrain will be built either in the US or UK and then transported to Australia to be mated up to the Australian-built sections (again, like HMS Dreadnought was, and similar to how Navantia in Spain provided modules for Australian surface warships recently). The noises being made seem to indicate that the resulting subs will be a joint design/manufacturing project ... time will tell how that works out.

While the state of the US ship maintenance infrastructure is a concern, the article linked by Pressurehead implies the West Coast drydocks being out of service will impede sub construction; left unsaid is that those docks are all in one region (Kitsap in Washington State) and are not involved with new submarine construction - just maintenance and defueling/scrapping retired subs. The limit on new boats is capacity at Electric Boat in Groton and Newport News Shipyard, which are the only two nuclear ship construction facilities in the US. If AUKUS includes expansion of Australian drydocks for the new SSNs, they could be specced to also perform maintenance on US and UK subs - win-win.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Also, something I forgot but worth noting - the Virginia-class subs are already manufactured in separate components that have to be transported for final assembly. While subs undergo final assembly at both yards and they alternate producing the reactor plant, Newport News builds the stern, habitability, machinery spaces, torpedo room, sail, and bow for all boats while Groton builds the control room and engine room for all boats. That arrangement was basically to make sure both yards stayed in the nuclear shipbuilding business. At least, that was the arrangement when the program started; I don't know if it's been revised or will be revised given that it seems all the assembly on the Columbia-class SSBNs will be done in Groton.

The Royal Navy's Dreadnought-class SSBNs also have their SLBM tubes built in the US as part of the same production line producing the Columbia-class missile tubes.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

In other circumstances, a nostalgia watch of The Hunt for Red October might be in order:

Russia's Last Giant Typhoon Class Submarine's Fate May Finally Be Sealed

The decommissioning of Dmitry Donskoy will bring the story of the iconic Typhoon class, made famous by The Hunt For Red October, to an end.

www.thedrive.com

 

[Jared0425]

In other circumstances, a nostalgia watch of The Hunt for Red October might be in order:

Russia's Last Giant Typhoon Class Submarine's Fate May Finally Be Sealed

The decommissioning of Dmitry Donskoy will bring the story of the iconic Typhoon class, made famous by The Hunt For Red October, to an end.

www.thedrive.com

About time. Those Typhoons were a massive drain on the Russian Navy expense wise.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

About time. Those Typhoons were a massive drain on the Russian Navy expense wise.

The thing I expect really bites is that those boats have five separate internal pressure hulls - two parallel main hulls and then three smaller ones containing the torpedo room, control center, and steering gear - and the rest of that interior volume is free-flooding, including the space around the missile tubes. Keeping corrosion under control has to be a pain.

Back to Australian nuclear sub plans ... Australian commanders to have complete control over nuclear submarines and reactors

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Another one of the 52 lost USN subs from WWII identified - One man finds closure after long-lost WWII US submarine found off Japanese coast | CNN

USS Albacore (SS-218) had perhaps her finest hour on June 19, 1944 when she closed inside the Japanese ASW screen for their carrier fleet at the Battle of the Phillipine Sea. Her Torpedo Data Computer failed while lining up on her target, so she fired a spread of six torpedoes at a range of 5,300 yards for one hit (four missed and one was intercepted by a determined Japanese pilot who crashed into it). After a prolonged "going over" from three Japanese destroyers, Albacore's crew assumed they had only damaged their target. As it turned out, one was enough.