The Astute-class is the latest class of nuclear-powered fleet submarines (SSN) in service with the Royal Navy. The class sets a new standard for the Royal Navy in terms of weapons load, communication facilities and stealth. The boats are being constructed by BAE Systems Submarine Solutions at Barrow-in-Furness.
Seven boats will be constructed. The first of class, Astute, was launched in 2007 and commissioned in 2010, and the second, Ambush, was launched on 6 January 2011.Astute-class boats are powered by a Rolls-Royce PWR2 (Core H) reactor and fitted with a pump-jet propulsor. The PWR2 reactor was developed for the Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines. As a result Astute-class boats are about 30 per cent larger than previous British attack submarines, which were powered by smaller diameter reactors.
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Builders: | BAE Systems Submarine Solutions |
| Operators: |  |
| Preceded by: | Trafalgar class |
| In commission: | 27 August 2010 — |
| Building: | 4: Artful, Audacious, Anson, Agamemnon |
| Planned: | 1: Ajax |
| Completed: | 2: Astute, Ambush |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 7,400 tonnes submerged |
| Length: | 97 m (323 ft) |
| Beam: | 11.3 m (37 ft) |
| Draught: | 10 m (33 ft) |
| Propulsion: | Rolls-Royce PWR 2 reactor, MTU 600 kilowatt diesel generators |
| Speed: | 29+ knots (56+ km/h) submerged |
| Range: | Only limited by food and maintenance requirements. |
| Test depth: | Over 300 m |
| Complement: | 98 officers and men (capacity for 109) |
| Sensors and processing systems: |
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| Armament: | 6 x 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes |
Like all Royal Navy submarines, the bridge fin of the Astute-class boats is specially reinforced to allow surfacing through ice caps. They can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles from their launch tubes, including the new "tactical Tomahawk" currently under development. More than 39,000 acoustic tiles mask the vessel's sonar signature, giving the Astute class a better stealth quality than any other submarine previously operated by the Royal Navy. The vessel is equipped with the advanced Sonar 2076, which is an integrated passive/active search and attack sonar suite with bow, intercept, flank and towed arrays.
The Astute Combat Management System is an evolved version of the Submarine Command System used on other classes of submarine. The system receives data from the boat's sensors and displays real time imagery on all command consoles. The submarines also have DESO 25 high-precision echosounders, two CM010 non-hull-penetrating optronic masts which carry thermal imaging and low-light TV and colour CCD TV sensors.
The Astute-class submarines can be fitted with a dry deck shelter which allows special forces (e.g. SBS and SAS) to deploy whilst the submarine is submerged.
Astute is the first Royal Navy submarine class to have a bunk for each member of the ship's company, ending the practice of 'hot bunking', whereby two sailors on opposite watches shared the same bunk. However in other respects studies found the Astute human factors design inferior to earlier submarines, such as having less mess-deck space than the Valiant-class submarine built 45 years earlier.
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