Countdown Begins to Launch Royal Navy's Newest Attack Submarines

UK Ministry of Defence, The Royal Navy's largest and most powerful attack submarine was unveiled today, Tuesday 8 May 2007, one month before its launch, and one year before it heads to its base port at HM Naval Base Clyde. 
 
HMS Astute, the first of her Class, is being built at the BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria and will be launched on 8 June 2007. Although still shrouded in coverings to allow work to continue on applying more than 39,000 acoustic tiles, she is still an awesome sight, almost half again as big as the Royal Navy's current fleet of attack boats. 
 
The tiles will mask her sonar signature and will make Astute the most stealthy attack submarine ever operated by the Royal Navy.

However that's not the only amazing fact about what is a truly amazing submarine:  
 
1. She will never need to be refuelled – her one nuclear reactor has been designed to serve for the boat's 25 year operational life  
 
2. Despite her size, she can operate closer to shore, providing huge firepower for shore based operations  
 
3. Again, although she is bigger, she has a smaller crew – and for the first time, each crewman will get his own bed instead of hot-bunking  
 
4. Her design is more complex than the Space Shuttle  
 
5. She can circumnavigate the planet without surfacing – in fact, she is faster under water than on the surface  
 
6. Her captain sleeps only 10 metres away from her nuclear core – which is more complicated than a nuclear power station.  
 

Astute will be followed in a 22-month rolling programme by Ambush and Artful – at a total cost of £3.6 billion. All three, along with subsequent boats, will be based at HM Naval Base Clyde, where work has already started on the construction of a £150 million state-of-the-art jetty, named the Valiant Jetty, which will be home to the boats. HMS Astute is due to arrive at the Base next Easter after a year of trials (technically she does not become an HMS until after her formal launch). 
 
The Astute Programme Director at HM Naval Base Clyde, Captain Peter Merriman, said: 
 
“Astute will be the largest, most capable and widely deployable attack submarine ever operated by the Royal Navy. She is designed to undertake a wide range of tasks, including support of land forces and land attack using Tomahawk cruise missiles.” 
 
Specialist engineering involves: 
 
– Nuclear engineering: providing safety and performance improvements to a state-of-the-art pressurised water reactor that is fuelled for life 
– Systems engineering: integrating the thousands of sub-systems that require up to 100km of cabling, 23,000 pipes amounting to10km of pipework, and over 5 million lines of software code – plus managing the supply chain, which consists of over 30 main suppliers 
– Marine and mechanical engineering: providing solutions for the propulsive power train, auxiliary systems and life support. Astute must be quiet, vibration free and robust enough to withstand a nearby underwater explosion 
– Hydrodynamics and control engineering: the design of the submarine hull, hydroplanes and control systems to provide control of depth and good manoeuvrability. The submarine must maintain neutral buoyancy and is literally 'flown' underwater 
– Human factors: ensuring that every system is safely operable and maintainable in all conditions by a relatively small complement compared with previous nuclear powered