The newest of the Royal Navy’s submarines has been lowered into the water for the first time The 6th ASTUTE-class SSN for the Royal Navy, the future HMS AGAMEMNON, has emerged from the Devonshire Dock Hall in Barrow-in-Furness and has been lowered into the water for the first time.

The 7,400-tons submarine has been rolled out of the assembly hall on October 2 and has been positioned on the shiplift, which lowered it into the water the following bay. The SSN has then been cold moved to the test and commissioning quay. This is the penultimate boat in the ASTUTE production run, with the 7th and last, the future HMS AGINCOURT, in advanced state of completion within the Devonshire Hall.

AGAMEMNON will probably commission at the yard in the new year, ahead of the sea trials that will follow. The first Commanding Officer of AGAMEMNON is Commander David ‘Bing’ Crosby, a veteran submariner and CO who has already commanded 3 of the earlier ASTUTE-class boats – HMS ASTUTE, ARTFUL and ANSON –, ensuring experienced leadership in the delicate phases of taking the submarine in hand and bringing it towards operational service.

The space freed within the Devonshire Dock Hall will not remain free for long as assembly of the new SSBNs of the DREADNOUGHT class pick up pace. Several hull blocks of the first of the 4 new SSBNs are already inside the hall, including the entire missile compartment. AGINCOURT will probably be lowered into the water sometime next year.

ASTUTE class submarines are equipped with a state-of-the-art Type 2076 sonar suite and are armed with 6 21-inch torpedo tubes. Their primary weapon, the SPEARFISH heavyweight torpedo, has just endured a very ambitious mid-life upgrade which has turned them into almost a new weapon since the wire has been replaced with a modern fibre-optic link; replaced the dual-fuel (liquid monopropellant, ‘Otto Fuel’, and HAP (hydroxyl ammonium perchlorate as oxidant) propulsion system with a single-fuel one; digitalized the weapon and replaced the warhead with a new one, Insensitive Munition compliant. Some 180 weapons are being remanufactured to Mod 1 standard and will remain in service for decades. The SPEARFISH is known to have exceptional performances in terms of depth and speed (reportedly achieving 80 knots in trials) which were originally sought to counter soviet ALFA-class submarines.

The SSN can carry 38 between SPEARFISH and encapsulated TOMAHAWK Block IV cruise missiles for torpedo tube launch. The Royal Navy is having all TOMAHAWKs rebuilt and recertified at the new Block V standard; it is not known whether the program includes adoption of a number of missiles in Block V-A variant (anti-ship capable) which would restore a capability lost in the early 2000s with the withdrawal of the Sub-HARPOON. Block V-B is also a possibility: this variant, soon to enter manufacturing, introduces a warhead with enhanced anti-bunker capability.

Notoriously, the UK is already at work on the ASTUTE-class successor, the much larger (estimated 10,000 tons) SSN-A (for AUKUS) which will be a shared design with Australia. The program is already in a phase of detailed design and long lead items procurement ahead of an expected start of the build of the first boat in 2028.

The shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness will expand massively ahead of the SSN-A project, with BAE Systems having already obtained authorizations to build a large new Research and Design facility (Project SPARTAN) while land has been purchased for the construction of an entirely new facility for construction of submarine hull sections.

An earlier application for the construction of what was going to be called RAMSDEN hall has been abandoned, to be replaced by possibly an even larger facility built nearby on land that used to be a gas storage site. While Australia plans to build all its SSN-A in-country, at the Osborne shipyard, the nuclear reactor will be made by Rolls Royce in the UK at Derby and fitted within the relevant hull section at Barrow before being shipped to Australia. This is a major driver in the expansion of both BAE Systems facilities in Barrow and Rolls Royce in Derby.

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