Tag Archives: AUKUS submarine

Shipyard News

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Lots of developments on the shipyard beat in the past week or so…

Welcome, Bob!

Saturday saw the christening at Bollinger Shipyards in Pascagoula (Escatawpa) of the future Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey vessel  USNS Robert Ballard (T-AGS 67), with the principal address delivered by the famed Dr. Robert Ballard (CDR, USNR, Ret), the ship’s namesake.

The 353-foot/5,000 ton AGS is equipped with just about every precision survey tool you can think of, and the class is vital in making hyper-accurate charts of the sea floor, something especially important for modern submarine warfare.

Speaking of which…

NoDak Undocks

The storied Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, last week  undocked the early Virginia-class attack submarine USS North Dakota (SSN 784), “marking a significant milestone in its maintenance and modernization availability.”

NoDak, commissioned in 2014, the first of eight Virginia-class Block III boats, has been under overhaul since April 2023. The work was scheduled to take 33 months and was cleared in just 34, which is great when it comes to SSN overhauls.

Virginia-class attack submarine USS North Dakota (SSN 784) undocking at Portsmouth, wrapping up a 34-month overhaul. (U.S. Navy photo by Branden Bourque)

Vermont wraps first SMP in Australia

In a quiet development from down under, the Virginia-class hunter killer USS Vermont (SSN 792) arrived at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia late last October and soon underwent something that is a first for both the class and the Royal Australian Navy– a four-month submarine maintenance period (SMP) by a blended American and Australian maintenance team without a sub tender alongside for support.

It’s the first time that was done outside of the U.S. and is an important milestone for the AUKUS SSN program, which will, eventually, see the RAN operating 774s.

Garden Island, HMAS Stirling, Western Australia, Australia (Nov. 10, 2025) – A bilateral team of U.S. Navy Sailors and civilians of the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Dive Locker, and Australian members of Clearance Dive Team 4, dive under the hull of the USS Vermont (SSN 792) in support of a planned submarine maintenance period (SMP). The bilateral team completed multiple jobs, including installing patches under the hull to allow access to main ballast tank three. The maintenance period showcased Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility’s ability to conduct maintenance in Western Australia and its training of Australian maintainers to support the establishment of Submarine Rotational Force – West as early as 2027 as part of AUKUS Pillar I, the trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The AUKUS Integration & Acquisition Program Office is the U.S. Navy office responsible for executing the trilateral partnership to assist Australia in acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered attack submarines while setting the highest nuclear stewardship standards and continuing to maintain the highest nonproliferation standards. (U.S. Navy Photo by Cmdr. Erik Wells)

Austal finishes the last EPF, keeps up with EMS, and ATS

The vessel that got Austal’s Mobile, Alabama yard on the map, the 16-vessel Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport, is wrapping up with the launching last week of the future USNS Lansing (EPF 16), capping a program that began in 2010.

The 337-foot vessels are big enough to land a CH-53K King Stallion on their aft deck and can schlep 412 troops around the theatre at 43 knots or, with a 20,000 sq ft mission bay, can fill a Swiss army knife of support roles– all with a crew of 41.

Austal says that, once delivered, the production efforts on EPF 16 will shift to final outfitting and system activation to support future USNS Bethesda (T-EMS-1), the first of three EPF Flight II medical variants, getting underway for sea trials. The white-painted EMS series will have four operating rooms and 124 medical beds, separated into acute care, acute isolation, ICU, and ICU isolation spaces.

Austal, in the same week, also successfully launched the future Navajo-class rescue and salvage ship USNS Solomon Atkinson (T-ATS 12) into the Mobile River, some 75 percent complete.

The future Navajo-class rescue and salvage ship USNS Solomon Atkinson (T-ATS 12)

The 263-foot/5,100-ton T-ATS will provide ocean-going towing, salvage, and rescue capabilities to support fleet operations. T-ATS will be a multi-mission common hull platform capable of towing U.S. Navy ships and will have 6,000 square feet of deck space for embarked systems. The large, unobstructed deck allows for the embarkation of a variety of stand-alone and interchangeable systems. The T-ATS platform will combine the capabilities of the retiring Rescue and Salvage Ship (T-ARS 50) and Fleet Ocean Tug (T-ATF 166) platforms. T-ATS will be able to support current missions, including towing, salvage, rescue, oil spill response, humanitarian assistance, and wide-area search and surveillance. The platform also enables future rapid capability initiatives, such as supporting modular payloads with hotel services and appropriate interfaces.

Welcome back, HMS Anson

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Yesterday’s Warship Wednesday profiled the final KGV-class battleship to join the Royal Navy, the sixth HMS Howe (32), and her WWII career which included a stint as the flagship of ADM Bruce Fraser’s British Pacific Fleet in 1944-45. We also touched on her sister, the seventh HMS Anson (79) which joined the fleet the same summer of 1942 as Howe.

HMS Anson dressed in Sydney Harbor for the Australia Day sailing regatta, 1946. The KGV-class fast battleship was commissioned in April 1942 but didn’t become operational until September, joining Convoy QP 14 on the Murmansk run. In all, she would watch over nine such convoys, support the Husky landings against Sicily, tag along on the Tungsten operation to sink Tirpitz and host RADM Cecil Harcourt’s liberation of Hong Kong in August 1945.

Like her four sisters that survived WWII, the battlewagon Anson would remain in mothballs until 1957 and was unceremoniously disposed of shortly after.

Well, the name Anson returned to the Admiralty’s list as the fifth of seven Astute-class hunter-killer submarines, commissioned yesterday into the Royal Navy at a ceremony at BAE Systems’ Barrow-In-Furness site. She had been christened in 2020 via a bottle of cider smashed against the hull– the drink favored by her namesake, 18th-Century Admiral George Anson, as a cure for scurvy.

Of interest, while both battleships Anson and Howe visited Australia in 1945 during the war, Royal Australian Navy submariners, as part of the AUKUS initiative to send SSNs down under, will join British crews to train on newly commissioned HMS Anson as announced yesterday by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. In reflecting this, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and a delegation of RAN officers attended Anson’s commissioning this week.

HMS Anson will join four other Astute class submarines in service with the Royal Navy –HMS Astute, HMS Ambush, HMS Artful, and HMS Audacious– all proud names carried by former vessels. Two further boats that echo historic battleship names – Agamemnon and Agincourt – are in various stages of construction at Barrow.

RAN getting into the SSN Game, apparently

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The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service has been around since 1964 but the Ozzies have been running subs going back to the Great War-era British E class submarines AE1 and AE2, which we have covered here on a Warship Wednesday.

Besides the Es, the Australians operated a half-dozen J-class boats in WWI, two O-class boats in the 1920s, and eight British Oberon-class submarines through the Cold War.

Barbecue on top of HMAS Onslow, a diesel submarine operated by Australia’s Navy from 1968 to 1999.

Today, they have the half dozen controversial (but Australian-built!) Collins-class submarines in service that are aging out.

Collins-class submarines conducting exercises northwest of Rottnest Island 2019

Driven by political pressure against nuclear-powered subs– both Australia and New Zealand have had issues with American “N” prefixes visiting in past years– Canberra signed a contract for a dozen planned Attack-class SSKs from France in a competition that saw both German and Japanese designs come up in a close tie for second place.

However, with the French boats not being able to get operational into some time in the mid-2030s, the Australians are scrapping the stalled French contract and going with a program with the U.S. and Royal Navy to field SSNs.

The AUKUS program is ambitious to say the least. 

RAN’s official statement, with a lot more detail than you get elsewhere: 

The submarines will be built at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, where French company Naval Group was to construct the soon-to-be canceled submarines, which is a heavy lift for sure, but not insurmountable. 

As SUBSCOL in New London is very good at what they do at training Nuclear Program submariners, and the production line for the Virginia-class boats is white-hot, it is likely something that could be done inside the decade with some sort of technology sharing program similar to how Australian acquired their FFG-7 frigates in the 1980s, provided the RAN can cough up enough submariners (they have a problem staffing their boats now as it is) as well as the cash and political will.

If a Virginia-class variant is chosen, perhaps one could be hot-loaned from COMSUBPAC, with a cadre of specialists aboard, to the Australians for a couple years as a training boat while theirs are being constructed. 

Can Canberra buy and man 12 boats? Doubtful, but a 4+1 hull program with one boat in a maintenance period and the four active subs, perhaps with rotating blue/red crews, could provide a lot of snorkel.

Plus, it could see American SSNs based in Western Australia on a running basis, which is something that has never happened. Of course, the precedent is there, as 122 American, 31 British, and 11 Dutch subs conducted patrols from Fremantle and Brisbane between 1942 and 1945 while the Royal Navy’s 4th Submarine Flotilla was based in Sydney from 1949 until 1969.

Of course, the French, who have been chasing this hole in the ocean for five years, are going to raise hell over this. 

The “breakup statement” of French Naval Group with Australia Attack class submarine deal…no mention of them being overpriced, overdue and under delivery.

Meanwhile, off Korea

In related Pacific submarine news, the South Koreans successfully fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday, just hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea.

The ROKN boat, likely the new ROKS Dosan Ahn Changho (SS-083), which just commissioned in August, fired the indigenous Hyunmoo conventional warhead SLBM, of which not much is known. The 3,700-ton Changho-class, of which nine are planned, have six VLS silos for such missiles in addition to their torpedo tubes.