Search results

The major availability issues with the Collins is that their refits are taking too long, exacerbated by lack of crew. Both issues should be handled over the next few years as they get more experience. Operational costs are high, but so are ours. You could generate similar numbers from dividing...

The largest problem with Arctic submarine operations is getting the boats from their home port to the SPA. An SSn would still have an SSK transit speed, and would pretty much have to turn around as soon as it arrived at an Arctic SPA, just like a Victoria. The RAN looked at the Upholders as...

ASROC was and is useful as a quick-reaction weapon. I'm not so sure it would likely kill a boat, but it would likely screw up ana ttack and force the boat to cut it's wires etc. Our current weapon loadout is very expensive and incompatible with PAAMS. I don't think there's any real desire to...

Wow...why would they leave that in? It was a token capability in the first place. They'll still need commercial ro-ro's to carry most of a deployment even with those capabilities in the AOR's. Didn't the auditor-general warn of this in a bunch of projects lately?

The projected cost is for 2 Cantabrias or Berlins, and they're still having trouble getting it done.

So it looks like what they're saying is that the program cost is capped at $9 billion. If the F-35 follows the C-17 cost near-doubling indication Haletown posted, that may mean we won't get 65...more like 40 or so.

A stopped clock is right twice a day. The boats are basically scarecrows right now, and would need considerable investment to be any more than that. Is the level of insurance they provide worth the considerable premium?

More like fit and jettison, which is also good to have. There's a lot more to firing a Mk 48 and getting it working than just ejecting it from a tube. Hopefully the recent fire won't delay the weapon cert.

I'm pretty sure that none of the boats have actually fired a Mk 48 yet, although that's supposed to change soon.

Not in general. The Americans laid up a lot of boats at the end of WWII, and pulled them out of storage for foreign sales/Guppy conversions. Thats how we got RAINBOW and GRILSE. The problems with the layup were that the RN never laid them up properly, and they never properly worked out the...

Were the Kangaroos something like a CCV?

That's actually a pretty big safety issue. The RAN lost a couple of submariners when they were thought to be in the boat, not on it.

If the Victorias got a reasonable combat systems upgrade, they'd be at the top level of SSKs in the world. They're not exactly what we would have picked if given a completely free hand, but they're what we have now. There aren't any other boats being built now that would meet a reasonable...

Word at the time was that the government didn't want to buy Spearfish and a new EW system. They would have run to ~$500 million or so.

You also said "There were only crew briefings - not briefings by rank level.  The crew of a VCS is only 48 - why would you split it up for briefings anyways?" If you were at the SCLE briefings you'd know that the entire submarine community was there, not just people assigned for crew at that...

I thought you said you were at the main SCLE briefings? Interesting.... FYI, there were a number of briefings held for the JR's and SR's, especially when the release rate started to approach 50% of MOG 5(UW) JR's. The one I mentioned was in the Roger with a couple of GTO's and the SCLE PM.

Now that would be incentive to be promoted..... ;D I've seen a couple of sailors with cutaway tunics for kilts. I think they were custom-tailored though.

I can't speak for MARS, but that has been known to happen in technical trades. The reverse has happened too. If you're submarine-qualified, you may be held back from a career course if the submarine community needs you.

Anything ITAR-related was installed on the Victorias. They grabbed anything involved in SOUP. Anything before that was obsolescent in the 70's.

OK and OL are pretty much done, and not before time. Those of us who have been on OK after her paying off are aware of her condition before this. OJ should be ok for the Port Elgin museum.