RN Submarines: Vanguard Class 1993

[Pelican]

Sir Humphrey@pinstripedline

CASD is hard work - that is 6 months submerged, completely isolated from home and with no contact with outside world - all part of OP RELENTLESS, which the Royal Navy, supported by RAF and RM has conducted since 1969 without fail.

See - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 5621899674

[Pelican]

Sir Humphrey@pinstripedline

CASD is hard work - that is 6 months submerged, completely isolated from home and with no contact with outside world - all part of OP RELENTLESS, which the Royal Navy, supported by RAF and RM has conducted since 1969 without fail.

See - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 5621899674

Guessing the Deployment After Royal Navy Vanguard Class Sub Returns Looking Like a “Sea Monster”

https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2023/09/gue ... more-60870

[Pelican]

Maintenance on number 9 dock (top) underway at Devonport - not yet ready to accept HMS Victorious to start her refit.

Support buildings have been demolished but the major work to revamp number 10 dock to enable SSBN/SSN refits yet to start.
RFA Mounts Bay foreground.

[Pelican]

HMS Vanguard arrives at Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay, Georgia today.

Likely her first port call ahead of long-planned Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) culminating in Trident missile test-firing.

Photo at - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 72/photo/1

[Pelican]

Navy Lookout

An unverified piece in The Sun today says a Vanguard class submarine came close to crush depth due to a depth gauge malfunction.
Not implausible, but the report lacks detail - hard to make a judgement about just how serious this incident was.

See - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24787481/ ... rush-crew/
And - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 12/photo/1

[Pelican]

Navy Lookout

An unverified piece in The Sun today says a Vanguard class submarine came close to crush depth due to a depth gauge malfunction.
Not implausible, but the report lacks detail - hard to make a judgement about just how serious this incident was.

See - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24787481/ ... rush-crew/
And - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 12/photo/1

Navy Lookout

JS Heappey effectively publicly confirms the incident with the Vanguard class submarine depth gauge reported by media this week definitely happened.
Tells CommonsDefence "The wider safeguards appeared to have worked - a second gauge averted what was imminent"

[Pelican]

HMS Vanguard alongside at Cape Canaveral, Florida preparing for Trident missile test launch soon.

HMS Scott arrived in support yesterday.

[Pelican]

Britain to test fire Trident nuclear missile

HMS Vanguard, one of the Royal Navy’s four Trident nuclear weapon-carrying submarines, will shortly conduct the test firing of an unarmed Trident D5 ballistic missile in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to a publicly accessible navigation warning, the launch will take place between the 30th of January and the 4th of February with United States Navy support at the US Eastern Test Range off the coast of Florida.

We have asked the Ministry of Defence for more information.
Continues at - https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain ... r-missile/

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HMS Victorious’ £560m refit to ready her for future operations

Submarine HMS Victorious will return to the Royal Navy modernised and ready for future operations thanks to a half a billion pound life extension programme.

Babcock and the UK’s Submarine Delivery Agency have agreed a contract worth an estimated £560m to deliver the planned deep maintenance and future-proofing of the Vanguard-class boat.

The nuclear submarine arrived in Plymouth last year to prepare for the programme which will enable her to continue operational patrols well into the 2030s. Work on HMS Victorious is already underway.

The boat is the second Vanguard-class submarine to undergo a life extension package at Babcock’s Devonport facility.

Continues at - https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... operations
Also - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/560- ... -1000-jobs

[Pelican]

Extending the life of HMS Victorious

HMS Victorious arrived in Devonport to begin a multi-year Deep Maintenance Period (DMP) in May 2023. Here we provide a some background and detail about the project.

Second of the Vanguard class, HMS Victorious was launched in 1993 and has already exceeded her originally intended 25-year design life by 3 years. The DMP is intended to extend her life into the mid-late 2030s when she will be replaced by second of the Dreadnought class, HMS Valiant. The DMP follows the much-troubled project to refit HMS Vanguard which was plagued by COVID, poor planning and resourcing coupled with an underestimation of the complexity of the work required to extend the life of these ageing boats.

Victorious arrived in at Devonport in a poor state, suffering from being run on as her DMP was repeatedly postponed by the delays to Vanguard. The full extent of the various defects she has suffered over the last few years are not in the public domain but in late 2022, she suffered a fire at sea. It is disputed whether the incident was sufficiently serious that she was forced to surface but fortunately, she was not assigned to a deterrent patrol at the time and was conducting exercises with the US Navy.

Continues at - https://www.navylookout.com/extending-t ... ictorious/