ASTUTE Class Submarine Montage (2014)

The Astute-class are the largest, most advanced and most powerful attack submarines ever operated by the Royal Navy, combining world-leading sensors, design and weaponry in a versatile, potent vessel. There are seven Astute-class submarines in various stages of build and development, with the lead ship HMS Astute commissioned into the Fleet.

HMS Astute
HMS Ambush
HMS Artful
HMS Audacious
HMS Anson
HMS Agamemnon
HMS Ajax

Key Facts:

• Each Astute submarine is 97m long - greater than the length of 10 London buses.

• When fully stored they will displace 7,400 tonnes of sea water, equivalent to 65 blue whales.

• Advanced nuclear technology means they never need to be refuelled. The submarines will be fuelled by a nuclear reactor powerful enough to power a city the size of Southampton.

• They can circumnavigate the world without surfacing and the dived endurance is only limited by the amount of food that can be carried and the endurance of the crew.

• Each submarine manufactures its own oxygen and fresh water from the ocean.

• The Astute class is the first Royal Navy submarine not to be fitted with optical periscopes -- instead the vessel employs high specification video technology. The images are delivered into the submarine via fibre-optic cables.

• Armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, they are able to strike at targets up to 1,000km from the coast with pinpoint accuracy -- equivalent to driving from London to Paris and back twice.

• Around 110 km of cabling and pipe work will be installed on each submarine -- equivalent to driving from Bristol to Oxford.

• The Sonar 2076 sonar suite has the processing power of 2,000 laptop computers. They have the world's largest number of hydrophones, providing the Royal Navy with the "biggest ears" of any sonar system in service today.

Class & type:
Nuclear-powered fleet submarine

Displacement:
7,000 tonnes, surfaced
7,400 tonnes, submerged

Length:
97 m (318 ft)

Beam:
11.3 m (37 ft)

Draught:
10 m (33 ft)

Propulsion:
Rolls-Royce PWR 2 reactor
MTU 600 kilowatt diesel generators

Speed:
Up to 30 knots (56 km/h), submerged

Range:
Only limited by food and maintenance requirements.

Test depth:
Over 300 m

Complement:
98 (capacity for 109)

Sensors and processing systems:
Thales Sonar 2076
Atlas DESO 25 echosounder
2 × Thales CM010 optronic masts
Raytheon Successor IFF

Armament:
6 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes with stowage for up to 38 weapons;
Tomahawk Block IV land-attack cruise missiles
Spearfish wire-guided heavyweight torpedoes

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