I believe the early variants of the EBRC Jaguar lacked proper stabilisation for their gun, only the very recent variants have it.
That’s likely an unstabilised variant which is causing the poor accuracy.
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Honestly i just dont know, i just shared what we found, together with the barrel wear thing it does look bleak.
Anyones gladly invited to prove me wrong.
I specialy wrote if those first hand knowledge are true ,since i cant verify it.
Same with the dispersion.
The thaught that people assume i checked / was aware of the pattern of the dispersion and it likely being an error of some kind ir whatever is kinda ridiculous.
I only saw a missing gun, nothing more
Suppose it counts as a weapons system but the first model of the SSN-AUKUS has just been released, I did a bit of a write-up on discord for some others but I thought perhaps someone here might find it interesting.
Contrary to popular belief, Boats are indeed cool as hell, and from a British perspective, Hunter-Killer submarines are probably the only military weapons system we have that are genuinely unchallenged in their place as No.1.
Some observations with SSN-AUKUS
Sonar
The flat plates I believe are the flank sonar arrays. Astute (below), as you can see has a similar panel for sonar 2076 which composes a bow sonar, 2 flank sonars, another 2 aft-flank sonars, and a towed array sonar deployed from somewhere (this is more or less secret).
Weapons systems
It features 6 torpedo tubes which is good, this is the same as the Astute class the standard number for RN submarines (well 5 is also standard but we no longer place a tube in the middle of the bow sonar array instead we arrange 3 around the circular shielding for the sonar on each side for a total of 6). American’s generally use 4 tubes plus VLS cells which the RN has never had before outside of nuclear missile subs. The seawolfs (American again) have 8 tubes but 4 are loaded with tomahawks at any one time as they lack VLS, so the american standard is 4 torpedo tubes. Astute’s generally have all 6 tubes loaded with torpedos as they don’t often fire tomahawks without advanced notice and not in salvos. The French only have 4 tubes and no VLS because their submarines are smaller and less capable (but still very good technologically).
Its worth noting as you can see these boats will also have VLS equipped in a common VLS compartment with the US next gen sub, similarly the British dreadnoughts and the new US Columbia’s are also sharing VLS compartments but on those for ICBM’s , so 6 tubes plus VLS would put them ahead of the current US standard for hunter-killer subs on torpedo tubes, and also on par for VLS. So they’re better hunter-killers than existing US subs and better land-attack platforms than existing British subs, best of both worlds.
Size
They’re going to be much bigger than the Astute’s though and likely on par with the Virginia’s. The best way of proving this aside from what the media is saying (often wrong) is the location of the dive-planes. All serious nations have moved away from the concept of sail mounted dive-planes they’re worse for a number of reasons but acoustically they’re a big penalty.
What’s interesting here is that as you can see the astutes feature their hull mounted dive planes up high, this is because they’re ~7200 tonnes submerged and don’t have the space, this also gives them their stubby look as the PWR2 reactor they use is actually the reactor for the Vanguard class which is ~15000 tonnes so a much larger reactor. as a result they had to place the dive-planes up high to find space for them. on all the new renders of the AUKUS subs they’re mounted optimally in the middle of the hull, this is because the new AUKUS subs are slated to be 10,000+ tonnes which is a lot for a Hunter-killer submarine, the US ones are that big regularly as they use the same base designs for arsenal submarines as they do for ballistic missile submarines to save development costs. Seawolfs are smaller and a similar size as a clean(er) sheet design.
Present features
As you can expect it features a nuclear-linked steam turbo-electric drive (Britain will be the first to field these on a submarine), a pumpjet propulsor (again british submarine innovation), X plane steering gear (British again) , Integrated optronics mast (british again…).
I also expect a lot of changes
That sail will not stay that way its a terrible design and won’t remain as in the full scale model, thats more american than anything and doesn’t suite the hull at all, i’ve included diagrams of dreadnought and an artists rendition of the AUKUS, as you can see it will have the same strengthened, streamlined, optronically integrated sail i believe. it probably won’t even have an Astute sail and those are better than the american ones.
Second thing is the round hull form, that’s last century for the Brits, we have never featured such a poor hull form in our entire SS(B)N history. That won’t stay as you can see on the AUKUS render and again Dreadnoughts the UK has pioneered a new hull form based partially on the physiology of Whales but also based on hydrodynamic advancements. so i expect the dive-planes to be refined to blend in with that new 2-piece hull form, you can see some of that on astute but its most prevalent on the dreadnoughts.
Why we’re really quite good at this
Look at any British nuclear submarine, then look at the equivalent nuclear submarine from a NATO ally, notice how they get the important features the generation after we pioneer it.
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No kidding.
People like to gush about Germany’s type XXI’s but the amphion class was out at the exact same time and lasted alot longer. Then came the porpoise and Oberon which Wikipedia calls one of it not the quietist sub during its service. (I spent a whole five seconds looking for figures and didn’t find any). Said it before but I’d really like to see British subs on game soon.
There’s a reason you won’t find much on the Oberons - they found much use (allegedly) being very kind to the folks in Hereford.
They also preceded the Upholders, which are still in service with the Canadians (as the Victorias iirc?), so there’s that also.
I am really fearing that they’ll start with US, Japan and Germany for “reasons” and it will be like a year later that other nations would start seeing Subs added
I mean, while I won’t go out on a limb and suggest that our submarines previous to the 80s were distinctly the best (partly because I have no evidence to support that, and partly because Imm in that crowd of accepting that US SSNs were probably best in the world at that point), TRAF class were god’s own (along with Spearfish which i’d wholly rate as superior to some variants of the Mk 48 on the basis of “you aren’t escaping an 80kt torpedo”), and then you get Astute that would’ve been a decent submarine had it not been torpedoed by the massive flaws in British Defence procurement post 1995 so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the best/the best SSN out there. There’s probably a reason the Americans are keen for buy-in.
Apart from the niche I-400s (?) with aircraft I genuinely see no reason to add JP Subs before anyone else.
popularity. More people probably play Japan than Britain naval at the moment.
To what end… Japanese naval popularity hinges on a certain series of comically oversized and badly considered Battleships (I’m saying this in a Universe where I fully believe we should get the essentially unarmoured 35,000t UK battlecruiser)
Japanese Submarines, which perhaps the distinct exceptions of maybe I-58 specifically and the aircraft carrying subs (how does that even work???) are not exactly well known. Everyone knows about the German Submarines (they did spend the better part of 5 years trying to starve off an entire nation). That doesn’t exactly apply to IJN subs in my (admittedly simple) mind.
this might be a little offtopic but i just want to brag a little xD
and now IMAGINE the absolute CINEMA when the engine buffs hit live
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I would say the Amphion had more of an opportunity to prove itself and lended itself better to the new revised hydrodynamic redesigns and more importantly significant acoustic reduction measures that Type XXI didn’t have and also wasn’t going to have (see Type XXVI).
But as a concept the Type XXI is rightly considered revolutionary long underwater endurance, high underwater speed, all forward torpedo battery, of which all are reloadable and advanced electric drives.
I hadn’t heard about that interesting.
Given the UK quite literally wrote the book on anti-submarine operations (including establishing the first school of ASW which trained other allied including American personnel), sank the most subs of WW2 and was the primary player in the Battle for the Atlantic both in time served, submarines sunk and technologies introduced and yet the Battle of the Atlantic event was American ASW vs German U-Boats…
Yeah i’d expect that result too.
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Frankly a big shame, although, would it have been especially unfair to have destroyers & frigates with properly functioning & aimable hedgehogs, squids, & limbos?
From the 1970’s onwards I will make the assertion that we have made the best Hunter-Killer SSN’s for a number of reasons. Prior to the 1970’s the US holds that distinction, firstly because their reactor was a generation ahead of ours or equal and secondly because our torpedo’s were god awful, to the point where the US practically begged us to adopt either the Mark 45 or Mark 48 torpedo’s because they were genuinely concerned that we had turned NATO’s best submarines into NATO’s worst purely because the options were a modernised torpedo from 1926 with no homing system or a torpedo so slow that anything that wasn’t a submarine could outrun it and a nuclear submarine could also outrun it whilst submerged.
From Churchill and then Swiftsure onwards (Trafalgar is a heavily upgraded repeat Swiftsure) it is undisputed we have the best Hunter-Killers.
Just on Churchill, you have a better generation reactor, a superior hull form, pumpjet propulsion (on Churchill, before that a better propeller), you’re quieter, you have more ready torpedo tubes, better sonar integration and a digital combat management system.
Swiftsure and Trafalgar only improve this disparity by adding pumpjets particularly and acoustic tiling.
For reference in the 1980s HMS Sceptre collided with a Soviet submarine she had been stalking that changed course rapidly after being given a new tasking. She sculked off at high speed. The Soviet submarine was a Delta-III class SSBN and reported to have collided with an American Sturgeon class submarine (the quietest US submarine at the time), but also noted that they believed their passive sonar had broken in the collision, because they didn’t detect the submarine move off at speed post-collision, but by the time they had switched to active sonar, the submarine was out of range. Turns out the sonar was fine, they just hadn’t heard the Sceptre.
The pumpjet on the Swiftsure class was that quiet that they could move off at top speed and remain undetected at ranges the Soviets had expected and tested that they should have heard a Sturgeon class submarine.
Spearfish itself is a revolutionary torpedo, longer range, heavier warhead, twice as fast better homing than the equivalent Mk.48 torpedo. I’m actually very surprised Australia is sticking with them for SSN-AUKUS, i’d honestly expected a switch however I suspect that’s because the Collins class uses them but the swap would not be that costly when compared to the price of the programme. But the RN will not switch to Mk.48 because Spearfish is that much better.
Astute is still the best Hunter-Killer out there, it just needs to leave port. Its a similar situation to how the Chieftain is regarded as the best tank of its era as long as it breaks down in the right spot.
The Astute’s are:
The quietest submarines out there, they have more ready torpedos, they have better torpedo’s, they have the best sonar system in service anywhere, they have the quietest propulsion system fitted to a submarine, they have large weapons stocks, they exceed 30 knots (35 is reported) submerged making them the fastest Hunter-Killer in service, they have a superior hull-form.
Their only issue is the maintenance, which isn’t inherent to the submarine, they’re the least maintenance intensive nuclear submarine the UK has ever constructed. However the last government let the company that manufactures the steel wires to hoist them out of the water for maintenance go bankrupt. A suitable alternative is yet to be contracted as a result, the 6 of them in service can’t go to sea as they can’t operate without maintenance, and the one that just rolled into sea trials will only be sea-worthy for maximum 18 months post-commission without maintenance.
The sub is great. The people managing them are the issue.
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I don’t view it as unfair at all, and they could have always added a more modern German submarine or torpedo’s
I mean your choices were between an unguided “dumb” torpedo or a torpedo so unreliable they decided it’d be more effective to use said dumb torpedo against a surface ship.
(In defence of the Tigerfish it was wire guided and it doesn’t really matter what hits you in a Submarine, if it goes bang you’re not in for a good day)
This is true for the entirety of UK Defence.
Tigerfish barely gets a pass, its still pretty slow, its still unreliable, but its better than the Mk.20 Bidder. But at least you can fix some of the unreliability via wire-guidance. Doesn’t help when the motor just doesn’t start though.
Mismanagement yes, but we have and have had some god-awful vehicles particularly recently.
This is just a great sub hampered by imbeciles in charge of its maintenance upkeep.
It genuinely infuriates me to see them defended like the best thing since sliced bread when they could just admit ‘yeah it’s not ideal, we wasted a bunch of money, we will learn lessons’.
brimstone only got sami active laser in the brimstone 2 upgrade, the brimstone was day one mmw
Guessing the Mk 23 Grog fits between these two.
Nah. There was an interim Dual Mode brimstone with a SAL seeker, before Brimstone 2. It was only in service on Tornado GR.4 however.
You can tell them apart because the DMB had a yellow HE band for the rocket motor from the original Brimstone, positioned about mid-way along the rear fins.
And Brimstone 2 has a brown Low Explosive band which is positioned towards the front of the fins, for the larger IM-compliant motor.
There’s also some construction differences around the front fins, where the main warhead is located - you can probably see the additional screws
What we have ingame for all aircraft using Brimstone, is the interim Dual Mode Brimstone with the smaller motor, even though IRL they were all expended on Tornado GR.4 operations and replaced by Brimstone 2 before Eurofighter integration or any exports of Brimstones with SAL seekers.