What You Need to Know: The Royal Navy’s Astute-class submarines are a testament to British engineering, offering exceptional stealth, endurance, and firepower. Some experts say they are the best attack submarines on Earth.
-Equipped with Rolls Royce PWR2 reactors, these nuclear-powered subs can operate for 25 years without refueling, making them as quiet as “baby dolphins.”
-Armed with Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Astute-class boasts an unrivaled arsenal.
-Advanced features like an optronic periscope, sonar system, and anechoic tiles ensure these boats stay undetected while delivering devastating strikes.
-With five active subs and two more expected by 2025, the Astute-class reinforces Britain’s maritime strength and serves as a formidable challenge to adversaries like Russia.
Astute-Class Submarines: Britain’s Secret Weapon Against Russia’s Navy
The Royal Navy ruled the seas for centuries, building the most significant warships in the world.
The island nation became the world’s most powerful empire through its command of the sea.
After World War II, the British were replaced by the United States, as they couldn’t compete with America’s industrial might.
Great Britain had strict budgets and couldn’t afford to build, maintain, and man aircraft carriers like its American allies.
So, it set out to build a world-class submarine service.
The Astute-Class submarine harkens the Royal Navy (RN) back to when it was the world’s envy.
Some claim the Astute-class submarines are even better than the US Virginia-class subs.
Whether they are or not…is still bad news for Putin’s navy.
Meet the Astute Class Submarines
The RN built the Astute-class submarines to replace the aging Trafalgar-class boats. These nuclear-powered world-class submarines are known for their outstanding stealth (they are as quiet as baby dolphins), firepower, and endurance.
Rolls Royce built the propulsion system (PWR2 Reactors), and the sub won’t have to be refueled for its entire service lifetime, which is about 25 years.
Pressurized Water Reactors are a very safe design because the hotter the water used to cool the reactor, the slower the nuclear fission reaction becomes, thus making it self-regulating.
The boat is 97 meters (about 308 feet) long, weighs 7,400 tons, can reach speeds of 31 knots, and has a crew of 98, down from 130 in the Trafalgar class. The Astute-class subs have six torpedo tubes and can carry 38 Spearfish torpedoes or Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles.
Astute-Class Submarine Royal Navy
The Spearfish 1 torpedoes have a range of 30km and can be wire-guarded or use an inboard sonar system.
The Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles have a range of about 1,000 miles.
When submerged, the sub carries a Dry Deck Shelter to launch Special Boat Service teams. When it is at the surface, it can also launch a Zodiac for SBS.
New Periscope Is a Huge Improvement
The optronic periscope is one of the best innovations that improves boat operation. Until the development of the Astute class, all RN submarines had periscopes containing mirrors and prism arrangements that allowed the commander to observe the view directly above the waterline when the boat was at shallow depth. The periscopes were the typical collapsing tube types that everyone is familiar with.
This new system is contained within the fin, and the CM010 electro-optical sensors gather high-definition digital imagery quickly. This reduces the time the mast is above the water when the submarine is potentially vulnerable to visual or radar detection.
The sensor head unit features 3-axis stabilization, giving a more stable and precise picture, even if the boat is pitching or rolling at periscope depth in rough seas. Instead of only allowing the operator to observe the scene, the new method can conduct a rapid 360º all-around look.
The command team can review the imagery on screens in the control room long after the periscope is lowered.
Stealth Is Improved on Astute-Class Subs
The sub is covered by more than 39,000 anechoic tiles, which absorb active sonar pulses and reduce noise from inside the boat. The chemical composition of the tiles is classified, but they are made from an elastic material containing tiny air pockets and are optimized to reduce the typical sonar frequencies of homing torpedoes.
The Thales 2076 sonar system suite is considered one of, if not the best, in the world. The 2076 is an “integrated passive/active search sonar suite with hull and towed arrays,” according to the British Ministry of Defense.
(May 21, 2003) — This conceptual drawing shows the new Virginia-class attack submarine now under construction at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., and Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va. The first ship of this class, USS Virginia (SSN 774) is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. Navy in 2004. U.S. D.O.D. graphic by Ron Stern. (RELEASED)
Royal Navy Captain Ian Hughes said, “A good analogy for the performance of Sonar 2076 is that if the submarine was in Winchester it would be able to track a double-decker bus going around Trafalgar Square” (a distance of about 60 miles).
The British currently have five Astute-class subs in service, Astute, Ambush, Artful, Audacious, and Anson, plus the new subs under construction, Agincourt and Agamemnon, are expected to enter service sometime in 2025.
The Brits hit it out of the park with the Astute-class subs.
About the Author:
Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in other military publications.
rohan wilson
January 12, 2025 at 9:00 pm
A safety assessment of the PWR2 design by the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator in November 2009 was released under a Freedom of Information request in March 2011.[12][13] The regulator identified two major areas where UK practice fell significantly short of comparable good practice: loss-of-coolant accident and control of submarine depth following emergency reactor shutdown.[14][13] The regulator concluded that PWR2 was “potentially vulnerable to a structural failure of the primary circuit”, which was a failure mode with significant safety hazards to crew and the public.[13][15]
Vitali Аlexandrovich Druzhinin
January 12, 2025 at 11:01 pm
Excellent reminding of all in the world that the once invincible and overreaching Royal Majesty fleet ,is here to be present again.God save the King Charles III and bless the World Parliament of Peace International inter-governmental corporate and Intelligence Organization for doing what we were doing during more than half a century now.
John ANTHONY STODART
January 13, 2025 at 5:08 am
Very informative, thanks. One correction, however, if you don’t mind.
There is no correlation between the UK’s decision in the 1960s to opt out of Carrier new construction and the development of an SSN, and then SSBN, capability.
1960 and HMS DREADNOUGHT, the UK’s first SSN, was an inevitable essential development to combat the USSR’s growing maritime capability. The USN had NAUTILUS, their first SSN, just 2 years earlier.
Nuclear powered submarines were, for both navies, an imperative to ensure maritime supremacy in the face of a numerically massive Soviet submarine force ….. and in short order, the advantage of strategic nuclear deterrent superiority, with SSBN development.
(Myself ex-RN and a 1971 ‘graduate’ of the USN Submarine Sonar School, Groton, CT, in the process of developing an RN sonar training and operating capability to suit our SSN development, in particular the SWIFTSURE class.)
John ANTHONY STODART
January 13, 2025 at 5:20 am
I probably should have specified that the UK Government’s “No more Carriers” announcement was Spring 1966 (thus 6 years after DREADNOUGHT’s arrival.)
I remember it well ….. the self flagellation within the Service ….. “no more carriers equalled the end of the world”!
I could expand on my own reaction to that ….. expressed in a (RNC Greenwich and RUSI prize winning) essay on ‘the future of the RN without aircraft carriers’.
An interesting time!
Graham Moore
January 13, 2025 at 11:52 am
The author suggests that Britain gave up building aircraft carriers after WW2. This was not the case.
Raymond
January 13, 2025 at 1:40 pm
Really l feel that the sort of information given out is NOT a good thing.
Their capabilities should never be discussed but on a need to know basis
Riaan Perold
January 13, 2025 at 5:04 pm
Excellent thank you. Informative and concise!
A. Moloney MMN(SS) Chief retired
January 14, 2025 at 11:52 am
Several areas of incorrect info. PWR advantage is its inherently wants to shutdown. Water density and relation to power is a true characteristic but when operating the plants run at a consistent temperature so is not a safety feature. Also the SHT is for sound absorbation outside. Sound isolation techniques and designs are for inside. Periscopes with traditional optics are one piece tube that goes up and down not in sections that accordion up.