Naval News has a tradition of running an April Fools article on April 1 each year. These are intended to amuse and entertain. There is no intention to genuinely deceive or mislead. At the same time, we hope that the content is thought provoking for those with a deep understanding of submarine topics.
Last year we published an “exclusive leak” showing that the AUKUS design would be based on an enlarged Collins-class submarine. This touched base with the cheer complexity of nuclear propulsion and submarine overhaul.
In 2021, we introduced you to China’s new mega-super-submarine, the insanely large Type-100 Sun Tzu class. That highlighted Chinese submarine construction, and how little we know about it.
This year, we chose (again) the AUKUS submarine program because of the recent developments: Australia will initially acquire as many as five Virginia class SSNs. These will then be replaced by up to eight “SSN-AUKUS” submarines.
The AUKUS submarine program came as a surprise. Not least to the preceding Attack-class submarine program. That would have seen the construction of 12 French-designed Shortfin Barracuda boats for the RAN. The Shortfin was a conventionally powered derivative of France’s Suffren-class nuclear submarine, itself part of the Barracuda program. This program is moving forward normally, with the second submarine in the class starting its sea trials one week ago.
