Bought 4 British hand-me-downs. They've done service around the globe for us, but the early stages were grim - they needed upfits, they needed repairs (largely thanks to us not getting the procurement done and them sitting *not propoerly mothballed* in a UK port for years), and the slow procurement also meant weapons systems went out-of-production etc. Then some not-completely trained/competent crew/captain let a wave wash in and set the insides of one on fire (salt water and electrical systems... not a great combo).

We're planning to give them life-extension upfits out to 2040-ish. We only ever have 2 active at any given time given their age requires regular PMs and inspections and any operational damage just adds to the yard time they need.

The Aussies, when offered these boats before us, calculated it would cost them about the same amount to develop their own locally and then they'd have the contractors, the money would stay in the country, and they could sell to other countries. So they built their own (was friends with one of the fellows on the review committee). Don't know how the foreign sales thrust worked out, but the subs themselves seemed okay. (Mind you, Aussies bought our used Leopard I turrets - saw a pic of them all unloaded on the dock in one of their ports...).

I wish we'd built our own, but we like to buy stuff and mismanage the procurements. No shade cast at procurement staff who work hard, just procurement contracts and the legal parts of holding contractors accountable and having levers to get the contractors to comply with their agreements is not simple. If we built a frigate every year and a few coastal patrol vessels every year and a sub every third year or some such, we'd have an ongoing relationship and that would stabilize our capacity to execute missions as well. That's a political issue though.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 12:35 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

Speaking of which;

On Saturday, August 22, 2020, 08:34:09 PM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

We decided we'd buy hand-me-downs from the Brits, let them sit in harbour there unmaintained for a while, and then finally pay for them, realize their torpedos were no longer being manufactured, and somebody let a wave crash in through open hatches and start a dangerous electrical fire on one that put it out of commision for a long while.

We really need to improve our procurement planning - a little at a time consistently would be better than a bigger order every 25 years....

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Some decades back, as I recall, the Canadian gov announced that it was getting irate at the way that other navies where 'shortcutting' thru their territorial waters, primarily in the Arctic, I believe.
They announced that they were going to acquire a number of submarines whose primatu purpose would be to enforce their territorial boundaries.

Their was a minor amount of speculation from various sources but then it all dies down & I don't recall hearing anything more but I've wondered how that turned out.

Any info anyone?

TIA,

-----
The Traveller Mailing List
Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com
To unsubscribe from this list please go to
http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=RDHE7iRpfwqlHvVvWBIhpJZsbTiD5NnL