Gotland SSK Sub Brief 

I visited the Uppland in March 2016 at Karlskrona and was allowed to tour her on the condition I surrender my phone and any other electronic devices which is usual practice I did get one cheeky snap of her though 😉 I entered through the forward hatch and dropped into the torpedo compartment and to be honest it was as I had expected quite large inside (no weapons on board) The first thing that struck me was the layout of the torpedo tubes they are 4 over 2 also they carry two sizes of torpedo and that was the second thing I noticed The four centre tubes are 53cm the two tubes below are 40cm and you do notice that right away as the smaller tubes are pushed forward I’ve only ever seen 40cm on older Russian boats The XO of the boat explained the sonar system is quite large for the hull this is why the tubes are configured this was and the bomb shop is on two levels (the deck can be lifted) the bow array is above the tubes she also has two hull arrays one each side and a small chin array It’s pretty much a traditional layout for a boat something you would expect to see Moving back into the living area is quite plush for a diesel boat but still small and cramped but adequate the bunks were quite comfy and the usual small space to sleep etc The real interesting bit for me came in the control room which is below the sail it’s actually laid out quite well with the usual stations Very heavily computerized like you expect on a western boat but there’s some analog dials and gauges and valves in the spots you would expect them to be The layout has the stations sat on each side of the compartment back to back there’s several stations for sonar which if I recall rightly is the starboard side with fire control communications on the port side Obviously you notice two scopes and the captains chair off to the rear was the navigation area So for me pretty standard layout but you got the idea that this set up made for a good flow of information and this setup has been adopted in the Virginia and astute I believe Back a bit further is another mess and galley which is usual size nothing I didn’t expect to be honest the engine room which is almost standard one engine each side but there’s a lot of new attachments to the engines I was told this was to do with the sterling system (of course they won’t go into detail with me) Now the mid life upgrade they put a plug in so it has changed since I went onboard The sterling system is quite obvious to see and filled the aft engine room Behind all this is the shaft and below is the second bank of batteries Oddly aft there’s what the XO described as a computer room I was not allowed in here I was told it’s off limits to everyone of the crew bar certain officers and enlisted Leaving via the forward hatch again I got the sense that this is a good boat she is actually very well maintained so she is looked after and despite her age she would give most ASW platforms a headache She certain doesn’t show her age I had previously been on Orzel a Polish kilo class spent 3 days underway with her and the difference is night and day ! The flooring in uppland is even made of sound absorbing material and you get a sense that they built this thing to be silent first and foremost then efficiently in command and control I saw a similar set up in the German type 212’s as well so the Swedes and Germans defiantly have had a chat about it and come to similar conclusions

Funny story, I saw the Gotland crew at IKEA at San Diego. They were buying Swedish foods. I mistook them for IKEA staff much my embarassment.

I served as an engineer on Gotland in 2005 when we went to San Diego. It was a surreal experience going from the Baltic to hearing dolphins and whales on the sonar.

Jive, that sign saying FMV at 2:00 is not Swedish. FMV in Swedish is an abbreviation for Försvarets materielverk.

At 18:04 it says that the upgrade of Gotland cost 2.1 Billion Sek and that is equal to $2.2B. The correct value is that 2.2 Billion Sek is about $250 M !.

Regarding the USN, "Success is a poor teacher."

There is a story that is missing, what got the US to lease the Gotland in the first place. Well sometime in 2000-2001 the Halland did a tour to the Mediterranean and asked if countries wanted to train with her. Pretty much everyone along the way and the US said yes. For instance the French wanted to see if we could infiltrate their carrier group and sink their CV. The results? The French and the US navy have something in common ;) Halland did a great in every exercise it participated in regardless of scenario and "opposing" assets. The exercise with the US was with a Los Angeles class sub, sadly our brief was running out of time so the the officer giving the brief summarized it roughly "it went as good as all the rest, lets just say the Americans had a little bit of a reality check and probably needed to make some phone calls". Couple of years later the Gotland was leased.

It was HMS Halland that sparked the USNs interest in the class in the year 2000, when she won several duels in the atlantic against Spanish naval units and a French SSN. Later that year she participated in an exercise in the Mediterranean sea. The USN sent USS Houston, and from what I know, Halland won that one to.

Ask Jens for an interview, I bet if you ask you could work something out, the Sweedes are very accomodating like that.

2.1 billion SEK is about 244 million USD at current rates.

@5:54 on the propeller to the left in the drawing it says "Super secret, low-noise propeller"

Great video Jive! As an update on RADM Nykvist, in February 2020 he moved from Chief of Navy to Minister of Defense, and is currently Sweden's military representative in Brussels for the EU and NATO.

Everything is so clean. From proposal process, production and even take a look at their shipyard. Just clean. Naturally I understand that those factors become a tad easier when you’re able to do small boutique style production but still it’s commendable to be so clean throughout. And great job Jive! Once again, such a great production on your behalf as well my dood! Being on the NAVAIRSYSCOM side of the house I always recommend your content when asked where to look for good OS briefs.

The company I worked for in San Diego, CA designed and developed their transient acoustic sonar system in the late 90's and early 2000. As the system engineer for the project I designed the hardware and software system, and led the development in the software system. It was a nice project for a company that had developed similar systems for the U.S. Navy like the BQR-22A and BQR-23.

Few things: Stirling engine is NOT an internal combustion engine. It is EXTERNAL combustion engine. It means that piston is heated from outside.And helium and nitrogen are not part of the combustion process, but they are inside the piston, as a working gas.

The conversion between USD and SEK is way off.

I'm sure the crew didn't mind staying in San Diego for that long.

While I was studying at uni I worked extra during the summer break and weekends at a battery factory. The coolest thing I ever did at that place was and something I'm actually am proud of was to build batteries for the Gotland submarines. When they change batteries every X years they put it in a dry dock, cut it open - replace the batteries and then weld it shut again. The specs and quality checks for those batteries were at least 10x compared to everything else we did, and some of them had some really funky shapes.

Late last year the new 5 year defence plan was encted and in that the third Gotland class submarine will undergo MLU as well

What a capable submarine & crew. Hats off to the little David slaying the Goliath....luckily for all of us in an exercise.

You got the speed wrong ;) Surfaced: 11 knots (20 km/h) Submerged: 20 knots (37 km/h) on batteries; 5 knots (9.3 km/h) on AIP

There were several Swedish submarine classes between the Sjööormen and Gotland. The Näcken and Västergötland class are two of them.

This is lovely. Although get ready for the new Blekinge class.

Another excellent sub brief!! This is a very interesting class of boats I've never heard of before, which I thought somewhat shocking considering their history/capability. I always enjoy learning about Russian & US boats, but this was a surprising & welcome change. Thank you cpt Jive Turkey for your dedication & hard work!

Thank you. This is the video I didn’t know I wanted but now can not live without. I love your content. You have inspired me to try for NUPOC.

Great brief Jive, very informative. Did however experience lots of glitches in the video, which I'm sure was something to do with the RU-vid platform.

Thank you for the video; it was very interesting. It speaks well of the Swedes that for a country with a small population (about 10 million) they produce some very high-tech products.

Stirling Engines are pretty cool how they work, while I'm sure the Gotland's style is more complicated and classified, its really more like an "external" combustion engine as the basic versions you can even get as a desk toy use an external flame to heat up air in a tube with a piston and that causes the motion of the piston that turns drivewheel to get your rotational movement. There's several videos about them out there but I'm curious how they made the one for subs that work as well as it does. Really cool, really old tech

Those pictures at 6:48 are from 2015 and show the first steel cut for the new Blekinge class (A26).

Helium is the working gas in the stirling engine. It's kept in a closed system and is not mixed with fuel or oxygen. From the beginning, the fuel was white spirit but since diesel fuel has gotten so clean (low sulfur), now it's used instead.

This is why I drive a SAAB 9-3....that distinctive Griffin Badge on the nose...creator of epic aircraft and naval craft...and a serious 6-speed Turbo car. !

Dude, your FMV logo there at the beginning has nothing to do with our Försvarets Materielverk. I'm not sure what it is, but the name looks like Turkish.

This is the submarine that got me interested in submarines, I'm very happy to see you doing a sub brief on it

Hard to believe that one of these puppies is significantly cheaper than an F-35!

Small correction. Jens Nykvist is as of last year no longer chief of the Swedish navy. He was replaced after long and faithful service by Ewa Skoog Haslum. Perfect video otherwise. Really enjoyed it!

Some minor things: BREGT is not a Swedish name, unfortunately. The governor of Skåne is named BENGT Holgersson. At 7:00. Jens Nykvist has a new job as the Swedish Military Representative to the EU and NATO, at the Permanent Representation of Sweden in Brussels. The new chief of the Swedish navy is a woman named Ewa Skoog Haslum.

The previous was called Sjöormen (Sea-Serpent)

Hello there, a pedantic swede here. About ÅÄÖ and how to pronounce them: Å soundes like the O in More, Gore, Lore, Door, For, Store Ä sounds like the A in Damn, Van, Land, Man, Band Ö sounds like the U in Murder, burn, turn, the E in Stern, the EA in Learn From Sweden with Love - Kami

Waited for it, its really silent assasin i sailed near Gotland island two weeksago, and even saw ORP Orzeł submarine going for trials ;)

I'm a little surprised the americans didn't buy one from SAAB. I would think this would have a good use case for coastal defense around Norfolk, NYC, Boston, etc.

The area where Kockums was is nothing like it was now. The crane itself was sold to South Korea (I think) and the area has been transformed into a residential area called "Västra Hamnen" (The western harbour). Kinda nostalgic seeing these old pictures of Malmö :D

Fascinating video! I wish you'd explained a bit about what happens to the exhaust in the sterling engine...

Check out the cutaway: propulsion is by a DC electric motor attached directly to the propeller which means that forward/neutral/reverse are achieved by manipulating the current and voltage i e the drivetrain contains no gears that might make noise

Admiral Nykvist is, as of 2020, the military representative and special attaché to the Swedish EU-representation, having stepped down as MC. He was flotilla commander for the First Submarine Flotilla 2013-2016, and then MC from 2016 to 2020 (MC would be the equivalent of the US CNO position). His successor, Ewa Skoog Haslum, is a surface combatant, and the first female Swedish flag officer.

Eagerly awaiting for your review on our Riachuelo class SSN's. One of ours already undergoes sea trials. A significant leap in national technology.

The stirling engine idea is pretty cool. I really like the fuel cell AIPs. Take hydrogen, combine with oxygen, get energy and pure water. You can store the pure water and once you surface you can use power derived from the diesel engines to reclaim almost all of your hydrogen and oxygen stores! (albeit pretty inefficiently) And it's way better than just dumping the pure water (since you can't drink it anyway), because electrolysis of saltwater tends to leave a lot of crap behind lol

FYI: "Sjöormen" translates to "Sea Serpent" (old sub and sub class first built in 1968, and all 5 boats sold in 1997 to Singapore) .

Watching this from my home town of Malmö. Great video! Thanks a lot!

Whew! Glad you're on our side!

The U.S. Navy should build diesel-electric submarines modeled after the Gotland and use them for among other things, protecting the missile subs from possible sneak attacks as they depart and return to their lairs. I suspect if the U.S. Navy does build modern diesel subs with air independent propulsion and all the latest quieting technology, they would be larger, carry more weapons and probably would be both faster and deeper diving. Some modern diesel boats can operate at very deep depths, which makes an already stealthy submarine even more so.They are ideal for protecting our coastlines because they do not need to go far from home, and they are very cost effective ways to augment the fleet so the larger nuclear subs can do other things farther from home. I'm glad this boat was covered in a video on this channel.....it sounds like a submarine Sweden should have built more of.

Hello SUB BRIEF, that reminds me of the year 2001, when the German submarine U24 approached the "USS Enterprise" up to torpedo range.

8:19 - I think you might have mixed up the surface and submerged speeds. With that bow-shape, being on the Sail at 20 knots would certainly be a sight to behold :'D

It'd be interesting to see how the type 212 submarine family compares to the Gotland class. They're equipped with fuel cell AIP propulsion with virtually no moving parts (except for the main shaft obviously)....

As usual an amazing story of another great vessel. Thanks for the content.

I've always been interested in the submarines which were based at Port Canaveral near the Kennedy Space Center and Canaveral Air Force Station during the early space program and through the Shuttle program. I watched an attack boat leave through the inlet once and have always wondered about their mission.

I wish you still did Cold Waters streams. I know you got bored with them but I really enjoyed rookie jive Turkey admitting mistakes were made during torpedo beats.

Great video, very interesting! Just one small comment about the audio: please use a pop-filter in front of the microphone and/or use a high-pass filter in post-processing to filter out the low-frequency wind noises, they are very obvious and a bit annoying on speakers that reproduce low-end well!

Been waiting for this. Fun too se my country build something good :)

Also HMS Halland will be upgraded. First it was said that only Gotland and Uppland would be upgraded but recently, it has been decided that Halland too will get the same upgrade. With the two new A26 underway, Sweden will have 5 modern submarines.

Point of order! What determines whether an engine is internal combustion or external combustion is whether the combustion takes place inside or outside of the working fluid. In a diesel engine, the working fluid is the air charge taken into the cylinder and the air charge is also where the combustion takes place, so a diesel engine is an internal combustion engine. For the Sterling engine, the working fluid moves between the hot and the cold side of the engine, through the recuperator, to produce mechanical work and the combustion is used to supply heat to the hot side, so the Sterling engine is an external combustion engine. Most (all?) steam engines and steam turbines are also external combustion engines [Hellmuth Walter's WWII era submarine propulsion system using high test peroxide and a fuel may have been an internal combustion steam engine, but that would make it the exception that proves the rule.]

Awesome Jive! Been looking forward to the Gotland Class Brief! Badassery Sir

Awesome brief. Thanks for putting this together 😃

I find the fact that this sub uses a sterling engine fascinating!!! I have never seen one really do anything except for those little demistration models.

One interesting excercise: invite a US sub to play hide and seek with the Swedish navy in the Swedish archipelago.

The Australian Collins Class is based on the Gotland class, roughly double the size but no AIP. The extra size was mostly for more batteries, fuel tanks and Mk 48s.

I would imagine the added cooling was for the engine while operating in warmer water as the Sterling engine is a temperature differential engine, just a guess on my part, great video, thanks.

You’ve got the surfaced and dived speeds the wrong way around. 10 knots surfaced and 20 knots dived.

Before Gotland Class it was Kilo Class, Polish ORP Orzeł in middle 90's when one of the first navy exercises with Poland in NATO and back than Polish ORP Orzeł sank British Carrier on Baltic sea. Got the nickname after this event "Black Hole".

Stirling is EXTERNAL combustion engine. It runs on simple principle of change in pressure/volume of gas (in closed volume) with change of temperature. Swedes made it run without vibrations. The question is what they did with combustion products still.

FMV stands for 'Försvarets Materielverk'. I don't know what language that picture was in but that's definitely not it.

The speeds quoted here look odd to me. I've seen them reported the other way round (11 knots surfaced, 20 knots submerged when using the batteries, and much less when completely relying on AIP). Post WW2 sub designs (and even very late WW2 with the type-XXI U-boat) tend to be optimized for submerged performance, so it would be an odd design decision to optimize for surface performance on a boat where the design brief was better under-sea endurance.

Waiting for A26 model to review.

Great video about a great sub, seen her from a distance irl and what a fine thing she is. Cheers from Sweden

My Father company sold equipment for Swedish Navy submarines. They were purchased by Sweden not for carrier interdiction, but to stem the flow of revenue to smugglers (50% duty on imports).

Omg omg omg.. Was waiting for this for so long!.. The sub that scared the pants of us navy asw-men..

Wonderful boat!

Stirling and external combustion engines have been around for a long time. They were once used a lot to pump house water with a little coal fire under them in people's basements. Check out Jay Leno's Garage channel for one he's restored. Why it is nice here is the engine doesn't have any rapid combustion events like a compression diesel or petrol engine does. Just a constantly burning flame and a supply of cold water heat head exchanged to the sea water. And as far as the exercise. People really need to keep the frame of reference in mind. The exercise extremely limited what the Task Force was allowed to utilized in terms of ASW and they had to sit there. IRL a Gotland would have to have luck to be in the right place at the right time to actually get a chance as it can't even approach a underway CVN group due to the speed differential. The goal was to see how well a at harbor force could detect a AIP electric boat like the Gotland. As it is known other nations are developing/building them.

I wish Taiwan had a half dozen of these boats. They have been looking for 6 modern diesel boats for a while but no one was willing to sell them out of fear of angering the dragon. They almost had a deal once but it fell through when the builder backed out. Maybe they can get India to build them some Kalvari (Scorpene) class subs.

We in Scandinavia are very proud of our kroner, but the value of them are not quite as much as we would like to think. 2.1 B SEK is around 190-200 mio $.

I think you made an error on the exchange rate. 1 Swedish krona is about 0.12 USD(12 cents) Thus 2,1 billion krona is about 252 mil. USD. Excellent information. Thank you.

It must be galling for the Swedes that, after an advertisement like that, they didn’t manage to sell any for export in the way they did the Gripen.

Thanks god this thing is on our side, OFFICIALLY, now.

Thank you herr Capitano. Great brief.

Yeah been waiting for this, great vid Thank you

Love to know more about the Stirling Engine. I know the basics of how such a Stirling Engine works, but would love to hear more details about this implementation. Can you post a link to these details? Better yet, do a White Board chat on it? Love to see Leroy trying to operate one :)

Considering this class of boat was designed for the Baltic. It's very telling that they have so many mines on the hull. I wonder what the turnaround time is to fully reload the mines?

One thing that is sometimes not mentioned about Gotland class subs used by Sweden is that it is designed for use in coastal waters defense not for transiting the long distances to their patrol areas like the US Navy nuclear powered subs always do. Yes, the Gotland class sub is very quiet as compared to the nuclear powered subs but it needs a lot of refueling to transit long distances. In fact, when the US Navy leased the Gotland SSK sub for training purposes, they had to put it on a floating drydock ship for the transit from Sweden to San Diego NAS.

Great video and excellent submarine 👍🏻

tip: Nykvist is probably easier for you to pronounce as New-quizzed.

Jens is like Yenss, all the Skandinavian languages pronounce j like a y. Great video! Takk! CJensen

Thanks for the amazing brief Jive. Just a little mishap: the FMV logo at 1:35 belongs to a Turkish private school, not the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration which also have acronym FMV 😉

The gotlant apparently used electromagnets to completely eliminate any magnetic signatures. No doubt active noise cancelling as well.

Thanks for your work.

Thank you for your very interesting contents! I am always learnin a lot. Could you also do something about the German Type 212? I think this might be very interesting for comparison because this is, as far as I know, another air independent non-nuclear concept.

Watching your series has really triggered my interest in studying submarine propulsion systems

I’d love to see Jive Interview Rear Admiral Jens on the channel.

What becomes of the Stirling engine exhaust?

the design is like to understated...

I had been wondering how this system worked for ages

Another great one Jiv... I mean Aaron! :) Hope to see a TYpe 214 soon!