Scorpene SSK Sub Brief 

Great!. I am looking forward for your lecture. The size of the yard was not a problem, the real thing was a not safe enough (for La Armada) reserve of buoyancy. After contracting Electric Boat they enlarge the "animal". They had also had serious problems with the AIP system. The first Spanish S-80, the S-81, is now in the dock. They are installing the last equipment and will go under sea trials next March with the idea of having it ready for La Armada in one year, when the second one, the S-82, will be at dock (like S81 is today). This two submarines do not have the AIP system that will be installed in the first major overhaul; they could do it but the Armada refused the idea for safety reasons. The S-83 and S-84 are under construction to be in dock in 2023 and 2024 ( expected to be commissioned 2024 and 2025 respectively), both will have the AIP since the beginning. That is the data as I remembered.

Actually, there's some similarity between Scorpene and S-80, but it's really skin deep. Scorpene wasn't a coporduction agreement insofar as Navantia (Bazan) didn't have access to the combat system, design info other than what they built and had to use providers certified by the French. Despite this, at one point Scorpene was anounced as the future S-80, but as mentioned, the deal failed for political reasons and Navantia went alone, mismanaging the project spectacularly as mentioned in the previous answer. Once proper redesign had been completed with EB help, the project has been coming along nicely. There were some uncertainties around the AIP plant (which ended up being bigger and only fit in the redesigned boat) including fuel cells (which aren't produced in Spain, but in the US). Spanish companies had to create the combat system from the ground up and integrate the German torpedoes, so the boat is in fact quite different from Scorpene.

Thanks ! I'll watch this one with GREAT interest !

@@lgriestra They should have decoupled the AIP issue ... and gone initially conventional diesel/electric, which they finally had to do .. as the wait could not be further delayed. India's native AIP project also dragged the same problem, delaying its Scòrpene launch, and also took the decision to launch the first units with conventional propulsion. New developments in batteries as pioneered by Japan and Korea in their latest subs may provide a temporary stopgap until new gen AIP irons outs some of the technological obstacles. It reminds me of the F35 fighter, where the B (STOL/VTOL) version has hampered all the project, it should have been spinned off ... It shares some commonalities but is more of a different species. A (conventional) and C(arrier) versions would have reached availability and market before if not subordinated to their lagging and more complex brother.

I would love for you to do a deepdive on the Gotland class (A 19) subs

I go over all the differences.

@@SubBrief hm?

@@SubBrief wut

@@SubBrief That's the answer to Pedro's comment.

I go over all the differences.

@@SubBrief I just think it's cool the way similar concepts show up in seemingly vastly different fields like astronomy and sonar. I know it's not a 1:1 comparison, but it's still kinda neat.

From the macro to the micro similar technology is also used in semiconductor production.

Yes.. And the raw data those telescopes collate is usually in petabytes.. It's much more faster for them to physically courier a copy of the physical stack of hard hard drives than to send them over the internet; to the lab that has the supercomputers to figure out the raw data points and give a intelligible output.. Mind-blowing operation.. 🤯

I go over all the differences.

Good update. Thank you.

Good for Romania! 3 is the magic number. 1 in operation, 1 in training, 1 in maintenance.

Sub cooperation between DCNS (nowadays Naval Group) with then Bazán (afterwards Irizar, and finally Navantia as the spinoff with the military shipyards, remaining the civilian in the former) had started decades before with the local construction of the S60 Daphné class, followed by its successor, the S70 Agosta class. S80 Scorpène was a 50%-50% project, as the initial buyer was to be Spain with 6 units, and any other sales would be export, as by then the French had decided to go all nuclear powered for their own future subs. DCNS role in international fairs was not of a trusted partner, ommiting the fact to potential clients that it was in a partnership. We see a similar attitude in the current FCAS project, always downplaying their Spanish partners. No wonder that with the Eurofighter headaches prior to France's exit, Italy preferred to go with the Brits on the Tempest. The sole fact Spain is there, is due to Germany. True that the sub was basically a french design, but it incorporated inputs also from the Spanish shipyard and Navy due to long exposure to the French (DCNS) way of designing and manufacturing. And thus it is no surprise that the S80 also had a certain external family look, regardless that the "environment" obviously defines the shape and as convergent evolution shows: independent organisms evolve to similar traits ... we see this also in aeronautics and the automotive industry. The US and France (starting with DeGaulle) had supplied the Spanish civil nuclear program, and the latter also floated the proposal of a nuclear sub. The Armada found the french subs fine for littoral tasks but unpractical to cover the >2000 Km one way distance and patrol from the mainland to the Canary Islands. Project SUBESPRON addressed this need of a true ocean sub capability and deterrance with a nuclear sub, for which the French floated a Rubis derivative. It was shelved among other issues due to the fuel dependency and high cost. This was no uninterested move, first: the need of a partner with whom to share costs; and a way to lock in Spain's dependency, who until then was an important buyer of French civil and military products (tanks AMX30, Mirage planes, the above mentioned subs ...). Since the XVIII century, with the Bourbon dynasty in the Spanish throne, the country's policy was alligned or subordinated to the French, dragging us to wars with the Brits, in favour of the US, the conquest of Indochina (VietNam), and Morocco, in which Spain made significant contributions, payed a high price, and in those that succeeded, got no acknowledgement. Some of the Spanish military services had began to abandon the French military dependancy; one of the first blows was the German Leopard tank; the sale of the Spanish Artillery Ordnance Company to GDLS instead of to AMX-GIAT; remain in the EF consortium and not bail out to following FR in the Rafale ... HK instead of FAMAS ... ...

i think those are reuploads or something. in one of those he says "up to now in 2019" i think in typhoon one

The caricaturization of Navantia's S80 project by their main competitors, specially NG, is precisely a sign of fear, that they take it as a serious competitor ... else they would not even bother. They felt the pinch with the success of the F100 frigates and the LHDs. And the S80 sub project was seen as a serious potential challenger to the West conventional sub export market duopoly of NG and TKNS, with their respective Scorpène and 212 products. There are some other players like Saab (ex Kolum) with good now how, mainly oriented to its country’s needs, like its Gripen fighter; but with export projects not materializing, as all military purchases have also a significant political implication beyond the industrial or technical specifications per se. The adoption and the feat of the then new frigates of boasting advanced US Navy equipment like AN/SPY, Aegis, Mark 41 VLs on a hull smaller than an Arleigh Burke (aka a mini AB, something that had been considered impossible) and exposure to other potential naval equipment and purveyors like Raytheon and Lockheed, convinced the Armada that the French equipment was first class, but some of the US was comparable if not better in some categories. Due to strategic and commercial arguments, French equipment was avoided whenever posible in the sub. The frigates do use the excellent Thales towed Captas sonars, but for the sub they went with Lockheed who also provided the SUBICS Combat System, not to be confused with the French SUBTICS. This also simplified the integration of other US weapon systems and sensors, as the software interfaces were already available and real-life tested. The costs mentioned in the video refer to the full project, including facility and specific manufacturing equipment which are fixed costs to be spread over the class, not oto be allocated in full to the first unit. The unit cost and sales tag is foreseen to be in line with those of comparable subs: 500-700 million €. Final price depends on client customization. I think the S80Plus class is going to be limited to the currently finished unit, also as a testbed, plus the 2 hulls underway, of the 6 initially foreseen. The other three shall probably be cancelled in favour of the S90 already in conceptual work: jet pump propulsion, x steering tail instead of the traditional cross scheme, VL for cruise missiles ... … AIP/new battery technology/revival of nuclear? The country is one of the few with Armed Forces funded way below the country's economic weight. It laggers behind not complying NATO's 2% GDP minimum. For good or bad, it's the choice of its people and elected leaders. 550 million € only in next years gender policies ... a bloated Public Admin with a cost of 500.000 million € (=US$ 565 billion) ... and without discussing about the too generous welfare state ... so no budgetary excuse to have one of the finest and best equipped EU Armed Forces.

The dock was planned to be increased since the very beginning of the project

Christian Villanueva of Ejercitos magazine, is a great expert in the S80 Odyssey, which he gone through in many articles. He himself is a naval engineer, and is going a publish a book on the subject, compiling these plus foreseable additional and updated information. The calculation or buoyancy error was a caricatured simplification of a problem in a project where the requirements are a moving target with specifications changing over time. The sub did float and could be used in its S80 incarnation, but it had exhausted its space reserve for future expansion. And the Navy did not accept a limp duck with constrained possibilities. The problem of Public owned Companies is that there is a high chance that the guy placed at the helm has no idea about the business. The flop of sending to early retirement some of the best engineers and experienced workforce was one of the worst. Their successors were naive in not checking this. And surely the poor freshmen were not aware that the CAD/CAM system was advising of this mismatch, probably lost in a specific tab or menu option. Electric Boat is a division of General Dynamics, Navantia's long time US partner, whose F110 derived was proposed in the FFG(X) tender. Despite this, the protocol required the assistance and supervision for the S80 to be channelled through the Navies of both countries. General Electric is the supplier of the US submarines nuclear reactors, licenced to the Brits for local manufacturing by RR. Talking about the Brits, if you look at the timeline of the first Astute it has not much to envy the S80 in mishaps. The sub had also to be enlarged as since its design the reactor had jumped to a new generation. It was more powerful, but bulkier. Here too Electric Boat was called in. In practice the EB team ended being deployed for a longer term than initially expected, and in practice runnning the shipyard.

@@santoriniblue8413 correct. And read his article from the S80 odyssey.

Is the U.S. criticizing Brazil? I haven't see that.

@@SubBrief Yes captain, I suppose me saying criticizing is too harsh when you did say it was only a point of contention. It would be interesting to see what they build ultimately, a nuclear submarine based on a diesel-electric design. That would make her one of the smallest nuclear subs in the world, similar to the Rubis class.

The thing, AFAIK, is that even from low enriched one is able to get plutonium from the spent fuel after reprocessing. Brazil was researching fuel reprocessing in the past, but something happened and the matter was left alone. As a concerned citizen, I prefer Brazil doesn't join the Club, we can barely play the diplomacy game, it's folly to think that nukes will help.

@@marcondespaulo And your South American neighbors will be spooked as well.

@@abigailroberts7943 I guess anyone with half a brain would be spooked when you neighbor has nuke weapons, or even nuclear grade uranium.

India has also developer such system based on PAFC system

When the Scorpion came out, at the time I thought that they took the Rubis design, removed the nuclear reactor and replaced it with MESMA as the source of the steam for the turbogenerator, the Rubis used to make power for the electric motor which drove it's propeller.

IIRC, there is no CO-free option with using hydrocarbon fuels. All those leave carbon byproducts like combustion, because in the end, they are products of an oxidation reaction.

co2 isnt much of a problem apparently it goes into water just fine. nitrogen is problem. so if you use pure oxygen to burn something co2 will just absorb into water. it was the same with long lance torpedoes not much bubbles because of pure oxygen. at least thats my understanding

Non, les tubes de lancement français utilisent un vérin pneumatique (les torpilles françaises sont conçues pour fonctionner avec). Les autres marines rejettent la torpille avec de l'eau haut débit. C'est pour ça qu'ils n'ont pas de torpilles françaises.

Agreed

Yep, english speakers spell Chile, like NIke or CETME. In the other hand, we spell USA badly, we should say “ Iuesei” lol

As I explained in a previous comment, that is the current full project expenditure including specific factory tooling plus the construction cost. Unit price is in the 500-700 million EUR depending on the final number of units built. The price is in-line with comparable 1st line conventional subs. In any case, due to the time delay it is 40% more than initially budgeted. I assume you are Australian, so you may understand that the Spanish sub project suffered akin to the Australian ATTACK delay more due to politics and navy chiefs of staff changing the goals and missions, changing the subs specifications with almost every cabinet.

I go over all the differences.

The split between Navantia and Naval Group is linked to the wish of Nanvantia to develop a new sub based on the original French design but using different weapon systems. Naval group considered that this was infringing on its property rights and refused to continue to co-develop the submarine in those conditions. The divorce was agreed around 2010 and both groups then went ahead with their own design.

Its not a scorpene hull, the alvaro alberto will be larger than the barracuda, and the reactor has already been developed and is under testing in a navy research facility called LABGENE basically a real scale model of the Alvaro Alberto's power plant section with the nuclear reactor and generators inside. Basically the agreement with france was transfer of technology of modern submarine hull construction and subsystems, the nuclear submarine design is not a scorpene

I believe there is no way France would have transferred nuclear technology to Australia. If they even attempted such a deal there would be a lot of geopolitical backlash, I can't see it happening. The AUKUS deal on the other hand is the only way such a deal could be made nowadays. If Australians were to develop all the technology by themselves it could take many years with political/population support for the program, or take decades otherwise.

@@marcouno8850 As we speak they are building a nuclear power plant in china ! No backlash there! But they don t wanna do that in Australia ?And rather lose the contract ? That is hard to believe! To my knowlege they weren t even asked! Austrailia will have to import know how to build any submarine ,let alone a nuclear one! Also they have to build in any chase new specialized facilitys to build those! Even with Aukus it will take decades , especially if you consider that they only have an agreement right now ! No design or anything! While with the frence one you already have a design which can come as either conventional or nuclear! At best Aukus is just as fast but I doubt even that! Even if the say otherwise ! Political and economical shinanigans are probably the bigger factor than any sane argument here! Not that im angry or anything , this is just the game!

@@christianjunghanel6724 I see man, I agree with a lot of what you are saying. About the nuclear power plant in China, it is not the first nuclear power plant being built on another country, there have been many. But a deal to build a nuclear submarine for another country is probably the first. It's all I meant by that. I'm definitely not qualified to talk specifics, but there is a whole lot more technical and engineering challenges in fitting and operating a nuclear reactor inside a submarine and making it effective. You are definitely right, the world is run on political and economical shenanigans.

The Australians had already lost confidence in Naval Group - they were already years behind schedule and way over budget. Besides that, the Frech nuclear submarines use an older technology that requires refueling every 10 years with the submarine out of commision for an extended period. The newer technology in US and British boats allows them to operate for over 30 years before requiring refueling. In addition Australia already had deep alliances with the US such as ANZUS in which Australia and the US jointly operate secret spying, radar, and military communications networks, They are both members of Five Eyes, and their militaries have a high degree of interoperability and regularly train together. AUKUS builds upon existing treaties and a long history of sharing sensitive technologies. For example, Australia is the only nation outside the US to be given permission to own and operate the Growler electronic warfare fighter jet. Australia also manufactures significant components of the F35 such as tail fin and wing components and parts of the weapons systems. Co-operation is deep and has existed for more than a century. France, on the other hand, was new to the Australian military, and has not had historic ties other than Australians fighting in France in the First World War. Thus any negotiations would be starting from scratch, and probably with great reluctance on the part of France. France would also not be in a position of being able to lease nuclear submarines to Australia while new ones were built. Lastly, the problems experienced by Naval Group in planning for the Australian Attack Class suggest that the larger boat required by Australia in larger quanties may have been a project of a scale that was beyond their capabilities. We will never know whether they could have successfully completed the project in any reasonable time frame, but the long delays and almost doubling the budget came under great criticism in Australia and the government had been under great pressure to drop the Naval Group build. It was widely discussed that for the same price as the Naval Group project was going to cost, the country could build nuclear powered submarines. Negotiations for the new AUKUS alliance took only a few months, and it is widely supported by the Australian public. Considering the large amount of reporting on the need to cancel the Naval Group contract in the year leading up to the cancellation, it is surprising that the French government claimed to be surprised by it. It seems that the French acceptance of large cost overruns and shedule delays blinded them to how other nations would view this sort of incompetence. Considering how poorly Naval Group performed in the conventional submarine project, it is not difficult to appreciate that Australia would be reluctant to trust them on another submarine build.

@@artistjoh The part about the reactor is new to me ! You are right that is a solid argument ! Thx

I CONCUR

Good comment! I really do believe he was involved in those corruption schemes but the whole thing seems like a setup to some extent too. Like it was hybrid warfare/threat exploiting a real problem. Almost all government officials found guilty of corruption are no longer in jail but all the companies involved were basically destroyed, some used to be huge and were venturing in defense technology sectors too. The political and economical crisis that followed was pretty bad as well. I find it weird how the judge that condemned the former president got so much attention that he is going to run for president on next year's election. If our political parties did not use tax payer's money to pay for their campaigns I'd bet some of the campaign money would have similar origins to that used to get him so much press coverage during the past few years. I'm putting away my tinfoil hat now.. but there is a lot to be learned if we pay attention to all that has happened over the past few years.

i think this is very old one just reupload

@@jebise1126 Thanks, this would explain some of the nonsense.

Yummm curry! XD

I'd rather have the smell of curry than McDonald's.

@@xavichuvy9047 Lol. There’s no fast food in a Sub.

Underwater Samosa

The Scorpène is named after the scorpion fish, no? Or, poisson scorpène if you wanna be technical (anal). Personally, even knowing the said info, I might still just say "scorpion" because we're speaking English and it sounds a little pretentious (anal) to me to try and sound fluent in a language that I don't know. Also, I find it funny that you're criticizing JT's pronunciation when you, apparently, can neither spell nor properly construct a sentence. PS I realize some of my grammar might be wrong, but I'm sure you'll swoop in and save the day by telling me exactly where and how I messed up. Thanks in advance!

Yeah it's a tongue twister for us Americans so we tend to default to the translation. We generally dont teach our children to speak obscure languages... like French. English IS the international language of communication. Heck, you typed your message in English. Deal with it.

@@navyreviewer And half of the words in your comment originate from French. What's your point?

Lol. Humorectomies are tragic.

@@huntera123 LOL. Humorectomy! I'm stealing this one from you! Hillarious!😂😂