The last conventionally powered submarines (the Barbel class) in the United States Navy were retired in 1990. With a POD after 1990, have the US Navy acquire a fleet of at least 4 diesel electric or AIP powered submarines into the US Navy fleet.
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OPFOR toys are indeed the most plausible scenario. The USN borrowed a Swedish conventional sub and crew in 2005 to play games with their carriers off the coast of California and assess their vulnerability to Chinese diesel subs with Air Independent Propulsion (AIP). By absolutely all accounts, what they found scared the piss out of them. Have them capture a sub from the Iraqis like GarethC says, sit in limbo for a couple years while they try to find a buyer/figure out what to do with it, identify a need for an OPFOR toy that happens to be authentically Russian/Chinese in origin after the 2005 exercises, and play around with that.
Be careful when comparing equipment costs between countries, different countries measure costs differently. Also any subs would be built by Newport News and Electric Boat, so price probably may go up from that. This of course assumes buying an off the shelf design with minimal changes, rather than adding features like the Virginia's land attack or spec ops capabilitiesAfter reading that article, I think they overplay the difficulties of diesel subs. Forward deployment at bases is not the huge deal they make it out to be (isn't this what Rota, Holy Loch, Guam, Diego Garcia and Yokosuka are for?). For the price of two Virginias, one could have two 5 boat squadrons of Type 212s. Heck, buy the Japanese Soryu classes, and the Japanese will forget about some of the issues surrounding basing rights (offered to the Australians as an incentive).
If a sort of artificial gill is developed allowing diesels to run under water,you could see some diesel sub's in the Coast Guard.
Because they are cool?Why would the US Coast Guard need SSK's?
Because they are cool?
Why would the US Coast Guard need SSK's?
They'd be useful for covert surveillance of ships.Why would the US Coast Guard need SSK's?
They'd be useful for covert surveillance of ships.
Depends on a lot of things. How big, how capable, how big a production run, are you splitting work between Newport News and Electric Boat, are you throwing in R&D costs as part of the price, are you doing "This is the price of the ship as a complete system" as the US usually does or "This is the price of the hull, not including weapons systems, electronics, propulsion systems etc." as some countries doLet's just think about this, the U 214 costs about €300 million, while the Soryu class costs $540 million, now given costs of the US yards tend to be higher than other Western yards at the moment, how much would a modern SSK come out as built in the US?
Depends on a lot of things. How big, how capable, how big a production run, are you splitting work between Newport News and Electric Boat, are you throwing in R&D costs as part of the price, are you doing "This is the price of the ship as a complete system" as the US usually does or "This is the price of the hull, not including weapons systems, electronics, propulsion systems etc." as some countries do
Best guess, would probably want something like the Australian Collins replacement, so cost should be in the same area, though at the lower end as the US has more experience building subs, so say $800 million to $1billion per