09V/09VI (095/096) Nuclear Submarine Thread

[Blitzo]

I have to say that I'm surprised to see another construction hall

I think the launch rate per year is only part of the reason.

The biggest issue to me is the long-lead time of submarine construction.
You see the Virginia SSNs currently taking 6 years from start to finish.

Building more specialist facilities means submarine production time is reduced, so they can enter service earlier.
This also accelerates the submarine development learning cycle in terms of design, build and test.

My guestimate is that with efficient facilities and Chinese working hours, they could easily reduce construction time to 4 years.

A secondary benefit would be more surge capacity if larger numbers of submarines needed to be built.

I think this southern hall being built is essentially the same in function as the eastern hall -- i.e. both are final assembly halls for submarines. One difference is that the southern hall looks like it is sized and arranged for building SSNs more efficiently than the eastern one.

But I don't think the new southern assembly hall being built is a different specialist building.

There are already a number of dedicated specialist buildings in the overall facility for various roles (hull fabrication, paint shop etc).

But the fact that they chose to build another entire assembly hall that increases the number of available SSN sized tracks by 2/3 (going from 6 tracks to 10 tracks) suggests to me a deliberate desire and goal to increase the rate at which they will launch submarines that couldn't be met with the one preexisting eastern assembly hall on its own.

With a destroyer production surge, you know the shipyards also have commercial work to always keep busy.

But if we ever see 10 nuclear submarines being launched from Bohai, I don't see that as anything except prepping for a full-scale war.

Depends on how many nuclear subs they require and whether at any particular period they may project to have a need for a boost in numbers.

 

[AndrewS]

Depends on how many nuclear subs they require and whether at any particular period they may project to have a need for a boost in numbers.

The thing with Bohai Shipyard is that its product line is almost exclusively nuclear submarines.

So a surge to 10 submarines in a year is difficult to achieve in terms of ramping up and then an orderly ramping down.

On a long-term basis, I reckon they would be looking at 4 nuclear submarines per year on average.
Given a 30 year service life, that would work out to 120 nuclear submarines.

That should be affordable for China given its larger economy, and considering that the US is ramping up to 3-4 per year.

 

[AndrewS]

I think the whole point of having a dedicated painting hall is to facilitate a faster launch rate per year by virtue of division of labour -- most nations submarine construction just paint their submarines in the same location that they are assembled (i.e.: the Bohai equivalent of the eastern and southern assembly halls).
But they took the time to build a dedicated paint hall for SSN sized boats, meaning they feel like investment in that structure is worth it just to eke out that extra bit of efficiency, or they are expecting to launch quite a few boats per year to make it worthwhile -- or both.

Is submarine primer a flammable fire risk?
And how toxic are the fumes?

Plus are the anechoic tiles glued to the hull by hand, and is the adhesive toxic?

It just makes sense to do this work in a dedicated facility with additional platforms and robots.

 

[Blitzo]

The thing with Bohai Shipyard is that its product line is almost exclusively nuclear submarines.

So a surge to 10 submarines in a year is difficult to achieve in terms of ramping up and then an orderly ramping down.

On a long-term basis, I reckon they would be looking at 4 nuclear submarines per year on average.
Given a 30 year service life, that would work out to 120 nuclear submarines.

That should be affordable for China given its larger economy, and considering that the US is ramping up to 3-4 per year.

Not necessarily, the pace of work and funding can be titrated up and down depending on the urgency of a projected period.

As I said, I'm not "expecting" them to ever build 10 submarines in a year as such, but rather floating it as a tantalizing possibility in light of the scale of the facility and also the PLAN's nuclear sub requirements and the PLAN's prior demonstrated power to surprise.

The question for me is what the sustained average production rate of the combined facility (i.e.: eastern and southern halls both) once it's running on full cylinders.

Is submarine primer a flammable fire risk?
And how toxic are the fumes?

Plus are the anechoic tiles glued to the hull by hand, and is the adhesive toxic?

It just makes sense to do this work in a dedicated facility with additional platforms and robots.

All of the above is irrelevant, because in other shipyards in the world that I know of, the work you described is all done in the same hall where the submarine is assembled -- i.e.: they don't have a dedicated hall for it.

The only reason I can think of for building an entire dedicated facility for such a specific niche part of the overall construction cycle is if they expect to run their new production facility at such speed and efficiency that they're able to gain efficiency by doing that work in a dedicated building.

 

[FangYuan]

Instead of building 10 submarines a year, China can build two submarines similar to the Akula class.

A giant submarine will carry more JL-3 ballistic missiles

 

[Blitzo]

Instead of building 10 submarines a year, China can build two submarines similar to the Akula class.

A giant submarine will carry more JL-3 ballistic missiles

First of all, that isn't the way it works -- even if for some reason you wanted to build two "massive" submarines (which by Akula I assume you're referring to the Soviet name for the SSBN that is P 941 and known in the west as "Typhoon"), the resources and infrastructure you'd use to build an equivalent of 10 submarines isn't the same as what you'd use to build to "massive" submarines.

Second, allocating the equivalent resources used to build 10 submarines to of 2 "massive" submarines would be a massively unnecessary concentration of resources. Can you even imagine how big such a monstrosity would be? The saying "too many eggs in one basket" exists for a reason.

Third, the Pr 941s weren't exactly a desirable SSBN design. Compared to the smaller Ohio class of equivalent timeline, it carried less SLBMs of a less capable design despite being a larger submarine. Larger doesn't always mean better, and if you're talking about SSBNs, striking a balance between a sufficiently capable individual missile load of a single submarine and having enough submarines to produce a sufficiently large fleet that can maintain continuous and redundant presence as part of the overall ops/maintenance/training cycle is important.

Fourth... the "10 submarines" a year is very much a hypothetical and not even a claim or speculation for the future, and that number is only really made in context of all of the production slots in the eastern and southern assembly halls operating at all cylinders for the SSN sized tracks only.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

But if we ever see 10 nuclear submarines being launched from Bohai, I don't see that as anything except prepping for a full-scale war.

10 nuclear submarines per year isn't prepping for war. This is China, and to China 10 nuclear submarines per year is simply normal.

 

[Blitzo]

10 nuclear submarines per year isn't prepping for war. This is China, and to China 10 nuclear submarines per year is simply normal.

That's also too far in the other direction -- the idea of 10 nuclear submarines launched in one year is already very out there tbh, and is definitely a high end idea (not even a projection imo), and I think I made it clear as such when it was raised. Even if such a spectacle occurs, it would not be likely sustained, and an average yearly launch rate would likely be quite a bit lower.

Talking about 10 nuclear submarines in a year as "simply normal" considering the new facility hasn't launched a nuclear submarine yet, is way too extreme and overenthusiastic.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Talking about 10 nuclear submarines in a year as "simply normal" considering the new facility hasn't launched a nuclear submarine yet, is way too extreme and overenthusiastic.

I don't believe so. I understand that you write about the PLA quasi-professionally in Western publications, so you have to maintain at least the appearance of "objectivity" and couch your writing in caveats. However, China's recent history is clear - if 40 years ago someone projected that China's economy would grow eighty-fold and account for a third of the planet's manufacturing (measured in nominal dollar terms, which vastly understates its scale), they would have been laughed at at best. Yet that's exactly what happened.

When discussing China, we should always bear in mind exactly what it is: a fifth of humanity united under the best-governed superstate in history and commanding the mightiest industrial infrastructure ever assembled by man. So yes, 10 nuclear submarines a year and 10 carriers in a decade and change isn't just perfectly normal, it's banal.

I'll do the caveat thing myself now and grant you that 10 subs isn't going to be a perpetual steady state. That number will come down when China has built enough of them that there isn't enough ocean for them.

 

[AndrewS]

Not necessarily, the pace of work and funding can be titrated up and down depending on the urgency of a projected period.

True. But for labour intensive shipbuilding, the pace of work is really dependent on the available trained manpower and the associated supply chain.

That is much more difficult for Bohai to ramp up or ramp down, because it's an isolated shipyard which primarily does military work.

In comparison Jiangnan can flex between commercial and naval surface ships.
Plus Jiangnan is near other shipyards and at the centre of the shipbuilding supply chain and trained shipbuilding labour.

All of the above is irrelevant, because in other shipyards in the world that I know of, the work you described is all done in the same hall where the submarine is assembled -- i.e.: they don't have a dedicated hall for it.

The only reason I can think of for building an entire dedicated facility for such a specific niche part of the overall construction cycle is if they expect to run their new production facility at such speed and efficiency that they're able to gain efficiency by doing that work in a dedicated building.

Actually BAE is building a new paint hall at Barrow for its nuclear submarine construction work.
And their construction rate will be roughly 1 submarine every 3 years.

Hence why I suspect paint/adhesive toxicity and the associated mess is actually an issue.

I agree that a dedicated facility improves speed and efficiency