A broader change in British defence debate appears here: technology is now expected to substitute for people more automatically than it was in the 1980 discussion. The British uncrewed undersea vehicle described is more than one hundred feet long, with a multi-mission payload bay and an advertised range of about three thousand nautical miles. The project responds to a shortage of nuclear attack submarines and the difficulty of increasing SSN production without disrupting the Dreadnought ballistic-missile programme. Restarting conventional submarine construction would require money, specialist yards, and a larger training system. An uncrewed design promised lower personnel demand and a faster route to additional hulls if the technology worked. The tradeoff is industrial and institutional as much as technical: Britain was trying to obtain undersea capacity without recreating the full support structure of a crewed submarine arm.
Chapter · 44:37-47:29
Britain's uncrewed undersea vehicle as an industrial shortcut
Britain's large multi-mission uncrewed undersea-vehicle concept promised additional capacity without interrupting SSBN construction or rebuilding a conventional-submarine production and training system.