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Comment by Fiahil | Hacker News Reader

If I read correctly, the subs are going to be built in Australia. So, you got, at least, jobs creation.

Yes we will get some very expensive jobs - the open question is are we going to get some submarines that are able to get out of the dock on a regular basis and not be detected from 1000 km away.

In the big picture, France has experience in nuclear submarines, the stealthiest ones (for France, India and Pakistan). I don't know how much of that technology in going into the Aussie ones, but the skill is there.

Unfortunately we are not building nuclear subs.

We are instead turning established French nuclear subs into diesel electrics.

When submerged, diesel electric is even quieter than a nuclear sub as there is no nuclear plant noise.

That is the hope. I have a bad feeling that this will not be easy, cheap or quick.

It seems to me to be a smaller change to an existing design than that proposed by Japan.

Separate to the build-quality problems of the Collins class, Australia has struggled to crew the ships.

Some reports say that the Collins class has 60 people on board. These recent articles have had me thinking - I doubt you need so many people.

With the space/storage situation, there is even less excuse to avoid automation than anywhere else. You should be able to shift the bridge with six or seven people (including officers). You'd need some people to maintain systems, and that should be cross-skilled work. Medical, kitchen.

> Consider a submarine where everything is automated.

We're not quite there yet but there have been some interesting developments.

The Soviet Project 705 ( Alfa ) class was highly automated with a crew of only 30. All were top-tier officers ( no NCOs or ratings ), partly due to systems-mangement training requirements and partly because most of their shoot / no-shoot decisions would have been war-starters due to the types of missions assigned.

The Swedes are also keen on automation for their small littoral submarines; the Näckens had only 19 crew, but without the need for long endurance at sea.

Warships have historically been over-crewed for normal operations, because when one catches fire you really, really need as many people as you can get to fight it.

This would be a good example of why you need a large crew besides normal operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_George_Washington_(CVN-73)...

The fire lasted 12 hours. You need more than one group of people to fight fires for that long. You can't realistically man hoses that long with a small crew not to mention everyone is at battle stations during something like that and putting out fires primarily relies on the people on duty that day since everyone can't just stop doing their jobs in scenarios where for example they're already in a combat mission.

:-) I like to think there's a submariners forum somewhere and they're asking why Twitter needs thousands of programmers. Like, what do all those people do all day?

I mean, with your minimal crew who's going to feed the badger? http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/aug/21/life-on-board-nucl...

As a programmer, I also wonder about Twitter ;)

I think everyone wonders about Twitter's head count. But, you know, nuclear reactors at 1,500 ft are child's play compared to 140 character messages.

Kidding aside, it'd be interesting to get Twitter's ops team headcount for comparison.

Reading about old battleships in WWII with complements of over 2000, I've always wondered what you need that many sailors for. Obviously they're necessary, but it's still a lot of people.

The Collin class is based on a scaled up version of the the Swedish Västergötland-class, which has a complement of 18 officers and 6 conscript. I could imagine the Collin class to need more personnel if it sails longer, but I don't know if 60 is excessive or not.

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