Spanish MoD Approves Redesign of S-80 Submarines

The Ministry of Defense Approves CDR of the S-80 Submarine Navantia Is Building in Cartagena

The Executive Committee of the Ministry of Defense has approved the Critical Design Review (CDR) of the S-80 submarine being built by the Navantia shipyard in Cartagena. This is a very important milestone for the future of the program and the shipyard, since it involves the final “freeze” of the submarine design, and allows its transition to production. In this regard, the enlargement of the boat’s pressure hull was completed in April, and its five sections are already available for the incorporation of its internal structures.

The approval of the CDR by the Ministry of Defence also demonstrates the technical feasibility of the submarine program. Achieving this milestone means finally overcoming the design problems suffered by the program in the past. The program therefore is transferred back to the shipyard, whose highly advanced transformation allows it to face the future with optimism.

The director of the Shipyard and of the S-80 Submarine Program, Admiral José Manuel Sanjurjo Jul, stressed the importance of the approval milestone. “The program for the design and construction of the S-80 submarine is the most complex engineering project that is being undertaken at the national level. Therefore, the technical difficulties that have appeared throughout the program are normal in the development and implementation of a project that requires unprecedented technological solutions. A project like this places demands on the leading edge of numerous technologies, which means taking risks,”

Passing the CDR formalizes the complete redesign of the submarine, which will thus have a greater length and a larger displacement, without having lost the capabilities that make it a conventional submarine of the next generation.

The possibility of having a national design for the construction of submarines supposes technological independence in one essential aspect of national defense. In addition, the success of the program has several benefits: on the one hand, national defense, because the survival of the submarine weapon is at stake; on the other, Spain’s technological image and, third, the industrial and technological weight that Navantia Cartagena represents for the entire Region of Murcia.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The technical errors that required a redesign of the S-80 submarine are not really due to its leading-edge technology, as the program director says in the above press release, but are a major failure of elementary naval architecture, as the initial design suffered from a deficient buoyancy that made it virtually impossible for it to surface.
In April 2013, after a two-year delay in the program, it was revealed that the lead boat of the S-80 class – Isaac Peral – was overweight by è5 to 100 tonnes, a weight excess that could compromise its ability to surface after submerging.
At the time, Navantia admitted the existence of "deviations related to the balance of weight" in the vessel, and estimated it would take up to two years more to correct the problem, the Daily Telegraph reported May 22, 2013.
In December 2015, Navantia inserted ten-meter plugs into the hulls of each of the four submarines ordered by the Spanish navy, to better distribute their weight and avoid sinking. This, the Spanish newspaper La Verdad reported Dec. 18, was one step of the process intended to solve seaworthiness problems "related to weight-balance deviations."
This fix was proposed by US naval engineers called in by the Spanish Ministry of Defence, allowing Navantia to focus on the redesign of other parts of the ship, a process that has now been completed and validated by the CDR.)

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