by Kieran Griffith
1/330 HMCS Scarborough Type-093E Class SSN (Scratchbuilt)
The Royal Canadian Navy has wanted Nuclear Attack Submarines since the 1980s and were just about to get six of them when the Cold War ended and they got their order cancelled. Now 20 years later there might be more oil and natural gas under the Arctic Ocean Seabed then there is in the Middle East and Canada deserves a slice of the pie. However, Canada's Navy can only patrol its northern coastline year round with nuclear submarine technology. And my young friend Fiona Bruin might have a little plan that could make this happen.
Fiona is working on an Idea for selling and export version of the Chinese Type-093 Nuclear Attack Submarine hulls with modified titanium fins for thumping throug the arctic ice pack to the Royal Canadian Navy with a Canadian AECL Lead-Bismuth LMFBR and shielding and British BAe Systems Submarine Solutions weapons control systems with Thales Underwater Systems sensors/electronics, counter-rotating propeller and anechoic tiles. Fiona says the Scarborough class would not be fleet submarines but ultra-high performance patrol submarines.
Some Chinese engineering and business students from Hong Kong Polytechnic and Belarus State University are working on this deal idea with Fiona and they have made a preliminary estimate with a few assumed factors that this kind of submarine would cost only about 520 million Canadian Dollars or 22% of the cost of a modern USN Virginia Class SSN. This kind of submarine could be a breakthrough for research in precision engineered Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor technology and also Counter Rotating Propeller Technology.
The model itself was fun to build. I used the 33cm hull from a 1/230th Revell Skipjack kit that is the same teardrop shape as the Type-093, turned the hull upside down and cut the fin short, then i used a couple of spare Yankee Modelworks propellors for the odd counter rotating propellor idea Fiona has. The model is painted like the HMS Astute looked at launch because the outside would be coverd with Thales Anechoic tiles. A mixture of flat black and a few drops of gold paint.
Performance Aspects of Future Scarborough Class Submarines
