Following this article Locum provided interesting comments on February 9, 2021, to which I respond:
On Spain's/Navantia’s S-80 Plus. (4 being built for the Spanish Navy)
Hi Locum
I assume you are saying the Dutch knocked back the S-80 Plus “in December 2019.” on cost grounds. Also the major displacement/buoyancy error of the original S-80 would have worried the Dutch.
"White Hat" Sitemeter Sigint Caution
As an aside my sitemeter provided very crude but effective “Sigint’ up to April 2011, when:
- Google displayed actual keywords used by "Northern Hemisphere" countries, intelligence agencies and nuclear weapons establishments (eg. Iran nuclear) searching my blog, and
- with these "Northern Hemisphere" entities not disguising their organizational IP addresses, which in turn revealed their organization's name up until April 2011, 2 weeks before this.
- Meanwhile Southern Hemisphere entities where always more anonymous and careful.
- Since 2011 all agencies everywhere (except some navies and defense departments) are much more careful not to too openly link IP addresses with actual organizational names, when they're searching.
- Also (for my sitemeter) since from around 2015 Google no longer displayed actual keywords users were searching for.
Back to Subs
Australia had/has good relations with Navantia during the Hobart-class and Canberra-class builds, but Navantia's grievous error in the original S-80 design was unacceptable for Australia. In that regard keyword “S-80” came up often in anonymous Australian searches - up to 2013. It seemed the usefully large S-80 design was a strong possibility to be shortlisted by Australia – but by then Spain’s dreaded buoyancy mistake was discovered .
Root of the Buoyancy Problem
In addition to your “original S-80 there was no spare room for drones or extra SOF / commando's, over the standard 8 SOF operators.” There were other Combat System weights (eg. torpedos, tubes, missiles, servers and workstations). These essential weights were not factored in by Spain when Spain did its buoyancy calculations.
I’ve said somewhere that Spain had never fully developed and launched a sub in Modern times without major French help. Probably it was this Spanish inexperience that resulted in the failed S-80 design.
Now since 2019
The Dutch would have noticed that the S-80 Plus design for the Spanish Navy, "3,200 tonnes (surfaced) and 3,426 tonnes (submerged)" see right side bar, has little reserve buoyancy and is too heavy for the Dutch Navy overall.
Like the Australian Collins and now Attack classes, the Spanish have created an extremely expensive orphan submarine class in the S-80 Plus.
Collins, Attack and S-80 Plus are only attractive to their builder shipyards-navies with no export prospects to amortize individual sub and project cost burdens. Any Australian hopes that the Dutch would look to Australian Attack class builders will pan out to be the Dutch going to Naval Group directly.