The British Royal Navy has received a new class of whale-like submarine known as the Astute. This monstrous submarine generates its own air and water and has a strike range of cruise missiles from English Channel to North Africa but the most surprising feature of this gigantic submarine is that it does not demand any fuel throughout its lifespan of 25 years. By this we can sense that it can sail round the globe 40 times continuously. According to the contractor of BAE Systems in Barrow: It learnt a lot from US sub builder Electric Boat – namely to build sections of the sub vertically (hence the 12-storey construction towers at the plant) which saved on manpower. The Astute specs comprise: *Weight: 7,800 tons *Length: 97m *Time to build: 6 years 4 months *Power: pressurized water reactor, fuelled for life *Crew: 98 *Astute Combat Management System (ACMS) receives data from sonars and other sensors and, through advanced algorithms and data handling, displays real time images on the command consoles. *Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile from Raytheon fired from 533mm torpedo tubes (range 1,000 miles, flies at 533mph) *I-band navigation radars *Thales Underwater Systems Sonar 2076 *Atlas Hydrographic echosounder, the DESO 25, is capable of precise depth measurements down to 10,000m. *Rolls Royce PWR 2 pressurized water reactor *2 Alsthom turbines *Rolls Royce pump jet propulsor Initially, three submarines are ordered by British Navy that will cost $2.33 billion each and are projected to come into service in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Via: Gizmodo