Name HMS Vanguard Laid down 3 September 1986 Construction started 3 September 1986 Length 150 m Draft 12 m | Ordered 30 May 1986 Commissioned 14 August 1993 Launched 4 March 1992 Displacement 15.9 million kg Beam 13 m | |
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Status In active service, as of 2016 Builder Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering | ||
The eleventh HMS Vanguard of the Royal Navy is the lead boat of her class of Trident ballistic missile-armed submarines. The submarine is based at Faslane, HMNB Clyde, Argyll, Scotland.
Vanguard was built at Barrow-in-Furness by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd (now BAE Systems Submarine Solutions), was launched on 4 March 1992, and commissioned on 14 August 1993.
Operational history
The submarine's first commanding officer was Captain David Russell.
In February 2002, Vanguard began a two-year refit at HMNB Devonport. The refit was completed in June 2004 and in October 2005, Vanguard completed her return to service trials (Demonstration and Shakedown Operations) with the firing of an unarmed Trident missile. During this refit, Vanguard was boarded by a pair of anti-nuclear protesters who spent half an hour on board before being challenged. They were charged with damaging a fence which they cut to access the submarine.
On 4 February 2009, Vanguard collided with the French submarine Triomphant in the Atlantic. She returned to Faslane in Scotland under her own power, arriving on 14 February 2009.
In January 2012 radiation was detected in the PWR2 test reactor's coolant water, caused by a microscopic breach in fuel cladding. This discovery led to Vanguard being scheduled to be refuelled in its next "deep maintenance period", due to last 3.5 years from 2015, and contingency measures being applied to other Vanguard and Astute-class submarines, at a cost of £270 million. This was not revealed to the public until 2014.
