Sous-marins d’attaque du futur, Pt.2: Propulsion, missions, and weapons

A program cost of approximately 10 Bn EUR (2014) is quoted in most cases for the programme as a whole, giving a unit cost in inflation adjusted figures of approximately 2.15 Bn EUR per boat in 2026 value. This can be in contrast to the Japanese Taigei class, which is something of the gold standard for a non-nuclear blue-water submarine, and which floats out of the shipyard to the tune of approximately half a billion euro. As always its good to take these numbers with a grain of salt, but, yes, in the most basic example you get four Taigeis for the price of one Suffren. A perhaps more relevant comparison is the conventionally powered version of the Suffren which was sold to the Dutch as the Blacksword Barracuda, which depending on which figures you use will see four boats delivered to the Dutch at a unit cost of somewhere 1-1.5 Bn EUR per boat. In other words: a very rough comparison is that powering your boat with crazy rocks costs in the neighborhood of half a billion euros per boat.…

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