Originally posted by tankee1981:
Singapore have revealed that we have been doing research on air-independent propulsion systems for submarines quite some time ago. If you have noticed, we currently have a topic in our forum on this relatively new form of technology being put into industrial production overseas. Though we just gotten our Challenger submarines not too long ago, i am sure that the RSN is preparing to get new submarines to replace them as they are officially classified as training subs. The question is: Are we going to buy them off the shelf or are we going to jointly develop them like in the Delta frigates' case?
Are you referring to hydrogen fuel cell propulsion?
Fuel cell development is not new development in ST, round abt 3-4yrs ago I found from internet digging that ST already has production facilities to build fuel cell engines for buses over in china and they do today have hydrogen fuel cell buses running on roads in china manufactured by ST.
I also heard that ST sometime back bought a small company in US doing some kind of portable fuel cell storage for providing electricity to homes and small buildings, but that company was later bought over by another company, not sure if ST still has a share holding.
So you see hydrogen fuel cell development is not new thing for us. But I guess when you talk abt submarines propulsion now that is something which any government will jealously guard even from Allies.
If we count on our own engineers, my guess is it will take years I guess if we want this thing from them we have to give something in return which far exceeds the value of which we want. And even if we do get some collaboration it wouldn't be much, just enough for our engineers to get off starting point in the right direction.
But anyway whether or not hydrogen propulsion for submarines will turn out to be a blessing or hazard in real life situation is anybody's guess.