The second Batch of Upholders: In 1985 it was reported that the UK had told the Australians that the UK would order the Type 2400A version (lengthened for Australia with a third diesel engine) if they ordered it for what became the Collins class. Ferranti Thomson was developing Sonar 2075 for the second batch of Upholders and they would apparently have been fitted with SMCS as well.
What is difficult to decipher is numbers. The Nott review took the fleet/patrol submarine force down to 28 boats which was to remain "generally constant" and the fact sheet that accompanied options for change stated that the RN had 27 attack submarines. The Nott review had been aiming for 17 SSNs by 1990 and that was achieved with the commissioning of HMS Talent in May that year, HMS Triumph's commissioning would have got the fleet to 18 in 1991 had it not been for Options for Change. Things get complicated because the second batch of Upholders would have been ordered around the same time as the W-Class SSNs. Jane's reported that five additional Upholders were planned and seven W-Class boats which gets to a total fleet (including Swiftsure's and younger) of 29 boats which to my mind makes one or both of those numbers unlikely. Ministers seem to have been very coy about giving numbers for the second Upholder batch too.
Vanguard Class Boat 5: Right at the beginning of the Trident programme (1979) consideration was given as to whether the trident force should be four or five boats (with obvious parallels to the Polaris programme in the 1960s. In July 1980 the then Defence Minister (and direct predecessor to John Nott) Francis Pym said the following to the House of Commons:
The decision against a fifth boat seems to have been made sometime in early 1982 with John Nott making the following remarks in the house of Commons in March 1982:
Purely hypothetical but I quite like HMS Vindictive as a name for this contemplated fifth boat.
Unbuilt Vanguard/Trident support infrastructure: This explains the giant hole visible next to Rosyth Dockyard that Babcock is attempting to turn into a container port. This was the RD57 proposal that was abandoned in favour of concentrating nuclear submarine refits and refuelling at Devonport after the end of the Cold War:
Source: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6551/1/2004JamisonPhd.pdf
Whats curious is that this was built to west of the existing dockyard. As built a large area of land was drained/cleared/reclaimed to the east of the yard to provide for future expansion, for some reason this appears not to have been used for the RD57 facility.
Edit: Examining the RD57 site on google earth it looks like the foundations of the two dry docks were built- there are two long concrete structures in the hole that match the lengths described above. Based on their location it would seem that the entrances to the dry-docks would be directly from the non-tidal basin which would explain the decision to build the facility to the west of the existing dockyard rather than the east.
