The last part of the Three Colours Unmanned Trilogy: A UUV carrying SSN.
The boats' own weapons are external 21 inch tubes for self defence. She carries 6 large (24 tonne) fuel cell powered UUVs, (using current technology) which can operate as weapons carriers, sensor and communication nodes etc, or some combination of smaller vehicles.
The structure aft of the sail contains the hydrogen/oxygen plant, which is in a separate module due to concerns about the safety of having so much oxygen stored in the people tank. The UUVs would be stowed external to the pressure hull, behind the large hatches, and land on the aft casing to refuel.
This design was worked up in some detail, but there are still several oversights that could easily be fixed in a later iteration. Ultimately, however, the exercise served its purposes: Investigate whether the concept was feasible; investigate the application of the design methodology to this problem; demonstrate the capability to examine this problem. The work was subsequently picked up by a PhD researcher with external funding, who has been looking at more refined concepts using this as a baseline for comparison.
RP1
Reference:
Pawling, R & Andrews, DJ, “A Submarine Concept Design – The Submarine as an UXV Mothership”, International Conference Warship 2011: Naval Submarines and UUVs, RINA, Bath, June 2011.