Years behind schedule and over-budget, the navy unveils its latest stealth submarine

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Military officials say HMS Astute will be able to circumnavigate the planet without surfacing, and its nuclear reactor is designed to last for the vessel's 25-year operational life, meaning it will never need to be refueled.

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An artist's impression of the Astute class submarine

The Astute is due to be launched from the BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness on June 8 and to enter service in January 2009.

The sub is to be followed by two more Astute-class submarines, Ambush and Artful.

Together the navy estimates they will cost about £3.6 billion more than a billion over the original estimate. The project is also years behind schedule.

HMS Astute was originally due to enter service in June 2005, but in 2002 the government said the date had been pushed back to 2006. In 2005 the defense ministry said the sub would enter service by 2009.

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Inside the Astute class submarine

Nearly 40,000 acoustic tiles, designed to mask the submarine's sonar signature, have still to be attached to the ship's 97 meter (318 foot) hull, which is 30 percent longer than that of the submarines now in use.

It needs to be fitted with 100 kilometers (62 miles) of cabling, 23,000 pipes, and over 5 million lines of software code.

The first of two Astute class nuclear submarines being built in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria