I received the Astute (as well as USS Cole). The Astute cost a lot less than I thought, all in all around 5 euro.
As any submarine kit, it has very few parts and instructions are just printed on the backside of the box. It is, as expected in this scale, a tiny boat, at 13.7cm in length.
Parts were very well packed inside the box with a foam type of protection around the pumpjet and the aft diving planes (molded onto the upper hull). They were removed for a picture. Everything is also in a seperate plastic bag.
Here is the lay-out of the contents in the box:
Upper and lower hull are separated, but not on the waterline, just straight in the middle. This also has as a consequence that the aft diving planes as well as the conning tower are molded in 1 part with the upper hull.
Details scribed in the upper hull are quite extensive for such a tiny ship although I haven't checked on their accuracy yet. The lower hull also has some ballast/limber holes scribed in it, but only in the forward part (those are visible in most googled Astute launch-pictures), some logical thinking and a quick search reveiled that there are similar holes on the aft, but these are not molded on the lower hull section.
After a quick fit, the upper and lower section didn't truly fit well together. One of the parts has been bent side and upwards, at first sight it looks like the upper part is the guilty one. They can be pressed together without too much force though, so glueing them shouldn't be such a problem.
There is some flash on the hull halves, as well as on the small pump jet. There is also a slight gap between the aft diving planes and the lower hull section as well as on the joint of the upper and lower hull. Not really much of a problem though.
The pumpjet as well as the forward diving planes and masts are delivered in a seperate sprue, they look well molded at first sight, certainly for their tiny size. The pumpjet forward edge did reveil some minor flash/bubbles, something that will be rather difficult to correct if it has to be properly done (taking in account scale of course). I doubt someone would notice if you'd just sand off that edge all together.
Here is the sweet aft part of the pumpjet.
The kit comes with a set of decals, which look rather accurate for the first outfit of the Astute, not sure if she still has the same markings nowadays.
It also comes with a pre-printed stand in black plastic, which is a bit of a pitty perhaps, since it doesn't allow you to make the Ambush/Audacious/Anson etc. Unless you just overpaint it or make your own stand of course. It is however nicely done and it would a shame to throw it away.
I think I'll just make this ship without the stand, perhaps in a diorama. It would solve the "problem" of the not so accurate lower hull scribings (fixing that in such a scale is nearly impossible I think). as well as the pumpjet and joint issues. Yes, I'm just up for an easy project for now. In any case the kit is nice and sharp and even a moderate modeller will be capable of turning it into a realistic copy of the Astute.
As an edit: I don't know if this is common nowadays with kits, but this kit's painting instructions include a table with corresponding numbers of several paint brands for each of the indicated colours.