The SSN(X) reportedly would be bigger than the 8,000-ton-displacement Virginia is, and thus would more closely match the 9,000-ton-displacement of the Seawolf class. The new vessel would enter service beginning in 2034. Instead of upgrading the Virginia, the sailing branch anticipates designing a brand-new attack boat it calls the SSN(X). Defense Department photoīut the latest edition of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan revises those plans. At top - the Virginia-class attack submarine Minnesota under construction in 2012. This “Virginia Payload Module” boosts the type’s cruise-missile capacity from 12 to 40, a feature that could help alleviate a missile-tube shortfall resulting from the planned retirement of the cruise-missile carriers. The latest version of the Virginia includes a hull extension for new vertical missile tubes. Navy plans require as many as 35 boats to surge on short notice to a war zone during a major conflict.Īs of 2017, the Navy planned to upgrade the Virginia design and continue buying vessels of that class though the late 2040s, at least, while also retiring the converted Ohio cruise-missile submarines without a direct replacement starting in the mid-2020s. Today around 10 attack subs are on patrol on any given day while the others undergo maintenance and crew training. Each of these old boats can carry as many as 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. The balance of today’s submarines include 35 1980s-vintage Los Angeles-class attack submarines, three attack boats of the 1990s Seawolf class, 13 newer Virginia-class attack boats and four old Ohios that the Navy converted into cruise-missile carriers during the early 2000s. They include 14 Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines, or “boomers,” which the Navy expects to begin replacing with 12 new Columbia-class boomers starting in 2021. That’s significantly more than the Navy expected to spend as recently as 2017. Designing and building five of the new Large Payload Submarine cruise-missile subs and 30 of the new SSN(X) attack submarines could set back U.S. The submarines could help to maintain the Navy’s advantage in submarine-on-submarine warfare while also filling a looming shortfall in the sailing branch’s capacity for sea-to-land missile strikes.īut not without cost. ![]() Navy plans to develop two new classes of submarine, according to congressional analysis of the sea service’s shipbuilding plan for 2019.
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