He's certainly that. He certainly takes all the credit when his physical presence was lacking...
Yeah I got them all mixed up. Bosie, Helena, and Columbia are on the wall apparently due to the budget constraints. I thought they were block I Virginia's, not Los Angeles class.
My home state's boat is looking at being decommissioned too. I read she no longer carries her SLBMs and is just a submerged missile barge with SEALs eating her ice cream all day getting fatter.
The four converted
Ohio-class subs (
Ohio,
Michigan,
Florida, and
Georgia) are actually the busiest submarines in the fleet (due to demand and unlike the SSNs they still run Blue/Gold crews); once they retire there's going to be something of a scramble to replace their capabilities. Not sure about
Michigan, but
Ohio is slated to be retired in 2026 (after 45 years of service; she entered the fleet in 1981 and finished her SSGN conversion in 2006). If all of them retire at 45 years, they will be decommissioned one per year after that until
Georgia goes in 2029.
The four converted ballistic missile submarines are so much more than Tomahawk slingers and transports for Navy SEALs.
www.thedrive.com
The Block V
Virginia-class subs on order have an extra hull plug with four payload tubes similar to the ones installed in the
Ohio SSGNs (in addition to the two built-in "six shooters" ahead of the sail); there are 10 pf those on order and depending on which version of the shipbuilding plans one looks at (or what day it is in DC) there might be over 20 eventually. What the USN would really like to do though is extend the new
Columbia-class SSBN production out past the currently planned 12 hulls and outfit the extras as SSGNs.
As for the SSNs you mention, remember that the 688s are a late 1960s/early 1970s design, with SSN-688
Los Angeles commissioned in 1976 and SSN-773
Cheyenne commissioned in 1996. Nominally speaking the subs have a ~33-year design life on the hull and reactor; the 31 Flight I subs (SSN-688 through SSN-718) entered service between 1976 and 1985 and required a midlife reactor core replacement. Unfortunately for some of those boats, their planned refuelings fell during the 1990s "peace dividend," so some of them simply had their refuelings cancelled and were sent to recycling after just 15-20 years while others went up to 40 years. This is why USS
San Francisco (SSN-711) wasn't scrapped after her seamount collision; she had her core replaced just three years earlier and it was less expensive to graft on the bow from USS
Honolulu (SSN-718) than refuel
Honolulu, despite the latter being four years younger. Aside from the two hulls that were decommissioned and converted to Moored Training Ships (
La Jolla and
San Francisco), those are all gone now.
The seven Flight II boats came in between 1985 and 1989; they added 12 VLS tubes forward of the sail (theoretically it would have been possible to backfit those onto the Flight I subs, but that was never really considered after the Cold War) and a higher-output reactor core (which was refitted to the Flight I boats that got refueled, hence their longer careers). Those boats are on the way out; the last two are USS
Helena (SSN-725) and USS
Newport News (SSN-750; the planned and cancelled
Ohio-class hulls took the 726-749 numbers), slated to leave in 2025 and 2026 respectively. With the new cores and VLS tubes they were all kept around for > 34 years.
After that you have 23 of what are known as the Flight III/Improved 688/688i boats (which moved the dive planes to the hull and added quieting, sensor, and under-ice operations advancements) that entered service between 1988 and 1996. Some of the earliest hulls like USS
San Juan (SSN-751), USS
Pasadena (SSN-752), USS
Topeka (SSN-754), USS
Scranton (SSN-756), and USS
Alexandria (SSN-757) are also scheduled to go in 2024-2026. USS
Alexandria entered service in 1991; by the time she goes out she'll be 35 years old. Time marches on. I haven't seen anything about USS
Colombia (SSN-771) being slated for retirement; as there is a small chance she may still be in commission in 2031 (she entered the fleet in 1995, so that would make her 36 years old) the lead ship of the
Colombia-class SSBNs was recently renamed USS
District of Colombia (SSBN-826) to avoid the prospect of having two commissioned warships with the same name (there's actually a federal law that forbids that, hence why we can't have a new USS
Constitution while the 1797 original is still a commissioned USN vessel).
USS
Boise might well wind up being the last of the 688s; since she commissioned in 1992 and sat idle from 2017-2023 she might theoretically leave service in the mid-late 2030s. That's why the RAN will not be getting any 688s under AUKUS; by the time they're ready to start operating nuclear subs only a handful of 688s will be left running on borrowed time.
