By Franz-Stefan Gady
The U.S. Navy may face a critical shortfall in Virginia-class boats in the next decade.
The U.S. Navy is looking into the possibility of building three instead of two new nuclear-powered Virginia-class attack submarines (SSN-774) per year, military.com reports. The reason is simple: with older Los-Angeles-class fast-attack submarines (built between 1972 and 1996) retiring at a faster pace than Virginia subs are added, the U.S. Navy will face a shortfall in the number of active vessels in the near future.
This projected deficit is not news and was already predicted by analysts as far back as 1995, given the U.S. Navy’s current requirement of deploying an average of 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) on a day-to-day basis.
Given this deployment schedule, the navy must maintain a fleet of 48 SSNs over the next few decades. However, beginning in 2025, active SSNs will gradually drop below that number and eventually bottom out at 41 in 2029, which implies a shortfall of seven boats that year. Based on the U.S. Navy’s current 30-year SSN procurement plan, this gap will exist for 12 years until 2041, when the number of SSNs will finally be back at 48.
Read the full story at The Diplomat