It makes scheduling fleet maintenance all the harder.Īs the Navy mulls buying more large-diameter, large-payload Columbia-class (SSBN-826) sized submarines, and, at the same time, eyes a large-diameter next-generation attack sub, the Navy would be smart to conduct a last-second rethink and, if needed, reorient their shipyard investments to better reflect the future fleet’s super-sized attack submarine maintenance needs-needs that will likely grow in conjunction with the physical growth of the subs themselves. The latest Virginia-class variants are so much longer than the original USS Virginia (SSN-774), the new arrivals will, as of 2020, only have seven dry docks ready to take them. As the Navy’s initial optimistic-and, frankly, near-fraudulent- Virginia-class maintenance estimates ballooned into months of additional dry dock time, the Virginia-class submarines have also grown longer, limiting maintenance options even further. Today, as new Virginia-class subs inexorably replace the remaining 26 Los Angeles-class subs in the fleet, Virginia-class maintenance space is getting hard to find.Īnd that’s not all. When the fleet of new subs was small, it wasn’t too big a problem that the modern subs could only be serviced at 12 of the Navy’s 17 existing attack sub-certified dry docks. That’s all well and good, but the Virginia-class subs turned out to be a bit bigger than their Los Angeles-class predecessors.
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