Virginia-class submarine

The Virginia class, or the SSN-774 class, is a class of nuclear-powered attack submarine with cruise missile capability in service with the United States Navy. The class is designed for a broad spectrum of open-ocean and littoral missions, including anti-submarine warfare and intelligence gathering operations. They are scheduled to replace older Los Angeles-class attack submarines, many of which have already been decommissioned, as well as four cruise missile submarine variants of the Ohio-class submarines. Upon the 25 July 2025 decommissioning of the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Helena (SSN-725), the Virginia-class became the most numerous active submarine class in the world.

Virginia-class submarines will be acquired through 2043, and are expected to remain in service until at least 2060, with later submarines expected to operate into the 2070s.

On 14 March 2023, the trilateral Australian-British-American security pact known as AUKUS announced that the Royal Australian Navy would purchase three Virginia-class submarines as a stopgap measure between the retirement of their conventionally powered Collins-class submarines and the acquisition of the future SSN-AUKUS class submarines. If SSN-AUKUS falls behind schedule, Australia will have the option of purchasing two additional Virginia-class submarines.

The class was developed under the codename Centurion, later renamed New SSN (NSSN). The "Centurion Study" was initiated in February 1991. The Virginia-class submarine was the first US Navy warship with its development coordinated using such 3D visualization technology as CATIA, which comprises computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and product lifecycle management (PLM). Design problems for Electric Boat—and maintenance problems for the Navy—ensued nonetheless.

By 2007 approximately 35 million labor hours had been spent to design the Virginia class. Constructing a single Virginia-class submarine has required around nine million labor hours, and over 4,000 suppliers. Each submarine is projected to make 14–15 deployments during its 33-year service life.

The Virginia class was intended in part as a less expensive alternative to the Seawolf-class submarine ($1.8 billion vs $2.8 billion), whose production run was canceled after just three boats had been completed. To reduce costs, the Virginia-class submarines use many "commercial off-the-shelf" (COTS) components, especially in their computers and data networks. Improvements in shipbuilding technology have trimmed production costs below the $1.8 billion projected fiscal year 2009 dollars.

In hearings before both House of Representatives and Senate committees, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and expert witnesses testified that the annual procurement rate of only one Virginia-class boat—rising to two in 2012—would result in excessive unit production costs, yet an insufficient complement of attack submarines. In a 10 March 2005 statement to the House Armed Services Committee, Ronald O'Rourke of the CRS testified that, assuming that the production rate remains as planned, "production economies of scale for submarines would continue to remain limited or poor."

In 2001, Newport News Shipbuilding and the General Dynamics Electric Boat Company built a quarter-scale version of a Virginia-class submarine dubbed Large Scale Vehicle II (LSV II) Cutthroat. The vehicle was designed as an affordable test platform for new technologies.