The Navy’s Newest Submarine Is Finally Here—and It’s Still No Match for China (2024)

• The USS Idaho, the U.S. Navy’s latest Virginia-class attack submarine, officially launched last week after taking seven years to build.
• The Navy is going to need more submarines to rival China’s naval buildup but won’t get the number it needs for nearly 30 years.
• The ideal number of attack subs is 66, but Naval production is only on track to get to 48 by 2030 and 56 by 2040.

The U.S. Navy’s newest submarine took one more step towards service last week as the future USS Idaho entered the water for the first time. Idaho is the latest Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine and joins an underwater force that the Navy can’t grow fast enough. Under pressure to respond to China’s unprecedented naval expansion and the need to deter two major nuclear adversaries, the Navy is growing its all-nuclear submarine force, even as it sheds an aging, battle-tested fleet, and may still need to expand farther than ever before.

New Kid on the Block

The submarine, P.C.U. Idaho, is the 26th Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine. The sub, which was built by Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding and took seven years to complete, was christened in March 2024 in Groton, Connecticut, after its construction was lengthened by COVID-19 and supply chain disruptions. Per tradition, the ship is temporarily designated P.C.U., or Pre-Commissioning Unit. The ship takes on the USS. designation, or United States Ship, once it is commissioned and handed over to the fleet.

Idaho is 377 feet long with a beam (width) of 34 feet. It displaces 7,900 tons underwater, three times more than its ancestor, a World War II Gato-class submarine. A single S9G (the G stands for General Electric) nuclear reactor drives a pump-jet propulsor instead of a traditional propeller screw, enabling the sub to reach a top speed of 25 knots. Like all nuclear-powered ships it has virtually unlimited range, its endurance limited only by the ship’s food supplies for the 135-person crew. Each has four 533 mm torpedo tubes, the standard torpedo diameter since well before World War II, enabling it to fire Mk. 48 ADCAP heavyweight torpedoes and sub-harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles.

The Navy has slowly improved the Virginia class over time in a series of blocks, a cost-saving measure over building a completely new boat that started with Block I. Idaho is what is referred to as a Block IV boat. One improvement introduced with the Block III boats is the swapping of twelve individual vertical launch silos, each of which could carry one Tomahawk cruise missile, with two 87-inch diameter Virginia Payload Tubes, each of which can carry six Tomahawk missiles. According to the Navy, the tubes are designed to “simplify construction, reduce acquisition costs, and provide for more payload flexibility than the smaller VLS tubes due to their added volume”

Idaho will remain pierside as shipyard workers install necessary equipment. According to the USS Idaho Commissioning Committee, she is due to be commissioned into the fleet in Spring 2025.

Preparing for War

Idaho enters the fleet as the U.S. submarine force is about to ungergo major changes. Submarines are viewed as a major fleet asset in a potential war with China, capable of crossing the Pacific quickly and taking up station in the Western Pacific. At least one submarine is thought to be in the Philippine Sea at all times. Today U.S. Pacific Fleet submarines are based in Guam, Washington State, and Hawaii. Under the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement, U.S. submarines will operate out of Australia by 2027, vastly decreasing the time needed to reach “WestPac” in a crisis.

In the meantime, the U.S. is attempting to grow the submarine fleet as a counter to China’s growing navy. Although China’s own naval fleet is growing fast, it has no practical experience in anti-submarine warfare, and its submarines are easily a generation, if not two, behind American subs. Coupled with a submarine’s ability to stalk and ambush surface ships, Navy planners believe that America’s fleet of Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Virginia-class submarines will punch above their weight in a conflict with China, but there is still a consensus that the fleet must grow—fast.

Unfortunately, while the submarine fleet will grow, it won’t happen fast. By 2030, the Navy anticipates having 48 attack submarines and 12 ballistic missile submarines on hand. By 2040, the Navy will have 56 attack subs and 13 ballistic missile subs. According to the latest projections, Navy won’t reach its goal of 66 attack subs until 2054, thirty years from now.

Why is the fleet growing so slow? A smaller defense budget is one reason: defense spending accounts for only 2.7 percent of the GDP, the lowest since 1999, compared to 5.7 percent in 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and 8.6 percent during the Vietnam War. Other factors include a withered industrial base, with fewer shipyards and thus fewer facilities to build submarines, as well as fewer trained workers. American shipyards are also building three Virginias for the Royal Australian Navy, which, although the work will detract from the Navy’s total, the subs will still go to a fleet strongly allied with the United States—and against China.

Changes Full Steam Ahead

One of the biggest changes to the submarine fleet is the upcoming replacement of the 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, each of which carries up to 20 Trident II D-5 nuclear-tipped missiles, with 12 new Columbia-class boats, each with 16 Trident II missiles. The first Columbia-class boat, the USS District of Columbia, is expected to be complete by 2027 and begin its first nuclear deterrence patrol in 2031. As more Columbias enter the fleet, the Ohios will retire, with the last Columbia expected to be completed by 2041. There is some question, however, whether 12 submarines will be able to deter both Russia and China, the latter of which is embarking on a major nuclear buildup.

In the early 2000s, four submarines, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Georgia (collectively, OMFG) were declared redundant as a result of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) II treaty with Russia. Rather than retire the ships, the Navy instead chose to convert them to guided-missile submarines. Each can carry a staggering 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, giving each more short-term firepower than an aircraft carrier. As useful as they are, the subs are at the end of their service lives and all four will retire by 2028. Once the Columbia production run is finished, the Navy will order four new guided-missile subs, likely based on the Columbia hull, entering service in 2045.

As for attack submarines, the Navy plans to continue building Virginia-class submarines for several more decades, keeping up the steady pattern of upgrades to keep them on the cutting edge. After two more Block IV submarines, the service will receive its first Block V sub. The Block Vs will be 70 feet longer, to accommodate payload modules designed to carry up to 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles, for a total ship load-out of 40 Tomahawks per boat. The Block Vs will also be able to carry the Navy’s new Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles instead of Tomahawks. A Block VI class is anticipated but its feature set is to be determined.

A replacement for the Virginia class, SSN(X), is projected to enter service in 2041.

The Navy’s submarine fleet might well be the most important factor deterring China, Russia, and other like-minded nations from starting a war. As America’s submarine force grows, the options available to its adversaries shrinks, until the option of victory becomes vanishingly small. Building this fleet is no longer an industrial enterprise, it’s a geopolitical race that the Navy—and America—can’t afford to lose.