The U.S. Navy’s Big Ohio-Class Submarine Mistakes Still Sting

Key Points and Summary – The Ohio-class SSGNs were a post–Cold War judo move: convert four surplus ballistic-missile submarines into covert cruise-missile and special-operations platforms.

-Each carries up to 154 Tomahawks and berths dozens of SOF, giving combatant commanders a stealthy, long-endurance “arsenal ship” under the sea.

SOUDA BAY, Greece (Sept. 7, 2019) The Ohio-class cruise missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) arrives in Souda Bay, Greece, for a scheduled port visit, Sept. 7, 2019. NSA Souda Bay is an operational ashore base that enables U.S., allied, and partner nation forces to be where they are needed and when they are needed to ensure security and stability in Europe, Africa, and Southwest Asia. (Photo by Joel Diller/Released)

-They proved the concept in Libya (2011) and have quietly signaled and surged from the Pacific to the Middle East ever since.

-But retirements begin in 2026 and end in 2028, and the plan to backfill capacity with Virginia-class Block V submarines is behind schedule.

-The result is a looming strike-volume gap the Navy must bridge with industry fixes, new weapons, and smarter force design.

Ohio-Class SSGN Submarines: A Retirement That Will Not Be Easy to Get Over

When the Cold War ended, the U.S. suddenly had more SSBN hulls than deterrent work.

Arms-control reductions and revised nuclear plans meant four early Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines could be spared. Rather than scrap perfectly good nuclear boats, the Navy asked a sharper question: what’s the most leverage we can wring from them in a world where crises erupt far from friendly bases?

The answer was the SSGN: take the cavernous Trident missile compartment and turn it into a stealth magazine for conventional strike (Tomahawks) and a hotel and ocean interface for special operators. Keep the Ohio’s global endurance and two-crew model, add new mission systems, and you get a platform that can wait in silence for weeks, hit very hard in minutes, and then disappear again. That’s power projection with deniability baked in.

NAVAL BASE GUAM (April 23, 2025) – The guided-missile submarine USS Ohio (SSGN 726) transits Apra Harbor, Naval Base Guam, April 23, 2025. Ohio, homeported in Bangor, Washington, and assigned to Submarine Squadron 19, is conducting routine operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. U.S. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. James Caliva)

The Origin Story: From Treaty Arithmetic To A New Mission

The conversion idea wasn’t a whim. It flowed from post-Cold War force-structure decisions and arms-control commitments that narrowed the sea-based nuclear requirement. Four boats—Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Georgia—were chosen for a radical refit in the 2000s: 22 Trident tubes became seven-shot canisters for Tomahawks (for a theoretical 154 missiles), while the remaining tubes turned into diver lock-in/lock-out and support spaces. Inside, the boats gained SOF berthing for ~66 personnel, space for Dry Deck Shelters, and command areas sized for complicated clandestine work.

By late 2007, the SSGN enterprise had its initial operating capability, and combatant commanders quickly discovered they could task a single submarine for strike, ISR, and SOF without advertising their presence. The phrase “missile truck” understates it; SSGNs became undersea arsenals with a door for raiders.

What The SSGNs Actually Bring To A Fight

Start with the obvious: volume. One SSGN can put a triple-digit salvo of land-attack cruise missiles into the air, from a place and time of our choosing, with a radar cross-section that is essentially the ocean. That lets you crack open air defenses, suppress command nodes, and set conditions for follow-on forces—all without parking a surface ship within counter-battery range.

Then add presence without provocation. A destroyer bristling with VLS cells broadcasts politics; an SSGN sitting deep on a patrol line broadcasts uncertainty. Adversaries know the boat could be nearby, ready to do unpleasant things, but they don’t know where or when. That ambiguity is deterrence.

Finally, fold in special operations. The Ohio SSGNs aren’t just shooters; they’re SOF motherships. Dual lock-out chambers, Dry Deck Shelter compatibility, and lots of bunks give theater commanders a platform to insert, sustain, and extract teams quietly, at scale, from the same hull that can also erase a runway before dawn. That combination is rare—and potent.

Ohio-Class Submarine U.S. Navy.

Operational History of Ohio-Class SSGNs: Quiet Work, Loud Effects

Because the community keeps its own counsel, the SSGNs’ résumé is selectively visible. The most public moment came in 2011 over Libya, when USS Florida fired a torrent of Tomahawks in the opening hours of the campaign, knocking down air defenses and command-and-control so coalition aircraft could work safely.

That was the first combat use of a converted Ohio, and it proved the core idea: a single submarine can shape a theater before the first TV camera even finds a runway.

USS Georgia was also used to hit Iran during the 12-Day War.

Outside of declared wars, the SSGNs have been message platforms. Port visits or deliberately public transits—Florida through the Suez into the Red Sea in 2023, Michigan alongside in Busan during Korea crises—signal presence without a press conference.

In between, the boats do what submarines do best: go dark. They’ve trained with allies in the Pacific, lurked near chokepoints, and quietly fed targeting networks; you only hear about the sorties the Navy wants you to hear about.

The Retirement Wave: A Big Hole In The Magazine

All four Ohio-class SSGNs are over forty and reaching the end of their viable service lives. The Navy’s plan is straightforward and sobering: Ohio and Florida retire in FY2026; Michigan and Georgia follow in FY2028. When the last boat ties up, the fleet loses more than half of its submarine force’s vertical-launch payload capacity—in a single stroke.

Do the math. Four boats at a notional 154 Tomahawks each is 616 missiles of stealthy, on-call strike volume. You can spread that load across surface combatants and aircraft, but you can’t replicate the combination of stealth, magazine depth, endurance, and SOF support on one hull. That’s why the SSGN community has been the quiet darling of combatant commanders for almost two decades.

The Replacement Plan: Virginia Block V—Good, But Not A One-for-One

The Navy’s official backfill is the Virginia-class Block V with the Virginia Payload Module (VPM)—a mid-body insertion of four large-diameter tubes that collectively carry 28 additional Tomahawks. Fold those into a Block V’s forward payload capacity and a single boat totals about 40 Tomahawks—excellent for an attack submarine, but a far cry from an SSGN’s 154.

Scale can close some of that gap over time, but time is the problem. Production cadence on the Virginia line has slipped; Block IV units are delayed and Block V boats are running roughly two years behind amid workforce and supplier shortfalls. Columbia-class SSBN construction (correctly) takes priority in the same yards and shops, squeezing throughput further. Meanwhile, AUKUS adds demand to the same industrial base that already struggles to reach two Virginias per year. That’s not a criticism of the strategy; it’s a reminder that industrial arithmetic is now a warfighting variable.

If you’re counting missiles, another unpleasant sum appears: replacing 616 SSGN Tomahawks with VPM tubes alone requires 22 VPM-equipped boats (22 × 28 = 616) just to restore the mid-body capacity—not the total per-hull salvo. The Navy will build many Block Vs, but not that many any time soon.

Can Hypersonics And “Distribution” Save The Day?

The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic weapon will come to sea on Zumwalt-class destroyers first, and later on Virginia-class submarines. That adds a new tier of fast, survivable long-range strike—but in small numbers at first, and on platforms that are themselves scarce. CPS helps with effect against high-value targets; it does not, in the near term, replace the volume an SSGN brings to a regional fight.

🚨 U.S. conducts massive precision strikes “obliterating” key Iranian nuclear facilities

– USAF B-2 bombers dropped at least 6x GBU-57 MOP bombs on Fordo
– U.S. Navy guided-missile sub USS Georgia (SSGN 729) fired 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Natanz and Isfahan

What we know: pic.twitter.com/d6Unu7bo9O

— Ian Ellis (@ianellisjones) June 22, 2025

There is also a serious conversation inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill about a future large-payload submarine (or an SSN(X) with meaningful extra volume) in the 2030s and 2040s. That could restore some of the “arsenal ship under the sea” capacity.

But that is decades, not years—and only if budgets, yards, and design teams line up.

What Virginia Can’t Replace—And Why It Matters

A Block V Virginia is a phenomenal attack submarine. It will hunt ships and subs, collect intelligence, and launch meaningful strikes. What it lacks is the SSGN’s single-hull wallop and SOF hotel. A Virginia can host a team and a shelter; it cannot embark dozens of operators with the same comfort, endurance, and workspace. It can launch salvos; it cannot, alone, reset a whole air-defense picture across a region in a single opening punch.

Equally important is tempo. The Ohio SSGNs use a two-crew model (Blue/Gold) refined in the ballistic-missile fleet, keeping the boat deployed more days per year than a single-crewed attack submarine can manage without hurting people and maintenance. When you retire the SSGNs, you don’t only lose magazine. You lose presence measured in patrol days.

What The Navy Can Do…Now

There’s no magic wand, but there are practical steps:

Keep The Ohio-class SSGNs Fully Utilized Until The Last Day. The retirement dates are set; the goal now is squeezing every day of forward, ready presence without compromising safety as the hulls age. Maybe there is even a way to keep them service a few more years with little extra work in the yard? It might be wishful thinking, but worth exploring.

Stabilize Virginia Production—Then Stretch. The near-term win is achieving a steady two-per-year cadence, then climbing toward the oft-discussed 2.33 boats per year. That means money for workforce, suppliers, and facilities—not just contracts on paper.

Treat Strike As A System, Not A Hull. Distribute Tomahawk and future weapons across destroyers, submarines, and aircraft with smarter stockpiles and preplanned logistics. The goal is to recreate effects on the first nights of a crisis, even if no single platform can do what an SSGN did.

Accelerate Hypersonic Integration Where It’s Sensible. Zumwalt-class and select Virginias are the test cases. The sooner those weapons are in real deployment cycles, the faster you regain theater options that don’t ride on fragile air corridors.

Revisit A Big-Magazine Submarine Concept. CBO has floated versions of this; Navy leaders have alluded to large-payload hulls later in the 2030s. The planning needs to harden now if the fleet is to avoid a permanent undersea strike deficit.

The Hard Truth on the Ohio-Class SSGNs: You Don’t Miss A Platform Until You Need Its Trick

The Ohio-Class SSGNs are a product of strategic creativity: treaty cuts turned into new leverage. Their legacy is not just the number 154; it’s the strategic options those tubes quietly created—opening salvos no one saw coming, SOF raids no one admitted, signals that made adversaries behave. In a decade defined by contested sea lanes, busy skies, and anti-access umbrellas, that mix of stealth, volume, and endurance is exactly what you want at the edge of a crisis.

When Ohio and Florida retire in 2026 and Michigan and Georgia follow in 2028, the Navy will still be lethal. But it will be missing a unique trick—an undersea arsenal ship that lets a Combatant Commander change the weather in one night.

The race now is less about nostalgia and more about industrial discipline and design courage: fix the yards, field the Block Vs, get hypersonics out of PowerPoint, and decide—soon—whether America wants another big magazine under the waves.

Bottomline: the Ohio-class SSGNs will be missed.

About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis 

Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.

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