The Columbia boats will certainly be well worth their hefty price tag whenever they are introduced.
The US Navy’s upcoming Columbia-class submarines are facing delays of up to 18 months, as the service struggles to field a host of its next-generation systems in a timely fashion. From submarines and destroyers to fighter jets and aircraft carriers, a litany of the Navy’s projects has been burdened with delays caused by labor shortages, employee retention, supply issues, and other roadblocks. In April, Navy officials told Congress that the Columbia-class, set to replace the existing Ohio-class boats in America’s nuclear triad, is facing “critical path challenges” threatening its intended delivery schedules. Last September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) discovered that “the first submarine is estimated to be delivered over a year late and cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than planned.” Current estimates place the Columbia boats at costing roughly $13 billion each, which means the overall sum could be hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Navy initially planned. Despite these setbacks, the service is adamant that the eventual introduction of Columbia submarines will be crucial to maintaining its power projection doctrine.
From the Ohio-class to the Columbia-class
Set to replace the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines down the line, the Columbia-class will represent the Navy’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine contingent. The Ohios were constructed beginning in the 1980s, as the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was heating up. Built with low acoustic signatures, these submarines were designed to remain virtually undetectable while underway. Specifically, the Ohio submarines can loiter in undisclosed locations, preparing to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike at a moment’s notice. Following the collapse of the USSR, the US government was directed to convert four of its Ohio SSNs into guided missile boats per the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review. The Ohio boats are essentially unparalleled when it comes to armament power, able to carry 154 Tomahawk land attack missiles in addition to torpedo-launched Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
What Makes the Columbia-class Different
While the Columbia ships are expected to feature fewer missile tubes than their predecessors, these submarines will also pack a punch. The Columbia submarines are planned to be equipped with 16 missile tubes for launching the three-stage, solid-fueled submarine-launched Trident II D5 intercontinental-range ballistic missile. As detailed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Its payload carries a Post-Boost Vehicle (PBV) which can carry up to 12 Reentry Vehicles (RVs), though New START limits the number to eight. These RVs can be either the Mk 4 with a W76 100 kT yield warhead or the Mk 5, which has a W88 475 kT yield warhead.”
In addition to this armament feature, the Columbia submarines will also sport electric motors, rather than the typical mechanical system used to power earlier nuclear-powered submarines. While the Ohio-class boats are already known to be quiet underway, their successors will be even harder for adversaries to detect due to the incorporation of an electric motor.
Based on these features, the Columbia boats will certainly be well worth their hefty price tag and delays when introduced down the line.
About the Author: Maya Carlin
Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has bylines in many publications, including The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, and The Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.
Image: DVIDS.
