US navy’s Virginia attack submarines will now be able to fire nuclear weapons

THE Pentagon’s current nuclear weapons deterrence range has received a huge boost following deadly changes to its attack submarines.

ONCE a conventionally armed attack submarine, the US navy’s Virginia-class underwater vessels will now be capable of firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

US navy director of undersea warfare Rear Admiral John Tammen said the enhancement would see the submarine shifting into a nuclear deterrence role, reports The Maven.

“While Virginia-class submarines can use conventional deterrence to keep adversaries in check, a sub-launched cruise missile with a nuclear warhead would be incorporated into Virginias and give national command authority additional escalation control,” he said.

The current administration called for the weapon in the Nuclear Posture Review, with hopes it would benefit the Pentagon’s current nuclear weapons deterrence range. Currently only larger ballistic missile submarines are equipped to fire nuclear weapons.

As it stands, Virginia-class attack submarines are armed with tomahawks, which are long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missiles, and torpedoes, which are self-propelled weapons with explosive warheads.

Admiral Tammen said adding nuclear weapons capability would give combatant commanders new options to access high-risk areas and coastal regions previously unreachable by surface ships.

The move is the latest push from the US navy to secure a technological edge in the undersea domain against countries like China and Russia.

Last year the US introduced new fast-attack submarine, the USS South Dakota, into service.

The South Dakota uses quieting technologies inside the engine room as well as quieting materials to coat the hull, allowing it to approach high-threat areas undetected.

A tomahawk missile being launched.

The navy has since said this technology will be added to Virginia-class submarines and the next-generation, nuclear-armed, Columbia-class boats now in development.

Defence Secretary James Mattis said the introduction of nuclear-armed attack submarines could force Russia into adhering to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) it has violated. The treaty was supposed to eliminate all nuclear and conventional missiles and launchers with ranges up to 5500km.

“We have an ongoing Russian violation of the INF. We want our negotiators to have something to negotiate with because we want Russia back in compliance,” Mr Mattis said.

He said a sea-launched cruise missile option was needed to combat the rapid technological progress of adversary air-defence systems.

“To drop a gravity bomb that is low-yield means a bomber would have to penetrate air defences. Air defences are very different than they were 20 years ago,” he said.

Senior Pentagon leaders stress that arming the submarines will not require developing new nuclear warheads or increasing the size of the nuclear stockpile.

In addition to added nuclear capabilities, future Virginia-class submarines will be engineered to bring greatly improved coastal water warfare, surveillance and open ocean capabilities.

Part of this will be removing the need to manually control each small manoeuvre, with ships to be driven primarily through software code and electronics.

The Virginia-class submarines will also be equipped with a Large Aperture Bow conformal array sonar system which finds the location of enemy threats by analysing an acoustic ping.

More importantly, the subs will feature a “lockout trunk” which will remove the need for the ship to surface to allow special operations forces to deploy.

By 2020, the Virginia-class will also have a new 26m-long section designed to house additional missile capability — the number of tomahawks will increase from 12 to 40.

Continue the conversation in the comments below or with Matthew Dunn on Facebook and Twitter.