Ohio class

   Designed in the early 1970s as successor to the Benjamin Franklin and Lafayette classes in the SSBN role, the lead boat of the Ohio class, the USS Ohio, was contracted to the Electric Boat Division of the General Dynamics Corporation in July 1974. As the result of an unfortunate series of problems both in Washington, DC, and at the shipyard, the lead vessel did not run its first sea trials until June 1981, and was not finally commissioned until November of that year, three years late. Production then improved, and the USS Louisiana, the last of these 18 boomers, was commissioned in September 1997.

   The Atlantic and Pacific Fleets have 10 and eight boats with the Trident II D5 and Trident I C4 missiles respectively; the latter are being replaced from 1996 with the D5 weapon. The Trident I carries up to eight re-entry vehicles each with one 100-kT W76 warhead delivered over a range of up to some 7780 km (4 835 miles), while the larger Trident II carries up to a maximum of 14 but more typically eight RVs each with one 475-kT W88 warhead delivered to a classified range some hundreds of miles longer than that of the Trident I.

   Each submarine carries 24 rather than the earlier standard of 16 SLBMs, is expected to have a 12-month reactor refuelling refit every nine years, and works a patrol period of 70 days followed by 25 days spent alongside a tender or jetty readying for the next patrol. Because of their longer-range Trident missiles, the Ohio-class boats have patrol areas in waters either close to the US or in the remoter parts of the world's oceans, making virtually impossible effective ASW measures, the more so as the boats, are acoustically very quiet.

   Other than the Ohio and Louisiana, the Ohio class boats are the Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Henry M. Jackson, Alabama, Alaska, Nevada, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Maine and Wyoming.

   The Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia were converted to guided missile submarines. Their Trident missile tubes were modified to contain vertical launch systems. Each SSGN is capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Such amount of cruise missiles is typically deployed in a surface battle group.