Ohio-class Submarine - History

History

See also: STRAT-X

The first eight Ohio-class submarines were armed at first with 24 Trident I C4 SLBMs. Beginning with the ninth Trident submarine, USS Tennessee (SSBN-734), the remaining boats were equipped with the larger, three-stage Trident II D5 missile. The Trident II missile carries eight multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV), in total delivering more destructive power than the Trident I missile and with greater accuracy. Starting with USS Alaska in 2000, the Navy began converting its remaining ballistic missile submarines armed with C4 missiles to carry D5 missiles. This task was completed in mid-2008.

The first eight submarines had their home ports at Bangor, Washington, to replace the submarines carrying the Polaris A3 missile that were then being decommissioned. The remaining ten submarines originally had their home ports at Kings Bay, Georgia, replacing the Poseidon and Trident Backfit submarines of the Atlantic Fleet. During the conversion of the first four submarines to SSGNs (see below), five of the submarines, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Nebraska, Maine, and Louisiana, were transferred from Kings Bay to Bangor. Further transfers occur as the strategic weapons goals of the United States change.

Read more about this topic:  Ohio-class Submarine

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    “What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
    —Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)