US Navy's Virginia attack submarines will now fire nuclear weapons, marking dramatic shift

US Navy's Virginia attack submarines will now fire nuclear weapons, marking dramatic shift


Tomahawk Cruise Missile being fired

March 26, 2018

The U.S. Navy is going to have its Virginia-class attack submarines be armed with nuclear warheads, marking a history shift in how the submarines are used. “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,” Rear Adm. John Tammen, Director, Undersea Warfare Division, told Congress. The new weapon, part of the Trump administration's recent Nuclear Posture Review, is likely to bring a new element to the Pentagon’s current nuclear weapons deterrence posture. Currently, only the Ohio class and the emerging Columbia-class are capable of firing nuclear weapons. The Virginia submarines can currently fire Tomahawk missiles and torpedoes but by adding nuclear weapons, it would give combatant commanders new options and expand its mission, Tammen added.

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This fitting could possibly also be applicable to four retrofitted SSGN (Guided Missile) subs that were previously Ohio class SSBN subs. Not sure how this would affect the New START Treaty.

Rogue Valley said:

US Navy's Virginia attack submarines will now fire nuclear weapons, marking dramatic shift

Tomahawk Cruise Missile being fired



This fitting could possibly also be applicable to four retrofitted SSGN (Guided Missile) subs that were previously Ohio class SSBN subs. Not sure how this would affect the New START Treaty.

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Its about time. Nukes back on submarines. Kind of hard to do an initial attack / first strike / offensive nuke deployment......with nuclear weapons......if you don't know where the opposing countries nuclear missile subs are.

It makes good Military sense. Kudos to the President.




Joe :

Major Lambda said:

Its about time. Nukes back on submarines. Kind of hard to do an initial attack / first strike / offensive nuke deployment......with nuclear weapons......if you don't know where the opposing countries nuclear missile subs are. It makes good Military sense. Kudos to the President.

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Nukes (Polaris/Poseidon/Trident-I/II) have always been aboard the SSBN (Ballistic/Nuclear) subs.

Now they'll also be on Virginia class (SSN) (Attack/Nuclear) subs (nuclear armed Tomahawks). Block I-IV Class: 12 Tomahawk tubes. Block V Class: 28 Tomahawk tubes.

Major Lambda said:

Its about time. Nukes back on submarines. Kind of hard to do an initial attack / first strike / offensive nuke deployment......with nuclear weapons......if you don't know where the opposing countries nuclear missile subs are.

Click to expand...

Well, it makes no effect at all. This treaty restricts the number of warheads, and is almost exclusively built around ICBM and bomber restrictions.

Cruise missiles are not ICBM, therefore are not specifically part of the treaty.

The treaty however does restrict the number of deployed warheads each nation can have to 1,550. So any conversions needed can be freely made, and have no effect on counting.

This is because of an interesting way in which the treaty was configured. Just as Rail Launchers were not addressed as neither side has them, neither side uses submarine versions of nuclear cruise missiles. Therefore the consensus is that these would fall under the clause for nuclear cruise missiles on bombers.

And in this case, no matter how many such missiles are on a bomber, it only counts as a single launch platform. This is how a B-52H counts as a single launching platform, even though it can carry 20 nuclear tipped cruise missiles. Even though an SSBN with 20 ICBMs counts as 20 nuclear tubes, since the only use for the tubes is nuclear missiles, and nothing else.

This is actually a rather clever interpretation of the treaty. This is essentially what replaced START I and SORT, which is what generally killed the nuclear cruise missile in the first place. And there is nothing preventing the Russians from doing the same thing in the current treaty.

I guess we need to look into a New New Start to address this.