Ohio-Class Submarines: Blue and Gold Crews, Untargeted Tridents and SSGNs

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The Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine displaces 18,750 tons submerged, runs 560 feet long with a 42-foot beam, and ranks as the third largest submarine class ever built, behind the Soviet Typhoon and the Borei. General Dynamics Electric Boat built the boats in Rhode Island and Connecticut as 42-foot-diameter sections, fitting out each slice before welding them together. Despite a 35,000 shaft horsepower nuclear plant, rafted machinery on sound-dampening mounts makes an Ohio at 20 knots as quiet as older submarines at six. Each carries 15 officers and 140 enlisted sailors past test depths of more than 800 feet, and two crews, Blue and Gold, alternate 70 to 90 day patrols. Three large logistics hatches let cranes lower whole pallets and replacement modules, so a major dry dock overhaul comes only once every 15 years. The 14 active boats carry roughly half of all active U.S. strategic warheads.

The class first carried 24 Trident I C-4 missiles, replacing the Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin classes, and later the three-stage Trident II D-5. The missiles sail with no preset targets; coordinates arrive by very low frequency radio from U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska, which reaches the boat while submerged. After the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review set the need at 14 SSBNs, the Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia were converted between 2002 and 2008 at about $1 billion each into cruise missile submarines. Under New START, four tubes on each remaining SSBN were permanently disabled, cutting the load to 20 missiles. The Columbia class is due around 2031 at over $4 billion each, compared with about $2 billion per Ohio in late 1990s dollars, and Navy officials in 2020 and 2022 discussed extending some Ohio boats.

• Blank targeting acts as a safeguard: a malfunction or rogue action cannot send a missile anywhere until verified codes arrive.
• Each converted SSGN fits seven Tomahawks in each of 22 former Trident tubes, for 154 cruise missiles.
• The other two tubes became lockout chambers for up to 66 special operations personnel, with mounts for a dry combat submersible or dry deck shelters.
• Disabling tubes for the treaty meant severing wiring harnesses and welding steel plates inside them.
• Giving the boats state names once reserved for battleships signaled that the submarine had become the Navy's capital ship.