Yesterday it was attack subs, so why not mis­sile boats today?
Of the 18 Ohio-​​class nuclear bal­lis­tic mis­sile sub­marines built from 1976–1997, all are still in ser­vice. Four of them have been removed from strate­gic ser­vice and have been con­verted to SSGN cruise mis­sile subs. USS Ohio (SSGN 726) and USS Florida (SSGN 728) rejoined the fleet last year, USS Michigan (SSGN 727) just rejoined the fleet a cou­ple of weeks ago, and USS Georgia (SSGN 729) should rejoin this fall. The remain­ing 14 Ohios con­tinue to serve as strate­gic nuclear deter­rents much as they did dur­ing the Cold War.
Unlike the attack sub force, which has been nearly halved since 1990 with more cuts to come, the mis­sile sub force has not been cut back nearly so much. Though Northrop Grumman’s Newport News recently said it was ready and will­ing to start design­ing the next class of boomer, no cur­rent plans call for new boats.
If the attack sub fleet finds itself scram­bling to jus­tify its exis­tence in an age of asym­met­ric land war­fare, the mis­sile subs have an even tougher task in con­vinc­ing bud­geters of the need for a mas­sive nuclear deter­rent in a post-​​Mutually Assured Destruction world. In fact, the four boats con­verted to SSGNs were to have been retired begin­ning in 2002 rather than undergo the upgrade to the D-​​5 Trident II mis­sile.
How many bal­lis­tic mis­sile subs are required to pro­vide the US Navy the deter­rent it needs? A study pub­lished last year sug­gests that a force of 10 SSBNs would strike the right bal­ance between capa­bil­ity, cost-​​savings, and treaty agree­ments. Current treaty plans indi­cate a total of around 1440 nuclear war­heads for US subs, mean­ing about 4 per mis­sile if all 14 boats are retained. Each mis­sile now car­ries up to 8 war­heads. The report notes:

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Navy Bids Farewell to Minneapolis-​​St. Paul:

After more than 23 years of ser­vice, the Los Angeles-​​class nuclear-​​powered fast-​​attack sub­ma­rine USS Minneapolis-​​St. Paul (SSN 708) inac­ti­vated in a cer­e­mony June 22 at Pier 3 at Naval Station Norfolk.

Concerns remain that our shrink­ing fleet is going to leave us with our pants down at some point, and that our anti-​​sub war­fare capa­bil­i­ties (or, rather, our lack thereof) could leave seri­ous gaps wait­ing to be exploited. Two world wars showed that sub­ma­rine fleets were able to have a dras­tic effect on the wider mil­i­tary and eco­nomic efforts of the com­bat­ants.
While no one is going to chal­lenge our supremacy in the realm of carrier-​​centered naval power, even just the threat of sub­marines could poten­tially keep those car­ri­ers from oper­at­ing when and where we need them to. We’ve seen anti-​​mine capa­bil­i­ties whither over time. Are ASW capa­bil­i­ties going to suf­fer the same fate?
The attack sub fleet is part of the ASW effort, and when you cou­ple the shrink­ing hunter fleet with the retire­ment of the S-​​3 Vikings, the delays in the P-​​3 Orion’s follow-​​on (the P-​​8A Poseidon MMA), and ques­tions about the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) pro­gram, I sus­pect that we’ve got rea­son to be con­cerned about our abil­ity to com­bat enemy sub­marines that could threaten our sur­face forces and logis­tics fleet, let alone com­mer­cial ships.
The USS Hawaii (SSN 776) was just com­mis­sioned last month, so it’s not like the fleet just shrank the other day. USS North Carolina (SSN 777) will join the fleet next year. But the long-​​term plan is to reduce the num­ber of attack boats in the fleet by a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber. Not every boat retired in the com­ing years will be replaced by a new one. We cur­rently have 53 oper­a­tional attack subs in the fleet.
A 2005 study by the Navy itself said that 48 is the “min­i­mum num­ber of attack sub­marines needed to main­tain an accept­able level of risk at an accept­able cost.” But the cur­rent plan to acquire Virginia-​​class subs like the Hawaii and North Carolina will put us under the 48-​​boat level for six­teen of the twenty-​​seven years between 2007 and 2034, bot­tom­ing out at 40 boats in 2028 and 2029. For more, see the Heritage Foundation arti­cles The Navy Needs to Close the Projected Gap in the Attack Submarine Fleet and Congress Should Accelerate Submarine Procurement.
–Murdoc