Columbia class

The most survivable weapons America will ever build, running a year late — the Columbia class is the US Navy's replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines: twelve 21,000-tonne boats with sixteen Trident II tubes each, quieted by all-electric drive and an X-stern, powered by a reactor core that never needs refueling. The program has held first call on the Navy's resources since 2013; the lead boat, District of Columbia, is about 65 percent complete and racing a recovery plan toward 2028 delivery — because from 2027, the Ohios it replaces begin aging out at roughly one per year.

Overview

The Columbia class recapitalizes the sea leg of the US nuclear triad — the leg that carries the majority of deployed American warheads and the assured-second-strike logic underneath all of it. Twelve boats replace fourteen Ohios, a trade made possible by two design choices: a life-of-ship reactor core that eliminates the four-year midlife refueling (a two-year overhaul suffices), and higher availability that lets ten operational boats meet the patrol requirement. Each Columbia is the largest submarine the US has ever built — 560 feet, ~20,800 tons submerged — with 16 missile tubes for the Trident II D5LE (versus the Ohio's 20 active), all-electric drive replacing mechanical reduction gears, and X-stern control surfaces, both choices aimed at the only specification that finally matters in an SSBN: silence. General Dynamics Electric Boat builds and assembles the boats at Groton with major modules — including the bow — from HII Newport News. The program's numbers are nuclear-scale: ~$126.4 billion procurement for the class (CBO says count on more), a lead boat at ~$16.1 billion including design, and a $347 billion-class lifecycle. Its schedule is the strategic story: contracted delivery of October 2027 slipped 12–17 months on late turbines and a late bow, before a module-acceleration plan pulled the estimate back to 2028 — a recovery goal the Navy and GD were still "tracking to" as of April 2026, with the first Ohio hitting end-of-life in 2027.

Development

The Ohio Replacement Program became the Columbia class in December 2016, and the Navy has designated it its top acquisition priority since 2013, per the Congressional Research Service's standing report (CRS R41129). Lead-boat construction began 1 October 2020 — a month before the ~$9.47 billion Build I contract modification to Electric Boat — with the keel laid 4 June 2022 at Groton, the boat renamed District of Columbia (SSBN-826) to avoid clashing with the attack submarine USS Columbia. The program's defining turn came on 2 April 2024, when the Navy's shipbuilding review announced a 12–16 month delay: Northrop Grumman's steam turbine generators ran roughly three years late, HII Newport News' bow section and bow dome slipped, and the post-COVID submarine workforce and a supplier base that is ~70 percent sole-source did the rest, per CRS; by the FY2026 budget submission the estimate had grown to 17 months — a ~2029 delivery. The counterattack was logistical: an acceleration plan agreed in early 2025 to get all 26 major modules to Groton by the end of 2025 — achieved when the bow arrived from Newport News the week before Thanksgiving, seven months early against the internal plan, per ExchangeMonitor. Progress since: ~51% complete (November 2024), ~60% (October 2025, GD's CEO), ~65% (February 2026, the Navy's strategic-submarines PEO), with pressure-hull completion planned for end-2026, water entry in 2027, and delivery in 2028, per USNI News — reiterated by General Dynamics in April 2026. The second boat, Wisconsin (SSBN-827), laid down in August 2025, runs ~35% complete and on schedule for 2030.

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