A Look At The U.S. Navy's New Class Of Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarines

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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics: Meet the Navy's New Doomsday Submarine

​The next generation in nuclear missile submarines, explained.

The Congressional Research Service has a report on the new class of nuclear ballistic missile submarines, telling us a little more about these Navy vessels currently under development, which will carry the nuclear weapons of tomorrow.

Nuclear missile submarines, which spend months at a time submerged in classified patrol areas, are considered the most "survivable" of the so-called nuclear triad (land-, sea-, and air-launched nuclear weapons). The downside is that they are less accurate than land-based missiles and tend to be assigned retaliatory missions against "countervalue" targets—civilian targets such as cities, factories, oil refineries, and transportation infrastructure. The United States Navy still maintains 14 Ohio-class nuclear missile submarines. Each "boomer" carries 20 Trident D-5 missiles, and each Trident packs up to twelve nuclear warheads, each six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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WNU Editor: It will be 15 years before they are deployed.