Table of contents
Design Variants Boats See also

Design

The Seawolf class was introduced to combat the threat of advanced Soviet ballistic missile submarines such as the Typhoon class, and attack submarines such as the Akula class in a deep-ocean environment. Seawolf-class hulls are constructed from HY-100 steel, which is stronger than the HY-80 steel employed in previous classes, in order to withstand water pressure at greater depths.

Seawolf submarines are larger, faster, and significantly quieter than previous Los Angeles-class submarines. In addition they also carry more weapons and have twice as many torpedo tubes. The boats are able to carry up to 50 UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles for attacking land and sea surface targets. The boats also have extensive equipment to allow shallow water operations. The class uses the more advanced ARCI Modified AN/BSY-2 combat system, which includes a larger spherical sonar array, a wide aperture array (WAA), and a new towed-array sonar. Each submarine is powered by a single S6W nuclear reactor, delivering 45,000 hp (34 MW) to a low-noise pump-jet.

This advanced design made the Seawolf submarines very expensive. The projected cost for 12 submarines of this class was $33.6 billion, but construction was stopped at three boats when the Cold War ended.

Variants

USS Jimmy Carter is roughly 100 feet (30 m) longer than the other two boats of her class, due to the insertion of a section known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP) which allows launch and recovery of Remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV) and Navy SEALs. The MMP may also be used as an underwater splicing chamber for tapping of undersea fiber optic cables. This role was formerly filled by the decommissioned USS Parche. Jimmy Carter was modified for this role by General Dynamics Electric Boat at the cost of $887 million.

Boats
Seawolf class submarines USS Seawolf SSN-21 USS Connecticut SSN-22 USS Jimmy Carter SSN-23

Table of contents

Design

Variants

Boats

See also