USS Georgia decommissioned as first of four cruise missile submarines retires
The United States Navy has decommissioned USS Georgia after more than 42 years of service, retiring the first of four Ohio-class submarines converted from ballistic missile boats into guided missile and special operations platforms. The submarine returned to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay from her final deployment before being decommissioned on 31 July. USS Ohio, USS Michigan and USS Florida are expected to follow.
The capability being withdrawn is unusual. Under the conversion, 22 of the Trident launch tubes were reconfigured to carry canisters holding seven Tomahawk missiles each, for a total of up to 154, or special operations weapons and equipment. The remaining two tubes were converted into lockout chambers enabling the embarkation and deployment of special operations forces such as the Navy SEALs. That combination — a very large conventional strike magazine and a covert delivery capability in the same hull — has no equivalent elsewhere in the fleet.
Georgia's career spans the shift in purpose the class underwent. Construction began in 1979 at the Electric Boat yard in Groton, Connecticut; she was launched three years later and commissioned in February 1984 as SSBN-729, with her first strategic deterrence patrol departing Bangor, Washington, in January 1985. She completed 65 patrols with the Pacific Fleet in the ballistic missile role before conversion.
The conversion itself was a reprieve. With the end of the Cold War the navy planned to retire the first four Ohio-class boats, leaving fourteen in the deterrent force, before changing course and rebuilding them as multi-purpose platforms instead. Between 1976 and 1997 fourteen of the class were built, each able to carry up to twenty Trident I C4 or Trident II D5 missiles. The four converted boats subsequently became instruments of signalling as much as of strike, with the navy occasionally releasing images of them deliberately, an unusual step for a service that otherwise works hard to conceal submarine positions.
No replacement is planned. The navy has no programme to introduce vessels with comparable capacity for clandestine operations or with the 154-missile conventional magazine the converted Ohios carry, which means the retirement of the four boats removes the capability rather than transferring it. That gap opens at a point when several regional conflicts are showing a tendency to widen rather than settle, and it will not be closed by the Virginia Payload Module, which offers a fraction of the same magazine depth in a considerably smaller hull.
