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Submarine USS Connecticut Severely Damaged In Pacific Crash To Return To Service In 2026
The USS Connecticut, one of the U.S. Navy's prized Seawolf class nuclear attack submarines, is set to finally return to service late next year. The Navy previously indicated it could rejoin the fleet this fall. Connecticut is currently at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington State for repairs and other work after suffering major damage, particularly to its bow, from a collision with an underwater seamount in the South China Sea in 2021.
USS Connecticut hit the seamount in October 2021, and limped first to Guam, and then to San Diego in southern California, before making its way north to the Puget Sound area. A subsequent Navy investigation into the incident highlighted a weak command environment and lax attitudes toward the performance of key tasks as putting the submarine on a path to the accident, which you can read about in more detail here. The submarine's Commanding Officer Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani, Executive Officer Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin, and Chief of the Boat Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers were relieved of duty following the mishap.
'USS Connecticut (SSN 22) is in Dry Dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PSNS & IMF) in Bremerton, Washington, undergoing an Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA), which is a major maintenance availability that all submarines undergo during their maintenance life cycle,' a Navy spokesperson told TWZ last week. 'The damage USS Connecticut sustained in October 2021 is also being repaired during this EDSRA. Connecticut is expected to return to service in late 2026. PSNS & IMF and Naval Sea Systems Command are continuing to prioritize investments in materiel, infrastructure, and personnel to meet the needs of the fleet.'
The EDSRA formally began in February 2023. The following month, the Navy told Naval News that the availability was 'notionally sized at 31 months duration,' which would have had Connecticut returning to service in September 2025. The estimated cost of the repairs is unknown. Congress approved an initial trench of $40 million for 'emergency repairs' and an additional $10 million for a new bow dome in 2021, but this is just a small part of the full expected price tag.
Why the repairs are taking longer than initially expected is unclear. As TWZ wrote back in 2023 after the Navy released pictures of Connecticut docking at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard:
'As for the USS Connecticut, as the images show, her state remains relatively the same, at least in terms of what is visible, compared to when she arrived over a year and a half ago. Her sonar dome is still missing and, clearly, the boat has been idle for some time, with huge sections of its anechoic coating missing from its sail.'
'Major repairs to the submarine's bow, sonar, and other underside structure components will be challenging as the Seawolf class is long out of production. On top of that, just three boats were ever built, with one being a heavily modified sub-type in its own right, the highly secretive USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23). In the past, similar damage has been fixed by leveraging spare parts and entire sections of decommissioned submarines of the same class. That simply is not an option in this case.'
The small size of the Seawolf class fleet is a byproduct of post-Cold War U.S. defense spending drawdowns. The truncated purchase plan made each one extremely expensive – approximately $3.1 billion apiece in 1983, or nearly $9.4 billion in 2025 dollars – and they remain the most costly attack submarines ever built. Given the advanced capabilities the boats offer, the Navy utilizes them for a variety of specialized tasks, for which they are in very high demand. The aforementioned USS Jimmy Carter is a distinct subtype of the design further optimized for underwater espionage missions, and features a 100-foot-long Multi-Mission Platform (MMP) hull extension, which you can read more about here.
The Navy highlighted the challenges of sustaining the class in its 2025 Fiscal Year budget request, in which it asked for an unspecified amount of funding to purchase a spare Seawolf bow dome to hedge against an incident like this happening again in the future.
'The Seawolf Class submarines sustainment strategy did not include the provisioning of replacement bow domes; therefore, no replacement bow domes for these in-service submarines are within the Navy's inventory,' the budget documents explained. 'This program would procure one Seawolf Class bow dome for use in the event replacement is required. Funds in FY25 are to purchase a bow dome which has a three plus year lead time.'
With the EDRSA, the Navy is also taking the opportunity to conduct a deep overhaul of USS Connecticut, which could include the integration of various upgrades.
The Navy's 2026 Fiscal Year budget request puts additional emphasis on getting Connecticut finished before the end of next year. USS Seawolf is due to start its own lengthy maintenance availability at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard next April and is scheduled to then return to service in June 2029, according to the budget documents. For at least a time, the Navy now looks set to have just one Seawolf class submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter, operational.
It is worth noting here that the Navy continues to struggle with completing major maintenance availabilities for submarines and surface warships on time, despite efforts to reverse that trend, in large part due to shipyard capacity and related workforce issues. This reflects a broader and ever-more worrisome disparity between the United States and its chief global competitor, China, when it comes to naval shipbuilding.
The Navy's work toward a next-generation nuclear attack submarine, or SSN(X), underway since at least 2018 and seen in part as a successor to the Seawolf class, has also been pushed back. The service announced last year that the expected timetable for the start of production of those new boats had shifted to the right from the mid-to-late 2030s to the early 2040s. That schedule remains unchanged in the Navy's 2026 Fiscal Year budget request, which is seeking nearly $623 million in additional funding for the SSN(X) program.
All of this further stresses the importance of getting Connecticut back in service regardless of the costs involved, and doing so as quickly as possible. If the current schedule holds, the submarine will be back in service roughly five years after the collision in the Pacific.
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