LOS ANGELES CLASS

The Los Angeles-class submarine program originated in the late 1960s as the United States Navy confronted a troubling reality: Soviet submarine technology was advancing rapidly. The Victor-class nuclear attack submarines entering Soviet service were fast, quiet, and capable. The existing American force — built around the Permit class and the somewhat larger Sturgeon class — was optimized for quietness and weapons, but not for the high-speed sprint performance needed to intercept fast Soviet submarines and carrier task forces.

The Navy's requirements for the new submarine revolved around a single, dominant characteristic: speed. The proposed SSN-688 design would be built around the new S6G pressurized water reactor, a high-output plant capable of delivering 35,000 shaft horsepower — more than twice the output of the reactor powering the Sturgeon class. This enormous power output would drive the submarine to speeds exceeding 25 knots submerged, making her the fastest operational American submarine to that point.

The design contract was awarded in 1970, and construction contracts were split between the two major American submarine builders: General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Newport News, Virginia. This dual-yard approach would be maintained throughout the class's lengthy production run, creating a degree of competition and industrial efficiency that helped manage costs even as the program expanded far beyond its original scope.

The Name That Started a Tradition

The decision to name the lead boat — and the entire class — after the city of Los Angeles was itself significant. American attack submarines had been named after various categories including sea creatures, undersea terrain features, and previous warships. The choice of a major American city's name was a deliberate statement, reviving a naming tradition that had lapsed since World War II. Subsequent boats would bear the names of cities across the United States, creating a political dimension to the program that helped sustain Congressional support through decades of appropriations.

The lead boat, USS Los Angeles (SSN-688), was laid down January 8, 1972 at Newport News Shipbuilding. She was launched April 6, 1974, and commissioned November 13, 1976 — becoming the most capable attack submarine in the world at the moment of her commissioning. The Navy was so satisfied with the design that it immediately ordered additional units, eventually building 62 submarines over a production run that extended from 1972 through 1996, making it the longest continuous production run of any American submarine class in history.

The original unit cost was approximately $220 million per boat in 1970s dollars — a figure that would escalate substantially as the class evolved through three production variants and as inflation drove up material and labor costs. By the final boats, costs had reached well over $800 million each, though the capability delivered had grown proportionately through successive improvements to electronics, sonar, and weapons systems.

The class would prove itself across every major American military operation of the late Cold War and post-Cold War period. Los Angeles-class submarines fired the first cruise missiles in combat during Operation Desert Storm in January 1991, fired Tomahawks during Operation Allied Force over Kosovo in 1999, and conducted strike missions during the opening phases of both Operation Enduring Freedom (2001) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) participated in the Kosovo campaign, firing 10 Tomahawks against Serbian military targets.

USS Los Angeles (SSN-688) — Lead boat of the class, commissioned November 13, 1976 · U.S. Navy photo (via seaforces.org)

USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) was the 19th Los Angeles-class submarine to be built and the 19th to commission. She was laid down at Electric Boat Division, Groton, Connecticut on December 27, 1979 — the same Connecticut shipyard that had produced many of her sister ships and would continue building submarines through the Virginia class and into the future. She was launched on March 13, 1982, and placed in commission on May 21, 1983, with Commander Dennis Wisniewski in command.

Her homeport was Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut — the heart of the American submarine force, a base that has been home to submarines since 1916. From New London, she operated primarily in the Atlantic Ocean, conducting cold war deterrence and surveillance patrols in the North Atlantic and working with carrier battle groups and independent operations across the full breadth of her patrol areas. She later transferred to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she continued operations in the Pacific theater.

The Reactor Overhaul

As a nuclear submarine, USS Albuquerque was built around a finite fuel supply. The S6G reactor core that powered her from commissioning in 1983 had an estimated life of approximately 13 years — which meant that by the mid-1990s, she would require an Engineered Refueling Overhaul (ERO) to replace the reactor core and conduct the massive maintenance and modernization work that accompanied it.

USS Albuquerque underwent her ERO at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine — one of the Navy's premier submarine maintenance facilities. The overhaul, conducted roughly between 2001 and 2003, installed a new reactor core that would power her for the remainder of her service life, updated her electronics and combat systems, and brought her back to full operational readiness. The Portsmouth team completed the work with remarkable efficiency, earning recognition for the turnaround speed. With her new reactor core installed, USS Albuquerque had the energy to serve well into the 2010s.

A Flight I Boat in a VLS World

By the time USS Albuquerque returned from her ERO, the submarine force around her had changed significantly. The 688I boats (SSN-719 and beyond) had carried their 12 VLS tubes for years. The first Virginia-class boats were on the ways at both Electric Boat and Newport News. The force was modernizing rapidly, and USS Albuquerque — a Flight I boat with no VLS tubes, carrying her Tomahawks in the torpedo room — represented an earlier era of submarine design.

And yet she had already proven her combat worth. In March 1999, during Operation Noble Anvil — the NATO air campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo War — USS Albuquerque fired 10 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles from the Adriatic Sea at Serbian military targets. Each missile was loaded individually into one of her four torpedo tubes and launched. The operation demonstrated that even a Flight I boat without VLS could deliver meaningful precision strike capability in a real combat environment. The Tomahawk, designed to be tube-launched as well as VLS-launched, was every bit as lethal fired from her torpedo room as from a dedicated VLS cell.

Final Years and Decommissioning

USS Albuquerque continued serving after her ERO through the 2000s and into the 2010s, conducting deployments in both the Pacific and Atlantic. As the Virginia-class boats entered service in growing numbers, the pressure on the older 688 hulls intensified — the Navy needed fewer attack submarines of the old design as modern hulls came online. Flight I boats were the first to go.

USS Albuquerque was decommissioned on February 27, 2017, at Naval Base Kitsap — Bangor, in Silverdale (Keyport), Washington. She had served the United States Navy for 33 years and 9 months, having been commissioned into a world of Cold War confrontation and decommissioned into an era of great power competition, terrorism, and a submarine force transitioning to its next generation. She is now in the Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, being carefully dismantled according to strict environmental and nuclear safety protocols.