The boats can also carry up to 50 UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles for attacking land and shipping targets. However they also have extensive equipment for shallow-water operations, including a floodable silo capable of deploying eight combat swimmers and their equipment at once. They were built using HY-100 steel rather than HY-80 steel which is what previous classes had used. They were intended to combat the then-threat of large numbers of advanced Soviet ballistic-missile submarines in deep ocean, such as the Typhoon class, and to reply to the new Soviet Akula class attack submarines. They are quieter than the previous Los Angeles class submarines, larger, faster, have twice as many torpedo tubes for a total of 8, and carry more weapons, but were also much more expensive.

The end of the Cold War and budget constraints led to the fleet being canceled at three boats in 1995, and led to the design of the smaller Virginia class. At one time, an intended fleet of 29 submarines was to be built over a ten-year period, later reduced to twelve. The nuclear-powered Seawolf has a GE PWR S6W reactor system, two turbines rated 52,000hp (38.8MW), a pumpjet propulsor, a single shaft and one secondary propulsion submerged motor.The Seawolf class attack submarine (SSN) was the intended successor to the Los Angeles class, ordered at the end of the Cold War in 1989. The class was the intended successor to the. The Seawolf submarines were upgraded with the Lockheed Martin AN/BQQ-10(V4) sonar processing system under the acoustic-rapid commercial-off-the-shelf insertion (A-RCI) programme.īPS 16 radar, operating at I band, is fitted for navigation. The Seawolf class is a class of nuclear-powered fast attack submarines (SSN) in service with the United States Navy. The submarine’s sonar suite is the BQQ 5D with bow-mounted active / passive arrays and wide aperture passive flank arrays.Īlso fitted are TB-16 surveillance and TB-29 tactical towed arrays, which will be replaced by the TB-29A thin-line towed array being developed by Lockheed Martin and BQS 24 active sonar for close-range detection. CountermeasuresĬountermeasures include the Northrop Grumman WLY-1 torpedo decoy system and a GTE WLQ-4(V)1 electronic countermeasure (ECM) system. The range is 50km (active) and 38km (passive). It is capable of operating with or without wire guidance and uses both active and passive homing. The Gould mk48 ADCAP torpedoes combat both high-performance surface ships and fast deep-diving submarines. Seawolf has eight 660mm torpedo tubes for launching torpedoes and missiles. The range is 130km and the speed is high subsonic. Sub-harpoon uses active radar homing to deliver a 225kg warhead. The Seawolf Class also carries the Harpoon anti-ship missile from Boeing. The missile entered service with USN surface ships in September 2004. Block IV includes a two-way satellite link that allows reprogramming of the missile in flight and transmission of battle damage indication (BDI) imagery. The first underwater launch of the new Raytheon Tactical Tomahawk block IV missile took place in November 2002. The anti-ship Tomahawk missile is equipped with inertial guidance and an active radar and anti-radiation homing head.

Block III improvements include an improved propulsion system and Navstar global positioning system (GPS) guidance capability. Tomahawk can be fitted with a nuclear warhead, although it is not normally carried. The land-attack Tomahawk has a range of 2,500km.Ī Tercom-aided inertial navigation system (TAINS) guides the missile towards the target, flying at subsonic speed at an altitude of 20m to 100m. The submarine is armed with both the land-attack and anti-ship version of the Tomahawk missile from Raytheon.

Similarly to the improved Los Angeles Class, the Seawolf does not have any external weapons.