USS Arkansas Virginia-class submarine commissioned

Virginia-class attack submarine SSN 800 was commissioned as the USS Arkansas on 7 December 2024 at HII-Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia.

USS Arkansas will be the 27th Virginia-class submarine, and the eighth within Block IV of the class to be commissioned, with only the USS Iowa and the USS Utah to be commissioned.

Virginia-class vessels are designed to operate in both littoral and deep waters while conducting a variety of missions, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike warfare, special operations forces support, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, irregular warfare and mine warfare.

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Carlos Del Toro, secretary of the US Navy, attended the commissioning ceremony for the Arkansas, and said the boat would represent “the very best of our submarine force capabilities”. He drew comparisons between the strength and courage of the vessel’s future crew and that of its sponsors, surviving members of the Little Rock Nine.

The Little Rock Nine were African American students enrolled in the Little Rock Central High School in 1957, causing a crisis that eventually led to the US Supreme Court Brown Vs Board of Education decision which officially desegrated education by race in the US.

The Virginia class will continue to grow beyond Block IV – 10 boats in Block V have already been optioned and a Block VI with amendments to allow their use by special operations forces has also been planned.

The latest FY2025 US Defence Budget request plans for a total of 51 Virginia-class submarines. Meanwhile, the SSN(X) programme, which is expected to eventually replace the Virginia class altogether, began receiving government funding for design work back in 2021.

Three of the Virginia-class boats have been agreed for sale to Australia in the early 2030s as part of the tripartite AUKUS deal between the US, the UK and Australia, with another two available for optioning. The vessels will boost Australian submarine capability while the UK and Australia work on the newbuild AUKUS SSN.

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