In these situations, the Navy’s instinctual bias is almost always slanted towards saving the damaged craft-regardless of whether it makes fiscal or operational sense. As the Navy has little in the way of spare Seawolf Class parts sitting around-and no older boats to cannibalize-rehabilitating and re-certifying the USS Connecticut may be a far more time-consuming and expensive engineering challenge than either the U.S. Working from scratch is what the Navy will likely need to do if it wants to repair the USS Connecticut.

The “nose job” was complex enough, requiring 285,000 worker days to complete, but the task of appropriating the old bow and aligning and mating internal systems was a whole lot easier than repairing and restoring damaged external hull structures from scratch. To get the USS San Francisco’s back in a timely fashion, the Navy resorted to cannibalism, taking a bow from the retiring USS Honolulu (SSN-718)-a similarly-aged sub that, due to budget cuts, was being prematurely retired. The USS San Francisco was stuck at Guam for seven months and needed four years of work before returning to service. While nobody is saying that the USS Connecticut suffered as extensive damage in the current incident, the USS Connecticut likely won’t be returning to service anytime soon. The last time the Navy publicly reported a submarine had damaged their forward ballast tanks was in 2005, when the USS San Francisco (SSN-711) suffered a catastrophic collision with a seamount. Two defense officials told USNI that the impact “damaged the submarine’s forward ballast tanks.” Others told USNI News that the submarine had hit and grounded upon an uncharted seamount in the South China Sea. Naval Institute (USNI), the indefatigable Sam LaGrone is hearing whispers of damage. While the “silent service” is living up to its name, information on the submarine’s condition is gradually leaking out.

Submarine collision