Pearl Harbor is getting a fourth Virginia-class submarine next week, adding to the high-tech firepower the Navy has said will accompany the rebalance to the Pacific.
The USS Mississippi, commissioned in 2012, will join the Hawaii, Texas and North Carolina here. Pearl Harbor is the sole Pacific home for Virginia-class subs, which cost an average of $2.7 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Pacific Fleet Submarine Force will be gaining greater undersea capability in the littorals, or offshore seas, where a lot of quiet foreign diesel electric subs operate.
China is building a modern and regionally powerful navy with a "modest but growing" capability for conducting operations beyond China's near-seas region, the United States has said.
The newest, most capable U.S. vessels are moving to the Asia-Pacific region, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said recently.
New Navy P-8 sub-hunting and surveillance aircraft already have deployed to the region three times and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be sent there as well, Greenert said.
Despite problems in the Middle East and Europe, "the long-range interests of (the United States) are in the Asia-Pacific," Greenert said.
The 377-foot Virginia-class submarines are capable of very precise slow-speed control. The Navy's first major combat ship designed for a post-Cold War environment, the subs have six side-mounted sonar arrays, plus arrays in the bow, sail and nose, improving capabilities for eavesdropping and mapping the seafloor and minefields.
The subs carry Tomahawk missiles, have 12 Vertical Launch System tubes and four torpedo tubes.
They have "fly-by-wire" controls that improve ship-handling in shallow waters, a reconfigurable torpedo room to accommodate 30 special operations forces, and a nine-man lockout chamber for the rapid deployment of commandos from the submarine.
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