U.S. Navy’s Ohio Class Submarine To Get New Hypersonic Weapons
 

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They are by far the most heavily armed conventional strike platforms in the undersea battlespace. The U.S. Navy’s four Ohio Class cruise missile submarines (SSGNs) can carry a total of 154 Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM Block-IV) in their missile silos. When added to the torpedo room, this gives a total of 176 full-size weapons. This quantity of weapons is already unparalleled, even by the latest Russian Navy SSGNs.

And the submarines may soon receive new hypersonic missiles which could transform their capabilities. The new missile, being developed under the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program, will also reaffirm the U.S. Navy’s lead at a time when other navies are also rearming with hypersonic weapons.

The new missile will be able to hit targets with cruise-missiles like precision at extended ranges. And because of its incredible speed, greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), it can do so within minutes of the target being identified. Its speed and maneuverability will also make it much harder to counter.

The U.S. Navy expect to deploy the new hypersonic weapon on Ohio-class SSGNs. The head of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe, recently said that submarines will get the hypersonic strike weapon by 2025.

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It will be interesting to see how the Chinese respond if at all but I think they will.

Conventional first strike is one of the two big concerns for Russia and PRC.


So those hypersonics advancements together with the recent BMD test (SM-3 blk IIa vs an ICBM-like target) are not going to end well.

Why not? What's going to happen?

The concern is that US seeks a capability to enact a first strike using conventional fast weapons (such as hypersonics from forward deployed subs) and then catch the rest using the strategic BMD. SM-3 blk IIa is important here, as it both provides a second layer of strategic BMD to CONUS and expands the number of launchers by an order of magnitude or two, depending on the scale of the interceptor production.

This concern not only drives the development of Russian technological hedges (Burevestnik, Poseidon/Status-6 in strategic mission) or the Russian LoW stance (with declaratory doctrine that we would launch on warning of such hypersonic attack in progress) but also the Chineese modernisation/build up (MIRVing their force).

Moreover the SM-3 test itself would reinforce the position of critics of the New Start Treaty in Russia, as back in the day we decided to negotiate our concerns in a separate treaty, which never happened.
Now for the NST follow up it would be even harder to negotiate a treaty that does not include BMD and the new conventional first strike weapons.

Thus, overall, it would appear to be detrimental to strategic stability in general and US security specifically.

Why do we act like "hypersonic" missiles are terrifying apocalyptic boogeymen which will render future wars unwinnable to any nation which doesn't possess them? The V2 exceeded Mach 5 when reentering the atmosphere back in 1942.

That is one way to conceptualise it, sure.


However in this case what you compare against are TLAMs, that this SSGN specialised on before. And when compared to TLAMs you get less time to make decisions, amongst other things.

This SSGN had two crews and stayed at sea fo the most part for over two years

I wonder if the new Columbia class will hypersonic missiles too?

https://seapowermagazine.org/ssgn-us...ay-deployment/

SSGN USS Florida Returns From 800-Day Deployment