The U.S. Navy is getting another Block V Virginia-class boat, the newest and most capable variant of America’s premier fast-attack submarine line.

The Defense Department announced late last week that the Navy has signed a $2.42 billion contract with General Dynamics Electric Boat for the tenth Block V Virginia boat. “The 17,000 shipbuilders of Electric Boat are pleased to receive the award for the tenth Block V ship and are ready to meet the generational challenge of building the Virginia and Columbia classes concurrently,” General Dynamics Electric Boat President Kevin Graney said in a statement. “We are grateful for the continued support of our federal delegation, who strongly advocated for this important funding.”

The Virginia class of nuclear-powered cruise missile attack submarines was introduced in the mid-2000s as a replacement to the 1970s Los Angeles-class submarine line, thirty of which have already been retired. The past three Virginia blocks have focused heavily on cost-efficiency improvements. Block II slashed roughly $300 million worth of program costs, introducing a more efficient production process; Block IV brought reduced maintenance periods and lowered total ownership costs to boost the program’s sustainability well into the coming decades.

By contrast, the Block V upgrade is all about capabilities and performance. These new submarines are significantly larger than previous models, going from a length of 377 feet to roughly 460 feet. They also displace 10,200 tons, as opposed to the 7,800 tons of the original models. These vastly increased dimensions are, in large part, to accommodate a new supply of missile launch tubes from the original Virginia’s twelve total Tomahawk cruise missiles all the way to forty. But the Block V upgrade doesn’t just improve payload capacity; it also lays the foundation for compatibility with new weapons, potentially including hypersonic prompt-strike missiles. It is unclear if the Block V revision will be able to launch unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV’s), or if that capability is being saved for the rumored upcoming Block VI package. There will also be a suite of acoustics improvements, part of the U.S. Navy’s ongoing effort to maintain a stealth gap with its Chinese and Russian counterparts.

As previously noted by Caleb Larson in The National Interest, the Virginia-class brings enough substantive changes and improvements to be considered as a wholly new submarine class. But the bureaucratic procedures for a new class to be validated and funded are nothing if not stringent; it is both faster and more cost-effective for these new models to be developed as “blocks” of an existing class, increasing the capabilities of the original Virginia submarine through incremental changes.

Of the planned sixty-six Virginia-class submarines, nineteen have been completed and around eleven more are in construction; the vast majority of currently active Virginia submarines belong to Blocks I-III. The tenth Block V model, SSN-881, will reportedly be completed by 2030, while the first Block V Virginia submarine is slated for delivery in FY2025.

Mark Episkopos is the new national security reporter for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters.