Taipei [Taiwan], July 19 (ANI): The USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered attack submarine of the US Navy, is now expected to return to service by late 2026—nearly five years after it collided with an uncharted underwater seamount in the South China Sea, The Eurasian Times reported.
On October 2, 2021, while on a classified mission in the northern South China Sea, the Connecticut struck the seamount, sustaining extensive damage to its bow, sonar dome, and underside components. Despite the damage, the crew managed to surface the vessel and navigate it to Guam before it later made the journey to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington State for major repairs.
The submarine entered an Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA) period in February 2023, originally scheduled for 31 months with a planned return to service in September 2025. However, delays due to dock upgrades, limited spare parts for the Seawolf class, and a shipyard backlog have pushed the timeline into late 2026.
With only three Seawolf-class submarines ever built, sourcing replacement parts like bow domes has proven difficult and time-consuming, The Eurasian Times noted. This rarity has compounded the challenge of restoring the Connecticut.
Diana Maurer of the US Government Accountability Office highlighted how the drawn-out repair effort exposes weaknesses in the Navy’s repair surge capacity. “That, in turn, raises questions about how the Navy would execute battle damage repairs in the event of a conflict,” she said, according to The Eurasian Times.
The Puget Sound facility itself has contributed to the delay, as seismic strengthening work prevented Connecticut’s entry into dry dock until July 2023. Infrastructure bottlenecks have slowed progress even further.
Initial congressional approval earmarked approximately $50 million for emergency repairs and a new bow dome in 2021, but the total repair costs have since been estimated at around $80 million, The Eurasian Times reported, citing Bloomberg.
The prolonged absence of one of the Navy’s most advanced attack submarines has drawn concern as tensions escalate in the Indo-Pacific. The delays come at a time when China is intensifying its military and political activities in the South China Sea, even using the 2021 mishap as a propaganda tool to criticize US naval operations while downplaying its own aggressive maneuvers.
Further underscoring the urgency, delays in the Navy’s SSN(X) successor program—now expected to arrive in the 2040s—mean that restoring the Connecticut remains critical to maintaining US undersea capability in the region. (ANI)
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