The 34-Year-Old Nuclear Submarine the Navy Finally Gave Up On
For nearly a decade, the USS Boise sat tied to a pier without the legal right to submerge. As autonocion.com reported, the 6,900-ton Los Angeles-class attack submarine spent years sidelined while waiting in an overcrowded queue for a midlife overhaul she would never actually finish. When Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle announced on April 10, 2026, that the 34-year-old warship would be inactivated rather than repaired, he called it a tough but necessary decision. The money and shipyard workforce tied to the stalled project are being redirected toward newer Virginia- and Columbia-class boats, leaving one of the Navy’s most famous Cold War veterans destined for the scrap heap.
A Long Queue and a Lost Dive Certification
The trouble for the Boise began long before she entered a dry dock. After returning from her final deployment in January 2015, the submarine was scheduled for a routine midlife overhaul in fiscal 2016. In the Navy’s public shipyards, however, attack submarines sit at the back of a rigid line behind ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers. As the backlog grew, the Boise simply waited. By 2017, she lost her dive certification, an official sign-off required from the Navy confirming that a hull and its critical systems can withstand underwater pressure. Without regular maintenance keeping pace, that certification lapsed. For nine years, the Navy owned an attack submarine legally barred from going underwater.
The boat was towed three different times—first to HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia in 2018, back to Naval Station Norfolk in 2019 due to shifting funding priorities, and back to Newport News in 2020. She finally entered a dry dock in 2021, according to reporting by The War Zone. The Pentagon formally announced a roughly $1.2 billion contract for the overhaul in February 2024, setting a completion target of 2029. By that point, math from The War Zone showed the submarine would have spent more than a third of her active career sitting in port.
Overhaul Costs Exceed Expected Value of the Boat
Financial accounting for the abandoned project varies. USNI News tallied about $1.6 billion in total Pentagon contract announcements for the boat. Meanwhile, Navy Secretary John Phelan told Semafor that the overhaul had consumed nearly $800 million while achieving only 22 percent of the scheduled work. Phelan estimated that finishing the job would require an additional $1.9 billion. Phelan offered a stark comparison to Fox News, noting that completing the overhaul would cost roughly 65 percent of a brand-new Virginia-class submarine while returning only about 20 percent of a new boat’s service life. Phelan was remarkably blunt about the outcome, telling Semafor simply, We screwed up.
The decision to pull the plug reflects an acute shortage of skilled labor across naval shipyards. Caudle argued that freeing workers from an aging hull allows them to focus on active fleets and new construction. While Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Hudson Institute, noted to USNI News that submarine builders and repair crews possess distinct skill sets and cannot always be swapped interchangeably, he agreed that the overall math did not work out, stating that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. HII indicated that the shipbuilders assigned to the Boise would be transitioned to other projects at Newport News without impacting the local workforce.
Readiness Pressures and the Future of the Fleet
The cancellation arrives as the Navy struggles with fleet-wide availability. Funds and personnel recovered from the Boise’s cancellation will help support the incoming Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines designed to replace aging Ohio-class hulls.
Commissioned between 1976 and 1996, the 62-vessel Los Angeles class has served as the backbone of the Navy’s fast-attack mission, evolving through three flights that introduced Vertical Launch System cells and reinforced sails for Arctic operations. Only 23 of the class remained in service when the Navy decided to retire the Boise. The submarine now awaits defueling and eventual dismantling, a process that historically lands decommissioned nuclear boats at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.
