Navy

The Navy's Columbia-Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Has a Very Special Propulsion System

The Navy has now completed at least one-fourth of the design drawings and begun advanced work on a stealthy "electric drive" propulsion system for the emerging nuclear-armed Columbia-Class ballistic missile submarines -- as part of its strategy to engineer the quietest, most technically advanced and least detectable submarine of all time.

The Columbia class, slated to begin full construction by 2021, is to be equipped with an electric-drive propulsion train, as opposed to the mechanical-drive propulsion train used on other Navy submarines.

“The electric-drive system is expected to be quieter (i.e., stealthier) than a mechanical-drive system,” a Congressional Research Service report on Columbia-Class submarines from earlier this year states.

In today’s Ohio-class submarines, a reactor plant generates heat which creates steam, Navy officials explained. The steam then turns turbines which produce electricity and also propel the ship forward through “reduction gears” which are able to translate the high-speed energy from a turbine into the shaft RPMs needed to move a boat propeller.

Designed to be 560-feet– long and house 16 Trident II D5 missiles fired from 44-foot-long missile tubes, Columbia-Class submarines will use a quieting X-shaped stern configuration.