US Navy inactivates 46th Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine USS Alexandria after 35 years of service.

The United States Navy conducted an inactivation ceremony for the Improved Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Alexandria (SSN-757) at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego on June 29, 2026. This milestone concludes 35 years of active operational service, spanning post-Cold War security operations and strategic Arctic deployment cycles. The vessel will now transit to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for multi-year defueling, demilitarization, and nuclear recycling procedures.

Commissioned in 1991, the 6,930-tonne nuclear-powered submarine completed 14 overseas deployments and logged over one million nautical miles across four geographic combatant command areas. As the 46th Los Angeles-class hull to exit active service, its inactivation leaves 23 remaining vessels of the class in commission amid ongoing industrial backlogs and shifting Indo-Pacific force structure requirements.

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The USS Alexandria (SSN-757) ended service with 14 overseas deployments, operations in four geographic combatant command areas, and more than one million nautical miles steamed, a distance equal to nearly 46 global circumnavigations. (Picture source: US Navy)

On June 29, 2026, the US Navy held an inactivation ceremony for the USS Alexandria (SSN-757) at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego after 35 years of service, closing the operational life of one of the last Improved Los Angeles-class attack submarines. Commissioned on June 29, 1991, the boat served through the post-Soviet transition, the Balkan security operations of the 1990s, the post-September 11 wars, the return of Arctic submarine activity, and the later U.S. shift toward Indo-Pacific undersea competition. It is now scheduled to be decommissioned on August 4, 2026, as part of a broader fleet modernization initiative by the U.S. Navy to phase out older Los Angeles-class boats and replace them with more modern and capable Virginia-class submarines. 

It was the 46th Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, the third U.S. Navy vessel named for Alexandria, Virginia, and Alexandria, Louisiana, and a member of the 23-boat 688i subclass that incorporated quieter machinery, retractable bow planes, and under-ice capability. Its inactivation ceremony included Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, Director, In-Service Submarines and Industrial Base and commanding officer of Alexandria from 2011 to 2013, Capt. Phillip Sylvia Jr., Commander, Submarine Squadron 11, Cmdr. Donald Coomes, the boat’s 14th and final commanding officer, eight former commanding officers, former Chiefs of the Boat, retired Capt. Paul Norman, its first commanding officer, retired Master Chief Machinist’s Mate Douglas Muller, its first Chief of the Boat, and members of the original commissioning crew.

The inactivation begins a multi-year removal process in which the USS Alexandria will move from San Diego to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, the main U.S. Navy site for nuclear submarine inactivation, defueling and recycling. Before reactor work begins, the boat’s operational systems must be removed or disabled, including Mk 48 ADCAP heavyweight torpedoes, Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon missile capability, mine warfare fittings, cryptographic equipment, electronic warfare hardware, sonar processors, combat control equipment, communications security material and classified mission systems.

The S6G pressurized-water reactor will then be defueled, the propulsion train will be deactivated, nuclear support systems will be isolated, and the reactor compartment will be separated from the rest of the pressure hull for disposal under Naval Reactors procedures. This stage is often longer than the public retirement phase because a nuclear submarine cannot simply be scrapped like a conventional ship; fuel removal, radiological control, compartment separation, hull cutting and demilitarization require specialized shipyard labor, dry-dock availability and regulatory sequencing. USS Dallas (SSN-700), USS Buffalo (SSN-715), USS Olympia (SSN-717), USS Pittsburgh (SSN-720) and USS Helena (SSN-725) followed the same path, and Alexandria now enters that pipeline at a time when public shipyards are already carrying heavy maintenance and disposal workloads.

USS Alexandria’s service history reflects the changing use of U.S. attack submarines after 1991. Its first major deployment began in August 1993 with the USS America battle group and included support to Operation Sharp Guard in the Adriatic Sea, a NATO and Western European Union maritime enforcement operation during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Later deployments placed the submarine in the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, the Persian Gulf and the U.S. 5th Fleet area, where Los Angeles-class boats supported Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom through intelligence collection, surveillance, carrier strike group support, Tomahawk strikes and covert presence. The boat also operated in Arctic conditions, including ICEX activity that tested under-ice navigation, acoustic performance, tactical procedures and surfacing through ice.

In 2004, it completed a six-month global deployment through the Arctic, Pacific, Central Command and European operating areas, becoming the first Improved Los Angeles-class submarine to conduct such a circumnavigation and the first U.S. nuclear-powered submarine to visit Goa, India. The 2015 homeport shift from Naval Submarine Base New London to Naval Base Point Loma changed the submarine’s operational pattern from an Atlantic-centered career to a Pacific-centered one. After arriving in San Diego on November 10, 2015, the USS Alexandria became part of Commander, Submarine Squadron 11 and operated more frequently in the Western Pacific, around Japan, Guam, Okinawa, South Korea and the Philippine Sea.

Its later deployments included activity with USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group, Foal Eagle-related operations with South Korean naval forces, CHILEMAR submarine rescue interoperability with Chile, ANNUALEX activity with Japan and the U.S. Navy, and recurring port and support stops at Sasebo, Yokosuka, White Beach, Busan and Apra Harbor. Its final full deployment began on October 10, 2024, and ended on May 15, 2025, after roughly seven months in the Western Pacific, including Guam, Okinawa, Sasebo, Busan and Yokosuka activity. After Cmdr. Donald E. Coomes took command on June 2, 2025, the submarine continued local operations off Southern California through late 2025 and early 2026 before entering inactivation.

This final operating pattern shows why even late-life Los Angeles-class submarines remained important: they filled deployment demand while Virginia-class production and maintenance throughput lagged behind force-structure requirements. Technically, the USS Alexandria was a late-production Improved Los Angeles-class submarine, not a baseline 688 boat. It measured 110.3 m long, 10.0 m in beam and 9.4 m in draft, with a surfaced displacement of 6,082 tonnes and submerged displacement of about 6,930 tonnes. Its propulsion system used one General Electric S6G nuclear reactor, two steam turbines generating about 33,500 shaft horsepower, one shaft, and a 325-hp secondary propulsion motor. Official submerged speed exceeded 25 knots, while endurance was about 90 days. The reactor core was intended to support about 30 years before refueling or retirement.

Its combat system evolved from the AN/BQQ-5 sonar suite to the AN/BQQ-10 Acoustic Rapid Commercial Off-the-Shelf Insertion, giving the boat improved processing capacity compared with legacy Cold War acoustic systems. Its armament centered on four 533 mm bow tubes, 12 vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk missiles and a weapons mix that could include Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes, UGM-109 Tomahawk land attack missiles, UGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Mk 67 submarine-launched mobile mines and Mk 60 CAPTOR mines. With about 16 officers and 127 enlisted personnel, it could conduct anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, land attack, intelligence collection, ISR, special operations support and covert surveillance. The 688i design made the USS Alexandria more useful in demanding acoustic and Arctic environments than early Los Angeles-class boats.

Earlier Flight I submarines were built primarily for speed and carrier battle group protection, while later Flight II boats added 12 vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk strike. The 688i group, or Flight III, from SSN-751 through SSN-773, added quieter systems, improved combat electronics, retractable bow planes and under-ice modifications, making them better suited for Arctic operations and for tracking quieter adversary submarines. These changes mattered during the shift from a Soviet blue-water submarine threat to a mixed post-Cold War mission set that included land attack against shore targets, ISR near contested coastlines, special operations support and long-duration presence in areas where surface ships were easier to detect.

The USS Alexandria’s Arctic circumnavigation, ICEX participation, carrier strike group support and Indo-Pacific deployments show how one 688i hull could move across multiple mission sets without changing its basic design. That flexibility explains why Los Angeles-class boats remained heavily used even after Seawolf and Virginia-class submarines entered service. The Los Angeles class itself was a 62-boat program built between 1972 and 1996 in response to Soviet submarine advances. Development began in 1967, when U.S. planners needed attack submarines fast enough to operate with carrier battle groups and capable of countering Soviet Victor, Alfa, and later Akula-class submarines. The class became the largest U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine class ever built and formed the core of the U.S. SSN force during the late Cold War.

Flight I covered SSN-688 to SSN-718, Flight II covered SSN-719 to SSN-750 with vertical launch capability, and the Improved 688i group covered SSN-751 to SSN-773. During the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. Navy operated more than 60 Los Angeles-class submarines, giving it a large undersea force for carrier protection, Soviet submarine tracking, forward surveillance and strategic conventional strike after the Tomahawk became central to U.S. naval operations. By early 2026, only 23 Los Angeles-class submarines remained in commission, including 19 operational boats and four inactive reserve units, but they still represented about half of the U.S. Navy’s roughly 50 attack submarines. Most remaining Los Angeles-class boats entered service between 1985 and 1996, placing them near reactor core exhaustion, pressure hull fatigue limits and rising modernization costs.

Since 2017, the Navy has removed or moved toward removing boats including Helena, Boise, Olympia, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Bremerton, Asheville and Jefferson City, while Virginia-class production has not consistently replaced retirements at the required pace. A Los Angeles-class Engineered Overhaul can consume two to four years of shipyard capacity, and that work competes with maintenance for ballistic missile submarines, guided missile submarines and newer attack submarines. Public shipyards at Portsmouth, Norfolk, Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound have faced backlogs measured in millions of lost operational days, reducing the number of SSNs available for deployment even before hulls formally retire.

For an older 688-class boat, the decision is not only whether the hull can be kept alive, but whether scarce dry-dock labor should be used to recover a few more deployment years or shifted toward Virginia-class maintenance, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine work and nuclear ship disposal. In Alexandria’s case, the end of service after 35 years reflects that calculation. The strategic effect is most visible in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. Navy’s 2025 Battle Force Ship Assessment sets a long-term requirement for 66 nuclear-powered attack submarines, while the current force is about 50 and could fall to 46 or 47 before recovering in the 2030s.

Attack submarines are among the few naval forces that can operate persistently inside contested maritime areas, track adversary submarines, threaten surface combatants, collect intelligence, deploy special operations forces, and launch land attack weapons without the visibility of a carrier or surface action group. At the same time, China is expanding the People’s Liberation Army Navy with Type 093 Shang-class nuclear attack submarines, Type 094 Jin-class ballistic missile submarines, future Type 095 SSNs and Type 096 SSBNs, and a large Type 039A/B/C Yuan-class diesel-electric submarine force with air-independent propulsion. As a result, on February 16, 2026, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) stated that China managed to launch 10 nuclear-powered submarines between 2021 and 2025, exceeding US output in both number and displacement.

China also continues to expand shipbuilding capacity at Huludao and Wuchang while increasing naval activity into the Philippine Sea, Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. For instance, on March 2, 2026, Rear Admiral Mike Brookes, from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, indicated that its submarine force could reach roughly 70 submarines by 2027, and up to 80 units by 2035, with roughly half of the fleet powered by nuclear reactors. USS Alexandria’s inactivation therefore has a force-structure meaning beyond one hull: it removes a deployable 688i submarine while the U.S. Navy still lacks the 66 SSNs it says it needs, while Virginia-class output remains under pressure, and while demand for undersea missions is increasing across INDOPACOM, EUCOM and CENTCOM.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

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