Navy Calls It Quits On Attack Submarine USS Boise’s Never Ending Overhaul

The U.S. Navy has abandoned plans to return the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Boise to active duty. This brings an end to the saga of a still-incomplete major overhaul of the boat, which has lasted more than a decade now. In that time, it has become a poster child for the Navy’s worrisome struggles to tackle huge maintenance backlogs, as well as larger concerns about the availability, or lack thereof, of naval shipyard capacity in the United States.

The Navy announced its decision to inactivate Boise, which was first commissioned into service in 1992, earlier today.

“After a rigorous, data-driven analysis, we’ve made the tough but necessary decision to inactivate the USS Boise,” Navy Adm. Daryl Caudle, Chief of Naval Operations, the service’s top officer, said in a statement. “This strategic move allows us to reallocate America’s highly-skilled workforce to our highest priorities: delivering new Virginia and Columbia class submarines and improving the readiness of the current fleet. We owe it to our Sailors and the nation to make these tough calls to build a more capable and ready Navy.”

“The move is part of the Navy’s broader, data-driven initiative to optimize the fleet’s composition, ensuring that every dollar is invested in capabilities that directly contribute to maintaining a decisive warfighting advantage,” the service also said in a press release. “Funds and personnel associated with the planned overhaul of USS Boise will be redirected to support other Navy priorities, including the timely delivery of America’s submarine capability.”

To date, the Navy has spent approximately $800 million on Boise’s overhaul, which is still only 22 percent complete, the service separately told Semafor. The total estimated cost to complete the overhaul had risen to $3 billion, according to Fox News.

“At some point, you just cut your losses and move on,” Secretary of the Navy John Phelan also told Fox News in an interview ahead of today’s announcement. “The Boise represents 65% of the cost of a new Virginia class submarine, yet it only delivers 20% of the remaining service life.”

The Navy had originally planned for Boise to begin its overhaul in 2013, but the timetable was repeatedly delayed, primarily due to a lack of shipyard availability. The submarine has not been to sea since it returned from its last cruise in January 2015. The boat was deemed unable to conduct normal operations by 2016, and it formally lost its dive certification the following year.

The Navy moved Boise from its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, to Newport News Shipbuilding’s facilities in 2018. Newport News Shipbuilding is a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).

The submarine returned to Norfolk the following year amid competing funding priorities. It went back to Newport News in 2020, but did not actually enter a dry dock there until 2021, after which limited maintenance work began. The full overhaul was then further set back due to budgetary issues, with a formal contract only signed in 2024.

As of last year, the Navy was still pushing to complete Boise‘s overhaul and return it to the fleet, which was expected to occur in 2029. By that point, the submarine would have spent more than a third of its service life in port.

The overall size of the Navy’s Los Angeles attack submarine force has been steadily declining for years now already, as the service has acquired more modern and capable Virginia class types. The Navy commissioned 62 Los Angeles class boats between 1976 and 1996, and 23 remain in service today.

As noted, the Navy’s struggles with Boise are reflective of larger and more serious issues that have long challenged the service’s ability to meet even its peacetime operational demands. Back in 2018, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report saying that the Navy had more than two decades’ worth of operational time across its submarine fleets due to maintenance shortfalls.

These are concerns that would only be magnified if a large-scale conflict, especially one with China in the Pacific, were to break out. For years now, TWZ has also been sounding the alarm on the interrelated issue of dwindling U.S. naval shipbuilding capacity, in general, where the disparity with Chinese state-run enterprises has become enormous.

The Navy, with support from Congress, has been trying to take steps in recent years to reverse these trends, including moving to increasingly leverage foreign shipyard capacity. The second Trump administration, through Navy Secretary Phelan, has been particularly open about its efforts to shake up how the service acquires and maintains ships, and otherwise does business across the board. This has notably already included the cancellation of the Constellation class frigate program, which had become beset by huge delays and ballooning costs, as you can read more about in detail here. The Navy has been touting efforts to try to avoid similar pitfalls with new shipbuilding programs like the FF(X) frigate and Medium Landing Ship.

“I think, by killing these programs, it’s sending a message that we’re not going to continue to send good money after bad investments, and that we’re going to try to make prudent economic decisions that are in the best interest of the fleet and the force,” Phelan said, speaking generally around today’s anouncement about Boise, according to Semafor.

How the Navy fares in its broader efforts to turn things around when it comes to shipbuilding and maintenance remains to be seen, but the USS Boise‘s increasingly sad story is now coming to an end.

UPDATE: 2:10 PM EDT –

Todd Corillo, an HII spokesperson for the Newport News Shipbuilding division, has now provided TWZ with the following statement:

“We have been notified of the U.S. Navy’s decision to discontinue engineered overhaul (EOH) work on USS Boise (SSN 764). We will work with the Navy to execute this decision in an efficient, cost-effective way. We anticipate there will be no impact to our workforce and will transition shipbuilders currently assigned to USS Boise to other work underway at Newport News Shipbuilding.”

“We understand the importance of a strong submarine force to our national security. While our work on USS Boise will end, our commitment to ensuring our nation maintains our undersea maritime supremacy will not.”

Contact the author: joe@twz.com