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The modern United States Navy (USN) currently fields three classes of submarine - "Los Angeles", "Ohio", and "Virginia". The most numerous of these is the Cold War-era Los Angeles-class with some thirty-three in service (2020) - though twenty-nine have already entered decommission / retirement. The massive Ohio-class is another Cold War veteran, numbering eighteen ships from the planned twenty-four (as six were cancelled). This leaves the Virginia-class as the most modern of the offerings: the class introduced in 2004 and numbering nineteen boats in all with some eleven under various stages of construction.

Among their number is USS Texas (SSN-775), the second listed boat of the class. She was built as part of the earlier "Block I" sub-group by Newport News Shipbuilding (now Northrop Grumman Newport News) and saw her keel laid down on July 12th, 2002. Launched on April 9th, 2005, the vessel was officially commissioned on September 9th, 2006 and remains in active service as of this writing (2020).

USS Texas is classified as a nuclear attack submarine (hence the hull designation of "SSN"), outfitted with the S9G series nuclear reactor unit. The unit drives a single shaft astern and provides the boat with excellent underwater speeds of over 30 knots and essentially unlimited operational ranges. Dimensions include a running length of 377 feet with a beam of 34 feet. The hull has been tested to depths of over 800 feet. Submerged weight equals 8,700 tons (short). Aboard is a crew of 135 personnel comprised of fifteen officers and 120 enlisted sailors.

The profile of the boat is consistent with class design: the sail is set well-forward near the dive planes. Four torpedo tubes are seated at the bow with two launchers to a hull side. The hull's shape is perfectly tubular with a blunt nose cone and tapering tail. The tail unit is give a cruciform plane arrangement seated well-forward of the shrouded propeller mounted at the extreme rear of the boat.

Armament includes 4 x 533mm torpedo tubes supporting the Mk 48 torpedo family. Added firepower stems from the 12 x Vertical Launching System (VLS) cells supporting the BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile. This gives the boat the ability to hit land-based targets from the sea - well out of range of land-based defenses.

Today (2020) USS Texas homeports from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, giving it access to the vital lanes of the Pacific Ocean. She fighters under the well-known motto of "Don't Mess With Texas".©MilitaryFactory.com

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