Four Ohio-class submarines carried more Tomahawk missiles between them than most navies field across their entire fleet. All four are being retired by the end of the decade, and the US Navy isn’t replacing them with a new dedicated missile submarine — it’s using the Virginia Payload Module instead. This video asks the obvious question: is 40 missiles on a VPM-equipped Virginia actually enough to replace 154 on an Ohio SSGN? We cover the history of the four Ohio SSGNs and their staggered retirement through 2029, the missile-capacity math behind trading four 154-Tomahawk boats for nineteen 40-Tomahawk boats, why a Columbia-class SSGN was studied and ruled out, and how Russia’s Yasen-M class arrived at a strikingly similar answer from the opposite direction. On 4 August 2026, the US Navy made this replacement official, reclassifying nineteen VPM-equipped Virginias from attack submarines to

Source: Replacing the Ohio SSGNs: Is the Virginia Payload Module Enough?