The USS City of Corpus Christi, a Cold War nuclear attack submarine commissioned in 1983, returned to Pearl Harbor on Friday from its final deployment and will be decommissioned this year and scrapped, the Navy said.
The 33-year-old Los Angeles-class sub and crew of about 150 completed a five-month deployment in the Indo-Asia-Pacific that included participation in Exercise Malabar 2015 with India and Japan, as well as a last foreign port call to Yokosuka, Japan.
“We traveled 30,000 nautical miles, enough to travel around the earth at the equator and then some,” City of Corpus Christi’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Travis Petzoldt, said in a Navy-produced news story.
During the deployment, 27 sailors and three officers earned their submarine qualifications and got to wear the submarine warfare insignia. Corpus Christi served in the Cold War and global war on terror with anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, strike and surveillance capabilities.
The Navy wants to have a fleet of 308 ships in coming years, including 48 attack submarines, but older Los Angeles-class subs are being retired faster than new Virginia-class replacements can be built.
The Navy is building two Virginia-class subs a year. The two vessels requested for procurement in fiscal 2016 have an average cost of $2.68 billion each, according to the Congressional Research Service, which works for Congress.
“The Navy’s FY2016 30-year SSN (attack submarine) procurement plan, if implemented, would not be sufficient to maintain a force of 48 SSNs consistently over the long run,” said a Dec. 17 CRS report to Congress.
The report said the Navy attack-sub force included more than 90 subs during most of the 1980s. There were 55 attack subs in service at the end of fiscal 2014.
Pearl Harbor has the most U.S. submarines in the Pacific, with 21, according to the U.S. Pacific Fleet submarine force’s website.
According to a Navy report to Congress for fiscal 2016, the Houston, another Pearl Harbor sub, is scheduled for decommissioning. The Houston returned from its final deployment Oct. 28. Fiscal year 2017 would include the decommissioning of three Pearl submarines: the Bremerton, Jacksonville and Buffalo, the report said.
Four Virginia-class submarines with greater capabilities to embark special operations troops and operate in the littorals, or nearshore waters, are assigned to Pearl Harbor, including the Hawaii, Texas, North Carolina and Mississippi, with others anticipated.
The North Carolina just completed drills with South Korea in the Sea of Japan in what South Korean media said was a deterrent to North Korea.