The Navy is looking to extend the service lives of the entire DDG fleet and 5 X SSNs to achieve it's 355-ship fleet target earlier. The subs will be fitted with fresh nuke cores which the Navy just happened to have on hand.
Navy Will Extend All DDGs to a 45-Year Service Life; 'No Destroyer Left Behind' Officials Say - USNI News
CAPITOL HILL – The Navy will keep every one of its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in service for 45 years, extending the life of the entire class. The move allows the Navy to reach a 355-ship fleet by 2036 or 2037, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems said on Thursday.
The Navy currently has DDGs in multiple configurations – Flight I, Flight II and Flight IIA. Keeping each hull in the fleet for a 45-year service life equates to an extension of five to 10 years each, depending on the flight design.
Vice Adm. Bill Merz told lawmakers today every destroyer was already included in an Aegis modernization plan that would upgrade them each to Aegis Baseline 9 or 10 or Aegis BMD 5.4. The class-wide service life extension, as currently planned, does not include any combat system upgrades beyond what is already planned – though Merz said the Navy will be monitoring the threat set closely and retains the option to upgrade the combat systems later on...
In contrast to how the Navy is handling the class-wide extension of the Arleigh Burke destroyers, NAVSEA and Naval Reactors have made a very deliberate effort to pinpoint five Los Angeles-class attack submarines that could be extended past their intended service lives. Moore said during the hearing today that it is hard to keep submarines in service longer than their intended 35-year life due to the forces on the boat while submerging and the stringent requirements for the hull to remain certified to submerge.
However, he said, “in this particular case we had five additional cores available, and it presented us with an opportunity to get some SSNs accelerated back into the fleet. So between Naval Reactors and NAVSEA we went and looked, found some hulls that we could sharpen our pencils on and we were confident technically they could get to the service life that they’ve been asked to get to.”