Los Angeles-Class Submarine

The Los Angeles class is a class of American nuclear-powered attack submarines, the lead ship USS Los Angeles commissioned in 1976, designed primarily to hunt and, if necessary, destroy Soviet submarines and surface ships during the Cold War, and with sixty-two boats eventually built, it became the most numerous class of nuclear-powered submarines ever constructed by any navy. Powered by a nuclear reactor giving it effectively unlimited underwater range and endurance limited mainly by crew supplies, and armed with torpedoes and, in later boats, vertical launch tubes for Tomahawk cruise missiles, the class combined a fast-attack anti-submarine role with a growing land-attack strike capability as the Cold War gave way to the conflicts of the following decades. Los Angeles-class submarines served in every major American naval deployment from the late Cold War through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and although the class is being gradually retired and replaced by the newer Virginia class, a substantial number remained in active United States Navy service into the 2020s.