Inside the Construction of the Navy’s Newest Attack Submarine

The Virginia-class Block V submarine carries forty Tomahawk cruise missiles, far more than earlier Virginia-class boats, thanks to a single added hull section called the Virginia Payload Module. This episode covers how it was made: the Virginia class’s origins as a cheaper replacement for the Seawolf, the cost-cutting changes across Blocks I through IV, why the Navy needed more missile capacity as its converted Ohio-class submarines retired, how submarine hulls are built in separate sections and welded together, and how Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding split the work between two states.