USS Texas (SSN 775)

USS TEXAS History:

USS TEXAS is a nuclear-powered, VIRGINIA-class fast-attack submarine and the fourth U.S. warship to carry the name of the state of Texas. As the second boat of the class, she represents the early implementation of the U.S. Navy's post-Cold War attack-submarine concept: a relatively small, highly flexible platform optimized for littoral as well as open-ocean operations, with an emphasis on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision strike with cruise missiles, and support to special operations forces. She entered service as part of the gradual replacement of LOS ANGELES-class submarines and was intended from the outset to be a mainstay of U.S. undersea presence in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

The path to USS TEXAS began with the award of the construction contract on September 30, 1998 to what was then Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Newport News, Virginia, later part of Northrop Grumman. TEXAS was built as a Block I VIRGINIA-class boat, incorporating a modular construction philosophy that allowed large hull sections to be outfitted before assembly, reducing time in the building dock and anticipating later life-cycle upgrades. Her keel was laid on July 12, 2002, during a ceremony at Newport News at which First Lady Laura Bush served as ship's sponsor and authenticated the keel, tying the boat symbolically to the state whose name she bears.

Over the next several years the bare pressure hull was transformed into a fully outfitted submarine. TEXAS was christened by Laura Bush on July 31, 2004, again at Newport News. Less than a year later, on April 9, 2005, the hull slid down into the James River at night under floodlights in a launch that marked the transition from pier-side construction to at-sea testing.

Throughout 2005 and into 2006, the boat and crew went through builder's and acceptance trials off the U.S. East Coast, testing propulsion, reactor plant, sensors, weapons systems and habitability. U.S. Navy photographs from May 2006 show TEXAS returning to Newport News after sea trials, with crew members topside as she re-enters the shipyard, indicating that by late spring she was already operating on nuclear power at sea and moving toward final delivery.

By August 2006, TEXAS had left the confines of the yard and begun working up as an operational unit. A series of official images from that month show her departing Naval Station Norfolk and visiting Port Canaveral, Florida. In early September she continued west into the Gulf and on September 4, 2006 arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, where she was escorted into the harbor by the historic barque ELISSA. The arrival of a namesake nuclear submarine in Texas waters drew substantial public attention. Contemporary reporting describes crowds lining the waterfront as she made her way to the pier in preparation for commissioning. On September 9, 2006, TEXAS was formally commissioned in Galveston with several thousand guests present, joining the U.S. Atlantic Fleet as the second active VIRGINIA-class attack submarine.

After commissioning, TEXAS entered a period of post-shakedown work and early operational training under Submarine Force Atlantic. She operated primarily out of the New London submarine base at Groton, Connecticut, conducting a mix of engineering trials, crew certification events and tactical exercises along the U.S. East Coast and in the western Atlantic. This was the period in which the Navy and industry were still validating the design of the first VIRGINIA-class boats, so TEXAS served not only as a fleet asset but also as a testbed for refining maintenance practices and tactical employment of the new class. The submarine took part in local and regional exercises, integrated at times with surface ships and aircraft, but most of these early sorties remained routine and largely unpublicized compared with later deployments.

By 2009, strategic focus within the U.S. Navy was shifting more heavily toward the Pacific, reflecting growing concern about China's naval expansion and the importance of undersea forces in supporting operations from the Western Pacific to the Indian Ocean. To align the newest attack submarines with that focus, TEXAS was reassigned to the Pacific Fleet. On September 16, 2009, she left Naval Submarine Base New London bound for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. During that transit she headed north into the Arctic Ocean rather than taking the more direct Panama Canal route, demonstrating the under-ice capability of the VIRGINIA-class. Public accounts describe TEXAS surfacing through the polar ice near the North Pole's ice pack before continuing south into the Pacific, a symbolic validation that the new class could assume classic Cold War missions in the high latitudes as well as newer tasks in shallow coastal waters. The boat arrived at her new homeport of Pearl Harbor on November 23, 2009, where she joined Submarine Squadron 1 under Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet.

In 2010, TEXAS left the training and transit phase behind and began her career as a regularly deploying Pacific Fleet submarine. A Honolulu Star-Bulletin report notes that she departed Pearl Harbor on May 19, 2010 on what was described as the first six-month deployment undertaken by a Pacific-based VIRGINIA-class submarine, with the Navy declining to identify the operating area. In the early 2010s such deployments typically supported a mix of intelligence collection, surveillance of sea lanes and potential adversary naval activity, and, where tasked, support to counter-narcotics operations or other interagency missions. For this first cruise, however, the Navy has not released details of where TEXAS operated or which ports she visited. She returned to Pearl Harbor in late 2010 after roughly half a year at sea, having completed her maiden extended deployment and validated her ability to sustain long-duration operations from her Pacific base.

The following year saw TEXAS return to the Western Pacific on a more traditional forward-presence deployment. On June 23, 2011, U.S. Navy imagery recorded her departure from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for what official captions described as a regularly scheduled six-month deployment to the Western Pacific, again reflecting the pattern of assigning VIRGINIA-class submarines to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility. While specific operating areas and exercises from this deployment were not publicly outlined in detail, the mission would have placed TEXAS in key Western Pacific waters at a time when tensions on the Korean Peninsula, maritime disputes in the South China Sea, and the need to monitor regional naval developments were all shaping U.S. undersea tasking. After completing that deployment, she returned to Pearl Harbor and resumed the cycle of maintenance, training and limited-duration sorties common to nuclear attack submarines between major cruises.

By early 2012, TEXAS was due for her first major maintenance period. On February 1, 2012, a change-of-command ceremony was held at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, at which Commander Jim Roncska was relieved by Commander Eric J. Hertel as commanding officer, marking a leadership transition just as the boat was preparing to enter a lengthy availability. In May 2012 TEXAS entered Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard for what the Navy termed the first Extended Docking Selected Restricted Availability (EDSRA) conducted on a VIRGINIA-class submarine. This was a comprehensive maintenance and modernization period, planned for about 20 months but ultimately stretching to approximately 26 months in dry dock according to later fleet reporting. During EDSRA, shipyard workers overhauled propulsion and mechanical systems, performed hull preservation, updated combat systems and sensors, and implemented design changes based on experience with the earliest VIRGINIA-class boats. For TEXAS's crew, much of this period was spent in maintenance support, simulator training and qualification of new personnel rather than at sea.

When TEXAS emerged from dry dock, she had to rebuild her operational proficiency after more than two years out of the water. Over 2014 and into 2015, the submarine conducted post-availability sea trials and local operations around Hawaii to verify the performance of her modernized systems. Her next major deployment came in the second half of 2015, when she again turned west for an extended Indo-Asia-Pacific cruise that would take her to several key regional ports. On December 22, 2015, the Navy reported that TEXAS had arrived at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan, after transiting Tokyo Bay for a scheduled port visit as part of this Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. The visit was explicitly framed as a demonstration of U.S. commitment to regional stability and as an opportunity to interact with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. From Japan the submarine continued south toward the Philippines. On January 5, 2016, TEXAS moored at Alava Pier in Subic Bay, in the Republic of the Philippines, again for liberty and engagement activities during the same deployment. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command coverage of the visit highlighted both the chance for crew rest after prolonged submerged operations and the symbolic reinforcement of the U.S.-Philippines security relationship at a time when Manila was balancing tensions in the South China Sea with its alliance with Washington.

Later that month, TEXAS returned to Japan's southwestern approaches: on January 20, 2016 she arrived at Fleet Activities Sasebo for another port call, once more emphasizing alliance ties and cooperation with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. These visits bracketed a deployment focused on the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations, where the submarine conducted the full spectrum of missions expected of a fast-attack boat, from anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare training to covert surveillance. TEXAS completed this Indo-Asia-Pacific cruise in early 2016. On March 9, 2016, she returned to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after what Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet described as her second scheduled deployment to the Western Pacific. During this deployment TEXAS steamed more than 27,000 miles and made four port calls in two foreign countries - consistent with the Yokosuka, Subic Bay and Sasebo visits documented in public reports - while conducting missions described as vital to national interests. The Navy noted that she had spent 26 months in dry dock before heading out, underscoring the significance of successfully completing a demanding deployment so soon after major maintenance. Press releases also pointed out that the crew enjoyed 37 incident-free liberty days and that a number of sailors earned their submarine warfare qualifications during the cruise, reflecting the ongoing process of training and professional development aboard the boat.

Following her 2016 deployment, TEXAS resumed operations from Pearl Harbor. The following years continued the pattern of forward presence in the Western Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific region. A Navy news release from January 2018 records the submarine arriving at Fleet Activities Sasebo on January 17, 2018, for a port visit during another deployment to the Indo-Pacific region. The article again stressed that the visit strengthened the U.S.-Japan alliance and contributed to maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility. Photographic records tie TEXAS to Fleet Activities Yokosuka in December 2017 and show her returning past the Missing Man Memorial at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on January 26, 2018, indicating that this late-2017 to early-2018 deployment followed a similar pattern of operations and port calls in Japan before returning to Hawaii.

Later in 2018, imagery released by the Navy shows TEXAS alongside in Ketchikan, Alaska, in October, suggesting that during that period she operated in the North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska, regions where U.S. submarines regularly train and monitor naval activity in the increasingly busy waters of the high latitudes. Such northern operations fit within a broader U.S. effort to increase presence in the Arctic and sub-Arctic as sea ice patterns change and Russian and other naval forces become more active in those waters.

By 2019, TEXAS was prepared for another long deployment that would extend beyond the Indo-Pacific and into the Middle East. Publicly released photographs place her operating in the Gulf of Tadjoura, off Djibouti, in early November 2019, a location that sits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea and near key maritime chokepoints including the Bab el-Mandeb. This positioning suggests that during this cruise TEXAS moved between the 7th Fleet's Indo-Pacific waters and the U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Central Command maritime areas, supporting missions that included monitoring regional naval activity, protecting sea lanes, and providing flexible strike and intelligence capabilities during a period marked by tensions with Iran and ongoing instability around the Arabian Peninsula. The Navy provided a more complete public summary of this deployment upon TEXAS's return. On February 24, 2020, she arrived back at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after a seven-month deployment described as covering both the Indo-Pacific and U.S. Central Command areas of operation. According to Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, TEXAS completed a full spectrum of operations during the cruise, including theater anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare tasking, reflecting her role in tracking foreign submarines and surface ships and contributing to broader theater anti-access and area denial counter-measures. During this deployment she also paid a high-profile visit to Western Australia: on January 30, 2020, the submarine arrived at HMAS STIRLING, near Perth, for a scheduled port visit, where her crew engaged with Australian officials, naval counterparts and local community organizations, highlighting the importance of the U.S.-Australia security partnership in the Indian Ocean and rim of the Indo-Pacific. The deployment also saw numerous crew qualifications and promotions, strengthening the boat's human capital as much as its operational record.

Not long after this demanding cruise, TEXAS transitioned again, this time back to the U.S. East Coast for major work. In September 2020, she arrived at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, for a substantial period of repairs and modernization. This availability, conducted at a yard historically focused on LOS ANGELES-class overhauls, represented Portsmouth's first major effort on a VIRGINIA-class attack submarine and involved extensive work on hull, propulsion, and combat systems. The timing also reflected the Navy's need to keep the relatively young VIRGINIA-class fleet fully capable for decades of service by inserting new technologies and addressing material issues identified during early operational years.

TEXAS remained at Portsmouth for several years, largely out of the public eye except for periodic updates noting progress on the complex availability. The work ended in late 2024, when the submarine completed sea trials that confirmed the success of the modernization effort. According to later summaries, those trials in December 2024 marked the conclusion of a multi-year overhaul and return of TEXAS to operational status. With updated systems and renewed hull life, she was positioned to rejoin the fleet as a fully mission-capable VIRGINIA-class boat at a time when undersea forces are central to U.S. strategy in both the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic.

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USS TEXAS Construction Gallery:

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USS TEXAS Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show TEXAS at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, on October 6, 2024.

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