Seven Navies Keep 45 Ballistic Missile Submarines in Service, GlobalMilitary.net Data Shows

Forty-five ballistic missile submarines are in active service worldwide, spread across seven navies, according to GlobalMilitary.net inventory data. Two of those navies account for 27 of the hulls.

The breakdown:

• United States — 14 Ohio-class, commissioned between 1984 and 1997
• Russia — 13: eight Borei and Borei-A boats (2013–2025) plus five Delta IV (1984–1990)
• China — 6 Type 094 Jin-class (2007–2021)
• United Kingdom — 4 Vanguard-class (1993–1999)
• France — 4 Le Triomphant-class (1997–2010)
• India — 3 Arihant-class (2016–2026)
• North Korea — 1 Sinpo/Gorae, an experimental boat that has never conducted a deterrent patrol

How these are counted. The figures cover hulls carried as active in the 2026 GlobalMilitary.net inventory snapshot for each country. Three categories are deliberately excluded, and each one inflates the total if left in. The four Ohio-class boats converted to guided-missile submarines in the 2000s — Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia — no longer carry ballistic missiles. Two Russian Delta hulls, Orenburg and Podmoskovye, were rebuilt as special-purpose motherships and likewise carry no missiles. And boats still fitting out are left aside, which removes two Borei-A submarines, Knyaz Potemkin and Dmitry Donskoy, from the Russian column.

The striking feature of the 2026 picture is not the totals but the timing: every established fleet is being recapitalised simultaneously. The US Navy placed a $29.5 billion order for five Columbia-class Build II boats on 29 July as part of a $76.6 billion submarine award. The following day, the British government committed around £8.4 billion to the fourth production phase of the Dreadnought class, the four-boat Vanguard replacement. Russia has two more Borei-A boats fitting out with further hulls contracted. France has begun work on the SNLE 3G successor to Le Triomphant, and India is building follow-on Arihant boats alongside a larger S5 design.

That convergence is a function of when the current generation entered service. The oldest deterrent hulls afloat date to 1984 — the American Henry M. Jackson and the Russian Verkhoturye were both commissioned that year, and are now 42 years old. The Ohio and Delta IV designs were meant to serve roughly 30 years; life-extension has carried them well past that, and the replacement programmes are consequently running against hard retirement dates rather than budget preference.

The distribution also shows how narrow the club is. Six of the seven operators are recognised nuclear-weapon states or declared nuclear powers; the seventh, North Korea, holds a single boat of limited operational value. No other navy has fielded a ballistic missile submarine, and the entry cost — a nuclear reactor, a missile compartment, a survivable command chain and the industrial base to sustain all three — has kept it that way for six decades. India's fleet, at three hulls, remains the only new entrant since China's in 2007.

Method: counts are drawn from the world_navy per-hull inventory, restricted to rows with active status whose class is typed as a ballistic missile submarine, then filtered to remove guided-missile and special-purpose conversions. Figures reflect hulls in commission, not warheads or missiles deployed.