[13][14] The Columbia-class is to replace the Ohio-class of ballistic missile submarines, whose remaining boats are to be decommissioned, one per year, beginning in 2028.

[citation needed] The Columbia class will take over the role of submarine presence in the United States’ strategic nuclear force.

[17] For example, while the modified Virginia-class and updated Ohio-class design options would have required an expensive mid-life refueling,[6] each Columbia-class nuclear core will last as long as the submarine is in service.

The cost to build District of Columbia, the lead boat of the class, will be an estimated $6.2 billion (fiscal 2010 dollars).

[6] The Navy has a goal of reducing the average cost of the remaining 11 planned hulls in the class to $4.9 billion each (fiscal 2010 dollars).

[22] In March 2016, the U.S. Navy chose General Dynamics Electric Boat as the prime contractor and lead design yard.

[25] Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding will serve as the main subcontractor, participating in the design and construction and doing 22 to 23 percent of the work.

[26] In late 2016, some 3,000 Electric Boat employees were involved in the detailed-design phase of the program[27] and the procurement of the first submarine was scheduled for 2021.

[47][48] Turbo-electric drives were successfully used on U.S. battleships and aircraft carriers in the first half of the 20th century,[49] and on the small nuclear-powered submarine USS Tullibee in the late 1950s.

[50] Another larger nuclear-powered submarine, USS Glenard P. Lipscomb, was equipped with a turboelectric drive but proved to be underpowered, unreliable, and maintenance-hungry.

[63][64] On contemporary nuclear submarines, steam turbines are linked to reduction gears and a shaft rotating the propeller/pump-jet propulsor.

[66] In 2015, an Ohio-Replacement scale model at the Navy League’s 2015 Sea-Air-Space Exposition suggested that the sub would have a pump-jet propulsor visually similar to the one used on Virginia class[67][38] perhaps as part of the Navy's stated desire to reuse Virginia components to reduce risk and cost of construction.

[67][6] In December 2008, General Dynamics Electric Boat Corporation was selected to design the Common Missile Compartment that will be used on the Ohio-class successor.