She was launched on 3 July 1989 sponsored by Mrs. Sarah McDade, and commissioned on 26 January 1991, with Commander J.G.

Scranton was the first submarine at Newport News to be built via "modular construction".

In this method, the ship was almost fully built out in individual hull sections.

The ship was later rolled into a floating drydock and "floated" In January 2006, Scranton successfully demonstrated homing and docking of an AN/BLQ-11 Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS) unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) system during at-sea testing under the leadership of Commanding Officer Michael J Quinn.

[1] On 19 March 2011, the submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan air defenses as part of Operation Odyssey Dawn.