USS Virginia SSN-774 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Navy) Source- The National Interest Author- David Axe The U.S. Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan underscores what service leaders and lawmakers have long known — the Navy is going to have too few attack submarines. To compensate, the sailing branch wants to pack more firepower into the subs it will have. The Navy’s goal is to maintain at least 48 attack subs as part of a roughly 300-ship fleet. But the 2016 edition of the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, published in April, shows the total number of Los Angeles-, Seawolf– and Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack subs declining from 54 in 2015 to a low of 41 in 2029. “The decline is the result of the retirement … of Los Angeles-class attack submarines,” Eric Labs, an analyst with the official Congressional Budget Office, wrote in an October report. “Those ships are reaching the end of their 33-year service life, having generally been built at a rate of