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Navy names next 2 Virginia subs

The Navy’s next two Virginia-class attack submarines will be named Minnesota and North Dakota, the Defense Department announced Tuesday, ending eight decades of ship-name drought for both states.

The news was especially sweet for North Dakota’s public officials, who stated in an announcement Monday that it was just the second time in Navy history that their state’s name would be on a ship — and the first time in 85 years.

“This is great news for North Dakota. It’s a testament to the respect the Navy has for our state that the next Virginia-class submarine will be the USS North Dakota,” Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan said in the announcement. “North Dakota may be landlocked, but our state has contributed a great deal to the U.S. Navy. This ship will be a fitting tribute that should be a source of pride for all of our veterans.”

The naming was the result of a decadelong campaign by North Dakota officials to get their state’s name on one of the new attack submarines, which took over the convention of carrying states’ names from the Ohio class of ballistic and guided-missile submarines.

Before the naming announcement, the ships were known by their hull numbers, SSN 783 for the Minnesota and SSN 784 for the North Dakota. They are the 10th and 11th Virginia-class boats. The Minnesota, which is scheduled to enter the fleet in 2014, is planned as the last ship of the “Block II” variant of the sub, with 12 vertical launch missile tubes in its bow. The North Dakota is planned as the first “Block III” sub, which will instead have 12 missiles in two larger, multipurpose payload tubes.

The new submarine Minnesota will be the third vessel to carry that name, but the state has gone even longer than North Dakota without its own ship: The battleship Minnesota — which was part of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet — was decommissioned in 1921. The only North Dakota, a battleship that served most of its career as a training ship, was decommissioned in 1923.