More than four years after the USS Connecticut slammed into an underwater mountain to force an emergency ascent off China's southeast coast, the Seawolf-class submarine is nearing a return to service. But not long after, retirement is now looming for a sub that became a lifeboat for the southeastern Connecticut economy as the Cold War drew to a close. Designated SSN 22 in Navy shorthand, USS Connecticut was the second of three Seawolf-class attack submarines launched in Groton by General Dynamics Electric Boat in the 1990s, between USS Seawolf and USS Jimmy Carter. A technological marvel then and now, the U.S. Navy originally envisioned a fleet of 29 Seawolf-class subs to counter the newest sub designs by the Soviet Union. But with the country disintegrating in 1991 during Mikhail Gorbachev's final year as president, the Navy canceled the contract with plans to swap in what it intended to be a cheaper option in the Virginia-class subs that Electric Boat assembles today in Groton. Facing a seven-year gap before Virginia-class sub construction would begin, Congress authorized a limited run of Seawolf subs to keep two active submarine construction shipyards viable during those years. As worded by Les Aspin, secretary of defense at the time, USS Jimmy Carter represented the final "bridge" sub in his words to keep dollars flowing to Groton and Quonset Point, Rhode Island, Electric Boat's auxiliary shipyard that builds major components. "When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev really scaled back the size of the Soviet navy and military force, the cuts to the submarine program happened instantaneously," said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd. "You look at the size of the shipyard workforce, it went from about 30,000 to less than 10.000 in a really short period of time. ... It was awful." USS Connecticut took five years to build, launching on Sept. 1, 1997, and commissioned for service in December 1998. This month, the Navy set a 2031 retirement date for USS Connecticut, even as planning proceeds for a new attack sub it currently calls SSN(X) — which given China's current push for naval superiority, might end up a lot more like USS Connecticut than the Virginia-class subs that Electric Boat is building today. "The Seawolf class is extremely capable — when you're going against other submarines, you have this feeling that this just isn't fair," Michael Connor, former commander of USS Seawolf and Submarine Force Atlantic based at the Naval Submarine Base New London, told CT Insider. "It's probably the best submarine class ever built."