KINGS BAY, Ga. -- Georgia's governor and two U.S. senators are among the dignitaries who will attend Friday's ceremony marking the return to service of a submarine named after the state.

Gov. Sonny Perdue will be the principal speaker at the invitation-only event that caps a week of return-to-service events welcoming the ship back to the fleet after a conversion that cost $1 billion and lasted more than three years that changed the submarine from carrying nuclear missiles to one armed with conventional Tomahawk missiles and capable of delivering special forces into hostile environments.

Georgia is the last of four Ohio-class submarines to be converted. The change was necessary to comply will nuclear-disarmament treaties, but Navy officials said it also makes the submarine more suited to support of the global war on terrorism.

Each of the converted submarines has the capability to launch up to 154 Tomahawk missiles and provides enhanced intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Georgia is 560 feet long, with a 42-foot beam, 36-foot surface draft, and 18,700-ton submerged displacement.

Capt. Brian McIlvaine, a 1984 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, is the ship's commanding officer and leads a crew of approximately 164 officers and enlisted personnel.

In addition to carrying a Navy crew, the sub can also support up to 66 special ops forces.

Petty Officer Christopher Schaeffer, who is assigned to the Georgia's torpedo room, said he'll never forget the sub's first dive underwater after the overhaul.

"You're not sure how the ship is going to react or how your system is going to react," Schaeffer said. "It was amazing to go through."

After the ceremonies are over, it sea trials and training will occupy most of the next year.

"These are some pretty young guys with a lot of responsibility," Lt. Spencer Nordgram said. "As they transition, they work as a team and learn each other's strengths and weaknesses and learn to operate together -- to meet the goal, whatever it is."

The name Georgia first sailed onboard the confederate ironclad CSS Georgia to protect the city of Savannah. A shell from CSS Georgia sails onboard USS Georgia today.

The first USS Georgia (BB-15) was a 441-foot, 15,000-ton battleship that served from 1906 to 1920 and cruised around the world as part of President Theodore Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet" from 1907 to 1909.