This does get followed up on in later books, particularly The Sum of All Fears. Taking the entire sub was much more valuable than just being able to track it; Clancy specifically mentions communication gear and code books, missiles and torpedoes, the reactor and most importantly, Ramius’ extensive knowledge of Soviet doctrine and tactics.
SSBNs are viable first strike weapons, yes. They can fire on a depressed trajectory, not a full sub-orbital shot, and hit targets near the shore with very little time to respond. Certainly a decapitation strike against Washington DC would be crippling to a counter-strike. Yes, you’d still have the airborne command posts and alternate communications networks, but it would introduce confusion and delay into the system, which may critically delay a launch before other counter-force weapons hit the rest of your nukes.
Launching from an unexpected angle also makes detection harder. Ballistic missile detection is actually somewhat tricky and rather specialized. The big arrays we use to detect ICBM launches only cover certain paths into the US. You wouldn’t generally use regular old plane-tracking radars to track ICBMs or SLBMs. They fly too fast, the software gets confused about what it is, they often fly too high, etc. Sub-launched missiles from unexpected angles can actually be tricky to detect and track.
Subs also play a big role in first strike scenarios in a counter-force role. Both to suppress (x-ray pin-down) and destroy ground based launchers by striking fast with a depressed trajectory from unexpected directions.
Submarines are definitely the most destabilizing arm of the nuclear triad, and something that significantly shifted the balance of power to increase the viability of a first strike would be extremely worrisome, it would encourage the side with that advantage to strike before the advantage was neutralized.
'Allo 'Allo!, I gather. They hit the laugh track a little too hard for me, just like Big Bang Theory does.
On the depressed trajectory SLBM, here’s an article (.Pdf) from the early 1990s where the authors attempt to model what changes would have to be made to the warhead and missile in order for the trajectory to be feasible, and what arms control implications fielding this sort of weapon would have had. Their work uses a lot of simplifications, but I don’t know of any other publicly available reports on the topic. From the paper, getting the missile to follow that flight path is harder than I first thought.
Per Robot Arm’s comment, I’d think the U.S. would still realize that it was a missile, and rapidly figure out who it came from. It’d be probably quite effective against airfields though, where the drastically degraded accuracy of the trajectory wouldn’t matter nearly as much as the ability to kill bombers before they can take off. A true zero-warning time weapon (like a nuke in the basement of your embassy. Or another country’s, for the lulz.) could have a lot of the decapitating effects that Senor Beef mentioned in his post.
Another question, why is the Red October being of the US Coast such a big deal in the movie? In real life at the height of the Cold War you had two or three Yankee class boats at any given time off both Coasts* and their express jobs were to knock out US Early Warning and Air bases in order to ease the job of the SS-18’s. In the book, boomers in both Oceans are recalled (IIRC, its been a while) at the same time as the RBNF sorties.
Instead of saying," first strike weapon, OMG", should the response of the JCS not have been “meh, the Yankee’s are getting old, they needed a new boat class anyway. Hey whats for lunch in the Officers club today?”
- I could be wrong, but I believe one was actually lost this way.
Mostly because the standard boomer subs were easily tracked, so if it came to the point where the missile tubes opened they were within range of some sort of anti-submarine weapon on a quick trigger. The Red October, being silent, could pop up anywhere, without warning, no chance of response before the missiles are away.
That. The danger of the RO was that you didn’t know where it was, and couldn’t point a satellite at it. SOAT explained it in his rather long post last page.
That’s Allo Allo.
Yeah, there was a neat moment in the book that wasn’t in the movie. When Ryan goes back to stop the KGB guy from blowing up the Red October, in the book he speaks English and Ryan spends some time trying to talk him out of it and defecting with the rest of the Officers. He fails and, I believe, shoots him like in the movie. But Ryan then looks at the open panel on the missile and sees all kinds of wires & things. First he tries to just grab them all and yank them out, but sparks fly. He & Ramius can’t be sure how far along the agent got in sabotaging it so they decide to eject it from the sub. Not ‘launch’ it mind you, just eject it while submerged and let it sink to the bottom of the ocean in case it still goes off.
Anyway, back on the Dallas Jonsey (he doesn’t go over to the RO in the book) hears the sounds of “A missile tube flooding and hatch opening!!” Needless to say it’s cause for a bit of alarm, but the Capt (he didn’t go over either), knowing what’s going down just says something like, “Steady Jonsey…”
There was so much more in that book that couldn’t make it into the film. Another Soviet Alfa attack sub looking for RO pushes its reactor to hard and suffers a meltdown. Clancy’s moment by moment description of the sub losing buoyancy, tipping down vertical, and the core melting its way thru the compartments of the sub was awesome…
Jonsey and Mancuso did go over. I distinctly remember one of the Soviet characters being impressed with Jones’s skills with Russian equipment.
The movie eliminated Chambers (the Dallas’s XO and recurring character in Ryanverse) and made Mr Thompson the XO (IIRC his only appearance in the Ryanverse is in Red October).
I always wanted to know where the mini-submersible thing they used to get to RO came from.
The Mystic-class DSRV. In practice, flown to the port nearest the stricken sub aboard a C-5, mated to either another submarine or a dedicated tender, and sailed to where the stricken sub is laying. It’s then released, and serves as an underwater taxi.
It’s been replaced by the Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System, which looks like an ROV that does the same thing.
The DSRV? That’s quite real.
Edit: bah, ninjeed. Curse you, Gray Ghost! 
No, I knew that. I meant how did it get there? In the movie you kind of get the idea that every sub has one already.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but IIRC, it comes in on the same ship that Admiral Greer was never here on. Skip Tyler is standing behind him when the torpedo does not self-destruct.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, but it shouldn’t take insanely long to get the DSRV where it needed to be. It can ride in a C-141 as well as the C-5 I mentioned. No idea how long it’d take to strap it to a low-boy and wheel it into the a/c. Then 5 hours max, probably less, to fly it to the airport near the port. However long it takes to drive the trailer to a dock with a suitable crane to emplace it on either a SSN or one of the two designated DSRV tenders. Then the SSN sails to the site at an admitted 15 knots (and probably can go faster.) The wiki for the USS Ortolan, one of the two Pigeon-class tenders that operated the DSRV, says it goes at 15 knots too. How far was the site from Groton or wherever the SSN was staging from? 35N, 70E, is only 380 or so nm from groton, if I’m working Google Earth’s ruler accurately. So, a day-ish of steaming? Call it a day and a half total?
Nobody does back-of-envelope calculations like a Doper. Bravo, sir.
ROFLMAO, I actually have met Tom Clancy at the sub base library in Groton. I would assume he was doing some sort of research.
And my neighbors kid was a chief on the NR1, I have a ballcap from him somewhere =)
Hanging out in one of the largest sub bases you get to see all sorts of interesting things and meet interesting people. I once had to translate for a bunch of French midshipmen touring the Miami when their translator didn’t show up. Although NOB was great for touring foreign vessels, I got the chance to tour a Soviet destroyer [the Olichny] on the first tour they did, it was fun seeing busloads of soviet sailors turned loose in Lynnhaven Mall! I still have the goodies I swapped US patches and pins for. My favorite is the large hat flash 
Era? I’ll narrow it down: Spring of 1985
The professor was actually a Romanian who had traveled with her fiance’ to East Germany to get married and they quietly ‘got on the wrong train and headed West instead of east’ and ended up eventually moving to The States. :dubious:
The comment was in response to some not-so-subtle innuendo that she still had Party loyalties even while living in the USA.
–G!
In the book, there was time to figure out the best place to remove the crew of the RO and sneak in that retired USN SSBN to blow up. Mancusso sent the rendezvous co-ordinates in morse via flasher to Ramius, and asked Ramius to active ping once or twice to signal that he understood the instructions.
And once RO and the Dallas were on the way to the rendezvous, Adm Greer and the others had time to get all the other vessels, including the DSRV and support vessel in place.