It’s an interesting idea but there are three reasons why not:
Although if Russia wanted to put SSBNs in Lake Baikal…well, still not very practical.
You’d be sacrificing the major benefit that the one in the Atlantic can go wherever it’s needed. If you want relatively stationary nuclear missiles that are hard to destroy, we have silos for that for a fraction of the cost.
Not taking issue with this per se, but it’s a very, very expensive way to deliver ordinance. And I’ve been of the belief that it was just a way to defend the submarine force post-cold war.
[End ax grinding.]
SSBNs do not carry conventional or cruise missiles. Four SSBNs have been converted to SSGNs, to carry large numbers of cruise missiles.
Several years ago there was a proposal to put conventional warheads on some SSBN missiles, buntil folks began to point out that if an SSBN launched a missile at some country, nobody had any idea whether that missile would be carrying a nuclear or conventional payload until it landed. Noting that countries were not likely to wait until a missile landed who-knows where before putting their own strategic forces on high alert, or worse, nobody wanted to start WW3 by accident and thus the idea died.
Not necessarily; the big selling point on ballistic missile submarines is that they provide a credible second strike capability. Even if one side were to somehow manage a successful first strike against the other via some ruse or decapitating strike against the other’s leadership and successfully catch the other sides nuclear force while it was still on the ground and in its silos, the oceans are huge and submarines very hard to track; one couldn’t hope to track all of the other side’s boomers or even a significant portion. They are as a force immune to a first strike and can even have their launch authorized as part of a fail-deadly system in the event that all communications with their mother country cease as a result of an enemy first strike. British boomers each carry a letter of last resort with final orders to be opened only in the event of complete loss of communication with the UK.
I wasn’t arguing in favor of the idea, just trying to explain it to John Mace.
A “boomer” is a Bengal tiger that used to inhabit Cincinnati and answered to the name Esiason.
Interesting responses. Thanks.
You dont need the actual subs, they are just taxi’s. Put so many D5’s inside a launch box and drop it into any conus lake and your golden. Problem is that there are better ways, rail car launch boxes, air droppable from cargo planes, purpose built airforce silos.
But that means that you plan to fight a nuclear war, or expect to fight a nuke war at some point, and not keeping them as a diplomatic/political tool. Big boom, but becoming obsolete. I’d rather see the money going to orbital Kinetic rods and the exo-atmospheric bomber.
Declan
The idea occurs to me because in the early 80s I studied nuclear deterrence theory while St. Ronnie was pushing the MX missile on the subway to nowhere out in the desert, and it always seemed to me that idea was just stupidly wasteful of money.
Another idea that comes to mind is that the US could, with satellite communications arrange to develop sat controlled cargo containers that would sit atop the huge cargo ships stacks and open up on pirates or other hostiles with remote control, the captains wouldn’t even need to know they were there.
Would it take a redesign to get a sub to operate in fresh water?
Also it sounds like a very boring job for the ship’s crew and a less then stellar promotion for whoever captains that boat.
Congratulations we are promoting you to captain of the newest boomer in the fleet. Yes it’s in the Great Lakes and is unable to leave, so you will be leaving port, going to a undesignated deep spot and sitting in the mud for 6 months in that tin can, then after you return to port for resupply and do it all over again. Enjoy your new position.
The primary declared value of nuclear missile subs was their ability to hide (“We hide with pride”). They represented a last line of counter-attack. Even if the Soviets managed to make a complete surprise attack and destroy every missile and bomber on the ground before they could be launched, the submarines would still be out there and capable of launching a counter-strike.
The undeclared secondary value of the submarines was their ability to launch a quick first strike. I don’t think this was ever a declared part of American doctrine because we didn’t want to admit that we might plan such an attack. But we did talk about how the Soviet submarine force could be used to make a quick first strike and obviously our forces could do the same. The principle was that missiles and bombers had to travel around the world. Even for missiles this took enough time for them to be detected and a counter-attack to be launched. But submarines could be stationed right off the coast of an enemy nation and launch an attack across a much shorter distance. In theory, a surprise attack by submarine-launched missiles might so quick that the enemy command be destroyed before it had time to order a counter-attack (see the first paragraph about making a complete surprise attack).
Both of these purposes would be defeated by stationing submarines in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are big but they’re a lot smaller than the oceans. It would be possible to simply blanket them with a few hundred nuclear explosions and that would destroy any submarines in them. And any missiles launched from the Great Lakes would have to travel around the world to reach their target (unless we decided to attack Canada).
It’s hard to see how that’s significantly different from what missile submarines are doing now. What difference does it make to the crew if they’re hiding down in the bottom of the ocean or hiding down in the bottom of a lake? It’s not like the ocean has better night life for when you’re off-duty.
I have no idea what this means.
Standard cargo containers that you see on trucks, trains and ships. Build some of them so that they open up automatically on command and shoot guns or missiles. Thus, the Maersk Bakersfield has a couple of cargo containers on the top row and pirates are reported coming up on a ship in the area. A signal is sent to the military containers nearest, which happen to be on the Bakersfield, on the top layer. One of them opens up and a missile shoots out and is then guided by satellite 100 miles to the incoming pirate ship and boom! Or, if pirates attack the Bakersfield itself, one pops open and a couple of mini guns take out the pirate ship.
Oh, that takes me back, back, back, back, back…
That’s probably a lot more cost effective, environmentally responsible, and less likely to trigger the end of the world, than nuking the pirates using an ICBM launched from a boomer lurking under the surface of Lake Michigan (although perhaps not as satisfying). 
You end the world the way you want to, I’ll end it my way.
Almost everything related to the nuclear arms race was. Both sides already had arsenals capable of destroying the other side hundreds of times over but kept sinking billions upon billions on the latest bit of shiny. An often unspoken reason behind the nuclear triad (ICBMs, bombers, and SLBMs) and how it developed was interservice rivalry. There were a number of big budget fights going all the way back to 1948 when the US Navy wanted to build the USS United States which would allow nuclear armed bombers to operate off of carriers for the first time, which the newly formed US Air Force saw as a threat to its monopoly on nuclear weapons. Building the subway to nowhere out in the desert for the MX would give ICBMs a bit of the first strike survivability of SLBMs, so the Air Force wanted it. That and it was new and shiny so the Air Force wanted it anyway.
There was really no need to maintain a bomber force once ICBMs had been developed and deployed in quantity, but they were already there so the Air Force wanted to keep them and continue to spend money developing new ones. Once SLBMs had been developed and deployed in quantity there was no real need to maintain an ICBM or a bomber force, so the nuclear triad and all of the reasons why we ‘needed’ each one of the legs was invented.
Plus, won’t mobile ICBMs provide a similar capability at much reduced cost?