Why would it be easier? About the only significant difference is that salt water is somewhat more corrosive than fresh water, but that’s a long-solved engineering problem (i.e. the old Navy maxim “if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, paint it”).
I see. I guess nobody could foresee anything ever going wrong with the U.S. military smuggling heavy weapons onto a commercial ship without the knowledge of the captain, and then making that privately-owned ship into a remote controlled death machine. And we all know that things that are satellite controlled are utterly unhackable, too. Seems like a solid plan.
Oh my god yes. Not as survivable as a submarine, but the cost of such a system is a minor fraction of an SSBN. Currently, the U.S. Navy is planning to build new SSBNs 10 years from now, and the estimated cost of each ship is in the neighborhood of $7 billion, not including the cost of actually operating the ship for the thirty-plus years of its expected life span.
This isn’t really true. The LGM-25C ‘Titan II’ and LGM-30A/B ‘Minuteman II’, both deployed around the same time as the UGM-27 ‘Polaris’ SLBM, could reach every significant target in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact states. (There were a number of locations beyond its range in the Peoples Republic of China and North Korea, but as neither state was then nuclear-capable that isn’t germane to the discussion.) The purpose of the nuclear triad was ostensibly to provide redundancy and robustness against a disarming attack. The reality was that each military service sought nuclear capability and the expedient political answer was to distribute capability along these lines. Indeed, the initial range of the Polaris A-1 was so short (less than 2500 mmi in prograde trajectories, less from Pacific locations) that there were concerns about exposing the submarines to attack or counterattack rather than the deep ocean patrols carried out by later, longer range missile submarines.
Although there is a lot of hand-wringing made about the capability of submarines to launch a “sneak attack” with the missiles flying on depressed trajectories, an SLBM launch and flight will still be readily apparent to modern early warning systems, and there is still a minimum range at which the booster can effectively deliver its weapons. The flight time might be reduced from the ~30 minutes from CONUS to 15 or 20 minutes from a submarine launch but the ballistic profile necessary to loft the RVs accurately is apparent to any space-based observation as well as any early warning radar systems looking in that direction, and the track of a ballistic missile (especially dozens or hundreds being launched simultaneously) is unmistakable. The “sneak attack” scenario has been implausible since the late 'Sixties.
It sounds like the story pitch for the Under Siege 3 sequel that Seagal has been trying to make for the last twenty years.
Stranger
You mean Diehard Afloat 2 ?
As well as those of us on the North Coast.
Dive Hard