My tritium source is good for another 9 years =) I love United Nuclear, they have some seriously odd goodies for sale 
I can add that even cleared contractors are not allowed on base during missile evolutions. Foreign nationals parachuting in during that time would probably end with a poor result.
Wait, what does this phrase “other nations” mean? 
Anyone who drove through NAD (Naval Ammunition Depot) at Camp Pendleton will testify to the heightened level of paranoia by the guards there. I have no way of knowing whether there are nuclear weapons stored there, but after reading a book on a sniper training at Camp Pendleton, and reading about the trainees pulling guard duty at sniper hides overlooking some of the many underground bunkers, one can certainly assume there’s something nasty therein.
Subs go into and out of port quite often. They would never have the time or money to take out and replace every missile every time a boat went in and out. They only take them out when they need to.
Someone above mentioned capture. Nuclear missile subs do not visit foreign ports.
cough Faslane cough
640 class boomerin Holy Loch / Faslane Scotland. Unless something funky has happened, that is a nuke in a foreign port.
Tender feeding missiles and supplies to boomers, Holy Loch. May she rust in pieces.
Maybe I should qualify that statement. They do not visit foreign ports now, nor have they recently (please correct me if I am wrong).
Doing a little bit a research (far from exhaustive) it looks like the last 640 class as a boomer was decommissioned in 1993. So that picture is probably at least 20 years old.
I am not aware of when was the last time a boomer (with missiles) visited a foreign port, but I am guessing it has been a while.
My last submarine (a fast-attack Los Angeles-class SSN) got diverted to King’s Bay once for drydock years ago. (It ended up being a screw job, as our precious few weeks ashore were spent down in Georgia instead of our home port, but I digress…)
Anyway, King’s Bay, as the linked story above notes, is the home port for east coast Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. Compared to our home base in Groton, we found the security to be extraordinary, to say the least.
Oh, and our sub looked like a tiny little guppy in the drydock that was designed for Ohio-class boomers.
Finally, I did a patrol myself on a boomer out of Holy Loch, and a few years later visited Faslane aboard my SSN. By the time of my visit to Faslane, the base at Holy Loch had been shut down.
What are those white masts on the sub with big black footprints on them?
Periscopes
Should get mrAru to answer, but snorkles, antennas, periscope, radar and so forth. Not sure which are which =)
[about the only mechanical thing I can do on a sub other than drift valves unofficially is annoy the weapons officer and on an old sturgeon class sub covertly turn off the hot water recirc pump to the CO’s head …
I really didn’t like Murph the Surf …]
It is surprisingly difficult to get an answer to this by Googling, and I haven’t found one. I thought it would be somewhere in the book, “Big Red: Three Months On Board A Trident Nuclear Submarine”, but it isn’t there either. The book mentions a lot of things about the missiles; the Explosives Handling Wharves (EHW) where, among other things, the warhead buses are mated to the rockets; and the Draconian security that surrounds the weapons. But it doesn’t say whether the SLBMs are removed after every patrol during the 25 day refit period. I found it to be a very interesting book, nonetheless, if you’ve an interest in this sort of thing.
IIRC (can’t locate the cite), the missiles are removed when the submarine goes into their once-every-nine-years overhaul, as opposed to end-of-patrol refit. (I think I’m getting the jargon correct.) I imagine they are removed for missile maintenance that requires unrestricted access to the various missile components; e.g., X-Ray-ing the solid rocket motors for cracks.
I imagine—there’s that un-GQ-like word again; sorry—that this type of whole-missile maintenance happens often, as the Naval Base Kitsap (which subsumed the old Bangor Submarine Base where the West Coast Tridents where based) is in the middle of trying to build another EHW, as the old one is inadequate to handle the required maintenance. Per the cite, there are 8 Trident SSBNs at Kitsap; nevertheless the old wharf can’t handle the maintenance requirements. It ‘seems’ like one wharf could handle the odd maintenance from 8 subs, (really 3-4, as the Trident is supposed to be at sea ~2/3 of the time.) especially since the conversion process from SSBN to SSGN and from C-4 missiles to D-5 missiles has already been completed. There is the Life Extension Program for the D-5 that is still going on. (Aside, the below-quoted snark at that site strikes me as funny for some reason:
You don’t say…)
Then there’s this statement from a Russian arms wonk, commenting on the fire on the Russian Delta-IV class SSBN, Ekaterinburg:
I’ve read the text of the New START Treaty (NST) that he refers to, and I don’t see where it mandates any such thing. Your guess is as good as mine as to what he means by, “Off-duty”. Perhaps the NST definition of “deployed weapon” includes SLBMs aboard a SSBN during refit? In that case, perhaps you’d want to remove the missiles, in order to not have the refitting sub’s missiles count against you, thereby allowing a larger number of deployed weapons on patrol? Seems like a lot of work, otherwise, to move the missiles on and off the sub after every patrol. Aren’t they as safe on the sub as they would be in the base’s magazine?
I think he’s wildly incorrect, but obviously I don’t know one way or the other. He may be using a legalistic sleight-of-hand by saying that a nuclear weapon isn’t a nuclear weapon if any of the pieces aren’t fully in place.
Ultimately, as alluded to above by billfish678 and Declan, “Those who know aren’t talking, and those who are talking, don’t know.”
Yeah, diesel-electric subs are the only kind that can go 100% silent if necessary. A nuclear powered one must always run coolant pumps for the reactor (at sea the reactors are only ever shut down in a dire emergency like imminent meltdown etc.)
Also, unless some treaty banned them, I believe SSNs (attack subs) can carry some nuclear tipped torpedoes and/or cruise missiles. Makes taking out an entire carrier group a lot easier. Also, unless I missed it, it is still the official policy of all branches of the US military to **never **confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons in specific locations.
The ‘footprints’ are camouflage to make them more difficult to spot on the rare occasions when they have to be raised at sea.
And then right after I post that friggin’ book, I find this cite from a USN SSBN Squadron commander, talking about changes to the Trident deterrent patrol and maintenance cycle:
Reading over the cite, he’s talking about the refresher training that occurs during every patrol. So, taking his quote at face value, the sub has empty missile tubes at some point during every patrol/refit cycle.
Here’s where the refresher training occurs, in the ‘new’ (I think the post was from awhile ago) cycle:
Is this any different than an aircraft carrier and the nuclear weapons they (presumably) carry when they are deployed? Do they unload those (presumed) nuclear weapons when they return, or do they keep them on board. I realize the US Navy’s official word is that they neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons on aircraft carriers. Let’s be logical, it’s a war ship and as such, one should presume it’s prepared to enter the worst conflict on a moment’s notice.
A second thought, is there a safer place to keep them other then locked on a naval ship on a secure naval base when they are not at sea?
Pretty good book. I don’t remember any discussion of how often the missiles or warheads are removed, either, but it certainly isn’t after every patrol.
My understanding is that American SSNs do indeed carry a mix of nuclear-tipped and conventional-explosive missiles. So, likely, do some surface combatants, such as Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
As it happens, I just read Peter Hennessy’s excellent The Secret State, which has quite a bit about the British nuclear deterrent. The Royal Navy now operates four Trident II SSBNs. The Prime Minister writes a secret letter to the captain of each, for reading only in the event of nuclear war: Letters of last resort - Wikipedia
Per this site, and this one, President G.H.W. Bush mandated that, after 1992,
Now, whether those warheads are still in the stockpile, or sitting in some bunker at Pantex still after all this time waiting for disassembly, I don’t know.
I had thought the way to not be lying when you claimed that “no nuclear weapons are on this ship” was to partially disassemble the weapon, but leave the vital piece nearby? Sort of like taking the bolt out of a firearm in order to make it safe. Stretching this concept like taffy, couldn’t it be argued that the codes and other stimulus needed to arm a modern nuclear weapon are the ‘vital pieces’ without which you don’t have a nuclear weapon, you merely have an expensive, heavy piece of modern sculpture?
And for Hail Ants, while I can’t pin down for certain whether any of the 688 boats’ S6G reactors can function in a natural, convective cooling mode, the S5G from USS Narwhal, the S8G that power most of the Ohio SSBNs (until they replaced the cores with S6Ws?), the S9G that’s planned for powering the new Virginia SSGNs, and the S6W that powers the SSN-21s: all of them can. I found this an interesting history and 50,000 foot-level survey of naval nuclear power, where you can find all of the above claims. The Narwhal starts at page 10 on the .pdf. Now, how much power can they get out of those plants before they have to turn on the supplemental cooling pumps? That’s classified.
Aside, since US naval reactors are fueled with ~93-97% enriched U-235, (page 6 of the linked pdf. Or page 26 of this one., an interesting read on methods for insuring that naval HEU doesn’t get diverted into bomb use. Per it, the USN’s reactors will run, and are probably running now, on old warhead HEU.) I wonder how they would be kept from forming a supercritical mass during wartime damage? The second pdf mentions how thick the Zirconium cladding on the fuel assemblies are, “To ensure that it will be capable of withstanding battle shock loads”. Would that ensure enough spacing to prevent a supercritical mass sufficient to cause a sizable (~1kT?) explosion? The wiki for US Naval Reactors mentions the use of a “burnable neutron poison.” Or are there no likely failure paths that would result in an explosive assembly of a supercritical mass? I realize that anything having to do with U.S. naval reactor design is classified to hell and gone; these are just some questions I had floating around my head.
I just never realized how enriched most USN submarine fuel was before. To this layperson, it seems at first blush that the back end of the boat is basically a floating fission bomb.
Uh, yes they do. Some are (or were ) actually stationed there. IE Holy Loch Scotland or La Madelena Italy
I was on Narpig, she was decommissioned long ago, don’t think it’s classified anymore. She could do “Natural circulation” up to 60% reactor power.
Boomers…Meh…REAL submariners were on Fast boats! (SSN attack subs)
slight diversion, but I believe that Holy Loch is just mothballed and can be reactivated very quickly if the US Navy wants access again. I may be wrong.
And of course Falsane which someone else alluded to here is still up and running - it’s the base for the Royal Navy’s ballsitic missile subs (and maybe other subs to, not sure). The only other all nuclear sub navy.