This doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Is this more distraction from Epstein?
This looks completely devoid of substance.
I thought the location of subs was secret. And aren’t they constantly underwater, roaming the oceans for months at a time, apparently randomly? They could be in the “appropriate regions” as well as anywhere else.
That, and subs being “deployed to the appropriate regions” is, one would hope, the normal state of affairs. The only place you might be able to get a story is where the President considers the “appropriate regions” to be (if they were just off the coast of Canada or Australia, say, that’d be deeply troubling), but that’s not stated.
There’s just not enough of anything of substance for this to mean anything. It’s a headline in search of a story. At least for now. Sort of hope it stays that way.
I have a technical question: For subs, does it matter where they are deployed? What is the range of the nuke missiles launched from a submarine?
I thought the whole purpose of a sub is to be the opposite of, say, aircraft carriers. Carriers not only have to change their deployment , taking a week or two to get close to the enemy (in order to get the planes within range of the enemy targets), they also have a major purpose of using those deployments as a very visible show of force. So where they are located is a political statement.
But subs are “the silent service”, totally secret. I assume there is [i]always[/i] a submarine or two capable of hitting Moscow, under the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine. If so, Trumps order is just a meaningless political stunt , which doesn’t change anything,
Well, no military worthy of the name is going to give hard figures on that, but the range of sub-launched ballistic missiles from the US is usually given as around 3500 miles. In other words, a sub off the East Coast of the US around, say, Maryland could launch a missile and have it plonk down off the West Coast of North America with range to spare. Or vice versa.
So… it matters somewhat, in that you need to be (probably) around 3500 miles/5500 km from wherever you’re aiming, but that’s a really big area to shoot from. Of course, there are multiple submarines out there, and only their owners have any idea of where they really are lurking. I’m sure there’s always a few within range of certain targets, regardless of which side we’re talking about.
Pretty much, yes. I’m hoping it’s just hot air and posturing.
US President Donald Trump says he has ordered two nuclear submarines to “be positioned in the appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative” comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
I assume that they are deployed to the “Nether Regions”, not to be confused (wink wink nudge nudge) to The Netherlands.
Does anyone, anywhere, give a flying fuck what “former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev”—who is a transparent Putin stooge—says about anything?
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Well, yes, but in the sense that I take his comments seriously, but not literally. He’s a deniable asset that amplifies the worst of Putin’s thoughts, while giving Putin plenty of cover in the international audience. So yes, what he says probably reflects Putin’s thinking (the darkest parts of it at least) but rarely is predictive in any way of actual actions Putin is taking.
Or they’d have gone nuclear regarding the Ukraine by now, given Medvedev’s saber rattling.
The whole idea of nuclear submarines is that no one really knows where they are and so they cannot be taken out in a real war first strike. Leave port for areas unknown, stay hidden for long periods of time, and if needed, they will always be able to strike back.
To say that you are moving them to a particular area defeats the idea, and is pure political posturing.
Right, he says whatever Putin tells him to say just to see what reaction he will get from other world leaders. To which as anyone who has dealt with a sociopathy or borderline coworker or family member knows, the best response is not to respond at all. If we just treated Putin as irrelevant and gave Ukraine the weapons and intelligence it needs to repulse the Russian invasion, he would be compeltely marginalized and someone within the Russian government might even sack up enough to replace him despite how much Putin has vigorously tried to remove anyone competent enough to challenge him.
Trump is the worst fucking ‘negotiator’, executive, or even figurehead. He’s only good at being a tinpot would-be dictator. Unfortunately, a large portion of American voters have lost all sense of irony or critical thinking and don’t see Trump for being the self-parody that he is. He’s a walking, talking Spitting Image puppet.
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I can’t imagine being the team or person who has to vet what information Trump receives in briefings, knowing that it could all be blurted out in a speech or on Twitter later that same day.
Fortunately, Trump doesn’t read reports or like briefings that have too many words that don’t mention him, so his ability to uptake and repeat any classified or critical details is limited by his attention span even without consideration for how much he mangles even straightforward talking points and rambles on in steam-of-semi-consciousness. If Trump were actually an intelligence asset, his case officer would live in terminal frustration of getting him to provide useful information somewhere within the mass of narcissistic self-adulation. It would make for the dumbest John le Carré-esque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, an espionage version of A Confederacy of Dunces.
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Former U.S. submariner here, and speaking very generally…
Per the article linked in the OP: “The US president did not say whether he was referring to nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines in his post on Truth Social.”
First off, all U.S. submarines currently in commission are nuclear-powered.
Secondly, regarding nuclear-armed submarines, if you are talking about ballistic-missile subs, it doesn’t really matter where they are deployed. They misiles they carry have ranges that are thousands of miles.
The only type of subs in which their deployment is significant are attack submarines, which carry Tomahawk cruise missiles. (While these smaller missiles can be equipped with nuclear warheads, they usually carry conventional warheads.) For example, these were reportedly used in the recent attack on the Iranian uranium-enrichment facilities.
Are you referring to SSGNs or SSNs? I’m aware the latter can carry cruise missiles, but I would generally think of the latter as “attack submarines” and the former as “cruise missile submarines.”
Modern U.S. attack submarines (SSNs) typically carry 12 vertically-launched Tomahawk missiles, like the improved Los Angeles-class sub I served on, and the earlier versions of the Virginia-class SSNs that are replacing them.
(They can also carry torpedo-tube launched Harpoon missiles, but these are typically deployed against surface targets at sea, not land targets).
The newest Virginia-class submarines can reportedly carry as many as 40 vertically-launched Tomahawk missiles.
As for SSGNs, the U.S. only has four of these. They are former Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines that were converted to carry as many as 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. These are all pretty old now, and are expected to be retired in the next couple of years.
In any event, to answer your question, in my earlier post I was referring to any sub that carries Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, so SSNs or SSGNs.
Specifically, the UGM-133 ‘Trident II’ submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Range varies from the merely intercontinental to ‘reach out and touch somebody’ wherever they might be on the surface of the planet.
Flight II and III 688-type ‘Los Angeles’ class SSNs have twelve (12) vertical launch tubes (VLS) as do all versions of the 774-type ‘Virgina’, which can launch UGM-109 ‘Tomahawk’ cruise missiles as well as ship-to-ship UGM-84 ‘Harpoon’ missiles (although I think these have been mostly retired). The three lonely ‘Seawolf’ boats don’t have VLS but can launch Tomahawks through their torpedo tubes, as can (I believe) the earlier flight Los Angeles submarines. At the end of the Cold War four of the Ohio-class SSBNs were converted to ‘Guided Missile’ configuration (SSGN), capable of launching groups of up to seven (7) Tomahawks from its missile tubes originally intended for the Trident II SLBM.
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Dumb question perhaps, but all else being equal, wouldn’t accuracy get better and better the closer the sub is to the target?
No, and in fact they have a minimum distance at which they can attack the target because of the powered trajectory of the SLBM will basically force a certain range of flight (which varies with latitude and direction). Accuracy is determined by the precision of the guidance system and control the post-boost propulsion system. And not to cite specific numbers but the accuracy at which they can delivery a reentry vehicle to the burst altitude is far smaller that the diameter of the damage zone of the weapon it is carrying.
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