That, and looking around for landmarks to make sure of where they are. And possibly asking helpful eskimos for directions.
As did my husband, twice [it was so fun he wanted to do it again? Snicker] He got his Bluenose and Magellan on the same trip [around the world is Magellan, Bluenose is north of the Arctic Circle.] There are a number of certificates available for various waterborn things.
Sure, but they can’t launch through ice, can they? And it wouldn’t take long to break through the ice, launch your weapons, and then re-submerge. Heck, in any situation where you’re actually launching, that last step isn’t even mission-critical: It does an enemy no good to destroy a boomer sub that’s already launched.
Every boomer has to assume it’s being shadowed by an enemy hunter-killer attack sub whose sole mission in life is to kill the boomer before it can fire. Hence, the boomer has to execute its launch procedure with a quickness, and as much silence as possible right up to the moment the launch tube doors open (after which, it’s almost too late to stop the missile launch).
Breaking through icepack is neither silent nor quick.
But if breaking through ice is something that subs do routinely, then the hunter-killer can’t use that as a trigger for its attack. And if the hunter-killer is shadowing that closely, and conditions are such that the boomer is expected to be attacking, then it can just attack immediately, without waiting for the icebreak.
USN Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines conduct “deterrent patrols” in broad ocean area in the Northern Hemisphere Atlantic and Pacific oceans because the range and accuracy of UGM-133 “D5 Trident II” submarine-launched ballistic missile allows them to hit their targets from that range and the Ohio class is quiet enough that it can best hide in open water. There is no need to patrol underneath the Arctic ice cap and the Ohio-class subs are not equipped with the necessary features to “break through” surface icepack.
Although the Trident II is not intended to be a counterforce weapon (e.g. to pre-emptively destroy opposing nuclear weapon or launch capability) the desire is to respond to a launch order in a very short period of time. Normal patrols are at some depth but come up to launch depth if they are on alert which takes a few tens of minutes after which they can be made ready to launch in a matter of a couple of minutes. Surfacing takes additional time, makes a lot of noise that is impossible to mask, exposes the vessel to detection and surface attack while it is on or near the surface, and probably the worst issue, it means the boat is in the surface layer where strong wave action can make it extremely uncomfortable and even unsafe for crew as well as interfere with launch operations while the boat is breaching or violently rocking.
When firing from a submerged position the boat is below the surface layer, the launching missiles are propelled and essentially enclosed in a bubble of compressed air which punches right through any surface activity, and once the boat has salvoed it can secure to dive into the thermocline layer where it might evade attack, which may not seem all that “mission-critical” or important to you but for the crew who would like to survive and return (although in the case of a strategic nuclear exchange what they might have to is a pretty grim notion) it is crucial. An opposing “fast attack” sub would doubtless endeavor to destroy a ballistic missile sub whether it has completed firing the complex salvo or not because it is still an extremely valuable military asset that could hypothetically be returned to port and loaded for reuse (although again if there was actually bases at Kitsap or Kings Bay to resupply them is another grimly unlikely consideration).
Former Soviet Navy and Russian Navy do have ballistic missile subs capable of breaking through ice because they are mostly limited to patrolling in the Barents Sea and southern Arctic Ocean (due to the SOSUS net and much larger USN-RN presence in the North Sea and similar presence by the USN in the North Pacific), and many of the older Soviet SLBMs were liquid propellant vehicles that had to fire from the surface or barely submerged, but I think even modern Russian SLBMs are primarily intended to be launched from considerable depth, again for the same reasons, and generally patrol in ice-free regions to facilitate rapid launch.
Stranger
So where would they launch from, then? As I understand it, sub-launched missiles are not intercontinental in range, and most of Russia’s coastline, you can’t count on ice-free waters.
Tridents have around a 4000nm range which is almost enough range to hit Moscow from New York City, so they have quite a large area to work with.
Being able to surface through the ice is mostly about communication, I think. Subs have extremely limited ability to receive information underwater (to the tune of several characters a minute) and generally can’t transmit without raising an antenna to the surface. There was at least one class of Russian missile sub that was designed to be able to launch from the surface after breaking through ice, but that’s definitely not a typical tactic.
Submarines do not break through icepack routinely (ICEX are special missions, hence the “Bluenose” badge), and an opposing fast attack submarine would only attack under orders to do so, presumably if a strategic nuclear attack were underway. Despite what you see in Hollywood movies, submarines do not fly through the ocean like jet aircraft, do not dodge and weave their way through deepwater canyons on the basis of “hyper-accurate surveys” and a steely-eyed Soviet sub captain, and do not deliberately attract an actively homing torpedo in order to (somehow) redirect it back to the attack submarine that launched it, which is literally impossible. (In all fairness, Clancy’s original novel had none of this, and the Red October takes out the Alfa by literally plowing across it instead of the stupid Top Gun maneuvers of the film.)
Although an Ohio class submarine is perhaps not as absolutely quiet as the Navy propaganda would have you believe, it is silent enough that it is extremely difficult to track acoustically in broad ocean area, and the passive towed sonar array would detect anything following close enough aft to keep in regular tracking or to launch upon it before it could ascend and launch its SLBM salvo. Any unprovoked attack (which would be immediately recognized by the acoustic signal of pressurized gas used to launch the torpedo and sound of the active homing sonar of the fish) would result in either a dive to get into the thermocline layer to confuse sonar or return launch of multiple torpedos to force the attack sub to cut torpedo control wires and evade.
The D5 missile has a range exceeding 12,000 km, so they can reach from the mid-Atlantic to all of Russia, or anywhere in the Western Pacific to essentially anywhere in Asia. USN/RN ballistic missile submarines to not generally patrol in the shallow North Sea or in the Norwegian Sea above the GIUK gap, and for obvious reason do not loiter along the Russian coastline where the limited maneuverability would leave them vulnerable to Russian attack submarines.
Stranger
Or walrus.
Something worth noting (which is mentioned many, many times in the Smarter Every Day video) is specifics about the performance capabilities of almost every component of U.S. subs is highly classified, while some basic parameters are basically considered “common knowledge” because they have been deduced by experts with knowledge in these areas, there’s actually a reason none of the officers on the boat Destin was on would give him any real information on the sub’s capacities. It’s intentionally kept a state secret, and the only people who know exact details for sure and not just hypothesized ones, either don’t post about them on the internet or are risking serious criminal consequences if they do post about them on the internet.
Right, I did in fact serve aboard a U.S. submarine that broke through the Arctic ice on numerous occasions. My submarine was actually the first of its class (improved Los Angeles-class) to conduct an under-ice deployment (aka ICEX).
The older Sturgeon-class submarines were also under-ice capable, with fairwater planes mounted on the sail that could rotate vertically 90 degrees. The original Los Angeles-class subs did not have this capability. With the phasing out of the Sturgeons in the early ‘90s, it was decided to add under-ice capability to the improved Los Angeles-class. Part of the improvements included replacing the fairwater planes with retractable bow planes.
Many of the reasons for why you’d want under-ice capability in a military submarine have already been discussed. I’m not going to get into much more detail than that for the reasons outlined in the previous post by @Martin_Hyde.
I will say that one reason why you’d want to be able to break through the ice is in case of an emergency or equipment casualty. If the sub’s reactor goes down and cannot be restarted in a timely manner, the sub is operating off of its battery, which only has a finite amount of power storage. After that, the sub has an emergency diesel generator, but diesels need a lot of air. In the open ocean, a sub can just surface or stick up a snorkel mast, but under the ice this can be more problematic.
Breaking through the ice was an important part of Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra. I can’t verify how accurate it was, but the process was described pretty well.
They’re damn liars, though.
You can’t refuel stolen Soviet planes from under the ice, now can you?
Say what you will about thought guided weapons (in Russian, no less!) but that was a way-cool scene!
Strange coincidence - I watched that film this evening, recorded off the BBC TV recently.
I talked to someone once whose job in the Canadian army while stationed in Alert base (high Arctic) back around 1980 was to listen to and try to interpret high speed data bursts from Russian submarines. As I understand the USA has worked with long wave signals from underwater but generally, the only way to send radio is to surface.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading MacLean’s novels, save for the last few, where he put headlights on a formula V, and had a time bomb that ticked.
A slight hijack, but since this is a current thread about submarines, here is a fascinating real-life spy case, currently in court, about a Navy vet who tried to sell top secret info about Virginia-class subs. (TL/DR: he contacted an unnamed US ally, which handed him over to the FBI; they acted as though they were the ally and trapped him. It appears that little or no intelligence was actually given to a foreign power.)