Lake Superior alone covers 31,700 square miles to an average depth of 483 feet. It’s far to large an area to target with a first strike and well protected from non US/Canadian forces.
Edit: A US/Canadian treaty demilitarized the Great Lakes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush–Bagot_Treaty
Now it runs through Lake Ontario and spends a day lolling in the deep cold waters there before night falls once more and enters the Nigara river (oh shit, you see where this is going) and starts the run through Nigara City.
At full speed the most daring Naval maneuver of all time is about to be attempted. Now, finally, the true value of the Yansen class will be revealed as two vast titanium wings snap out from under the hull and the super-cavitating bubble generator is deployed. The hidden rocket engines on the rear of the boat ignite. The submarine fills with the stench of human excrement as the whole crew void their bowels in unison and the Russian sub leaps from the water in front of Nigara falls and..
oh I give up.
Just when HN seemed to have settled into semi-intelligent tech talk we get this.
Sheeech
Oh, HN has always been like this on topics not directly related to tech.
Are you aware that in order to reach the Great lakes via the ocean requires navigating several locks?
Do you propose the Russian subs stopped at the locks, paid the lock fees and continued on their way?
when the reach the locks, what type of ship do they state they are
https://greatlakes-seaway.com/en/commercial-shipping/tolls-s...
They don't list "submarine"?
These lakes are in general on or near the Canada–United States border.
There are rivers to the north which feed the lakes, but the lakes are no where near Moscow.
Perhaps you mean Moscow, Ontario which is around 35KM north of Lake Ontario?
If not, Moscow, Russia is a 16 hour flight from the great lakes area.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3201b.ct002675/?r=0.011,0.16,1...
Fish stories and all that. But there is precedent for submarines and even aircraft carriers in the Great lakes. Lake Michigan is filled with crashed trainer aircraft from WWII.
A comment above mentions a demilitarization treaty of the Great Lakes.
I am definitely not suggesting it's a foreign state. That's less probable than unknown domestic military activities.
Reports of odd lights in sky or water. Or general nonspecific stories of "weird shit".
There's more too, but those are fish stories (sharks, people claim).
I like to do outdoorsy stuff, so this is what I've heard from fisherman, ferrymen, etc.
In theory this would deter a first-strike against the US because the subs could still retaliate with massive damage. Thus, cutting second-strike capability could make first-strike more likely in the eyes of US strategic (eg nuclear) planning.
Some are probably still "hot".
I suspect foreign agents try to bribe people in submarine crews to sabotage their sub in the event of a strike. If someone onboard could stop the American second strike missiles being fired they'd give Russia a huge advantage. I imagine the Navy have considerer this.
Au contraire! An important aspect of them as land based is the "nuclear sponge" concept: every single nuke spent on a silo is a nuke not aimed at a population center or vital infrastructure. They're out in the middle of nowhere for a reason (well, multiple reasons, but that's one of them). Even if they're all lost they've constrained the opponent's tactical choices merely by their existence, pushing towards the logic of a counter force strike instead of counter value.
Any nuclear exchange would be very bad, but unlike Europe the US does indeed have a lot of near completely uninhabited non-arable land for strategic depth. Makes sense to use it.
Further, they are trapped in a small metal tube with 100 other people in similar condition, and who will probably be....not pleased if any sabotage is discovered.
I suspect it would be very hard to successfully bribe said crew members. (And have them actually follow through with their end of the deal, rather than just taking the money and...not doing it if the war ever happened)
Surely hitting every ICBM silo, B-2 airfield and nuclear submarine virtually simultaneously is nontrivial.
‹honk›
Not that it matters, but I am Canadian and we were taught in school Canada was created in 1867 via the BNA (British North American Act).
Therefor, those who "sacked" Washington must be British, the same way that George Washington must British as well be given he was born prior to the formation of the USA. He became "American" later, much as "Canada" was created later..
It’s a fun thought exercise though!
Looks like the real reason is a US Canadian treaty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush–Bagot_Treaty
Though they tend to be quite wide, a custom barge is another option.
Best case 500 ft vs 12,000 feet means the blast might have a range roughly square root of 24 or 5x as far. But a more variable topology might work like the walls of an anechoic chamber and disparate the blast much faster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber#/media/File:C...
So let's look at the Trident system for a second (used on subs).
This is a MIRV weapon (Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle) Reentry refers to "space".
This gives them a tremendous range.
Triden's posted range is 12,000 KM.
Using "Toronto" to estimate distances as it is on Lake Ontario: Toronto to Moscow - 7,400 KM Toronto to Beijing - 10,583 KM
Therefor a sub in the great lakes with a trident system can reach pretty much any key "target".
What could a dozen 1MT warheads, sunk to a depth of 100ft, do to submarines anywhere in the Great Lakes? Shockwaves travel through water much better than through air. Water explodes into steam in a way that air doesn't.
My intuition is that you actually could pretty reliably paste a sub inside the Great Lakes using some nukes launches from Russia. The lakes may just not be deep or big enough to hide in.
This is leaving aside the treaty, the lack of freshwater sub technology, the long time to retaliation due to long range, the lack of a sub facility on the lakes, and the unnecessary nature of the whole enterprise (if the US lost 1 boomer sub to an enemy they could bring the others into a defensive posture making them practically impossible to hunt down, to preserve 2nd strike capability).
They aren’t that much better than depth charges in part because energy is spread in 3D space. 1,000,000 times the energy means ~100x the range, but depth charges are very short range weapons. In WWII with a sub on radar and using 12 depth charges in a grid they only had a 5-10% kill chance. Which is one reason why nuclear depth charges where replaced by target seeking torpedoes.
Carpet bombing the Great Lakes with thousands of nukes could work but that’s a great nuclear sponge. Directing a huge quantity of munitions away from other targets.
PS: 100ft is likely shallow with much of the blast being sent into the air but that’s not very important to your suggestion.
If, as this article claims, it will be impossible for submarines to hide in open waters in the future, hiding submarines in large, protected bodies of water such as the Great Lakes becomes a compelling option.
Shouldn't be an option for us.
How viable freshwater sources do we really have left to play with?
The Ohio subs do not go unprotected. However, they are designed to be able to carry not only nukes but also cruise missiles (up to 154 Tomahawks for instance), which would make the a huge threat to any naval force.
Also, let's say that these subs were used to deliver a few hundred anti-surface Tomahawks against for instance a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Not only would the missiles themselves be able to sink a lot of surface assets, the use of these subs would also signal their presence, indicating that the USN was meaning business.
It takes only one torpedo to disable most surface ships. An American Seawolf class submarine can carry ~50 torpedoes.
8 ships disabled on the first volley!
However, it might be that less than 20 missiles are loaded and or teach ICBM is not carrying the maximum capacity of nukes, but we just don’t know.
If you're executing a first strike, then your goal has to be to take out your opponents ability to retaliate...or you're trying to pull off a limited first strike.
In both cases, submarines add no strategic value if used: in the limited strike scenario you give away a submarines location, and in the first-strike scenario you are not going to have enough missiles, with up to date enough targeting data, in order to hit targets any quicker then land-launched ICBMs are.
The time you waste trying to maneuver your submarines close enough to your target to launch, the fact that it's entirely possible they get taken out before they launch their entire payload (US and Russian subs shadow each other as a matter of course to track their movements), and the inherent communications problems coordinating with submarines all make them irrelevant as first-strike weapons.
The point of a nuclear ballistic missile submarine is a guaranteed second-strike capability. Your opponent might surprise you take out your bombers. They might surprise you can take out your land-based ICBMs. But there's no way they can ever be sure they got every boomer sub, and boomer subs don't target military targets: they target cities, capitals and command bunkers. They exist to ensure no useful advantage is ever gained from first-strike.