Dear U.S. Navy,
Where are your nuclear subs and what are their missions?
Sincerely, Definitely a U.S. citizen
Where are your nuclear subs and what are their missions?
Sincerely, Definitely a U.S. citizen
I'm not trying to be a troll, or funny. What threat is currently best dealt with by deploying ICBMs in nuclear subs? And why is the money better spent on that than on any other alternative use?
There are so many other ways you can prevent such attacks. Diplomacy, commerce, keeping good relations, etc. The threat of an axe on your neck makes it hard to look like you have good intentions in the first place.
The problem is you can't always assume that the other guy has good intentions. If they're rational, then mutually assured destruction keeps everyone rational. If they're crazy, then that certainly is a problem, which is why there is enormous effort put into preventing proliferation and containing the capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran.
The ability to drop a bunch of nukes on someone on short notice is not to deter terrorists, it's to deter nation states - anywhere between North Korea through Pakistan.
The existence of nukes and the submarines that carry them is almost entirely orthogonal to the (relatively new) thread of terrorism.
I realize it's a circular argument, but MAD is for other nuclear nations (or future nuclear nations).
MAD wasn't just about deterrence, but also about ensuring mutual access to early warning information. The combination of the two is actually not a bad thing. "I know you can destroy me if I attack you, and I know you can see me if I start to do so" is not a bad set of factors. Unfortunately things like anti-satellite missiles and weapons in space really endanger that because if a small piece of space junk collides with a satellite over the other guy's territory, you may not know for sure that this is not the prelude to an attack.
So the actual MAD strategies as they developed through the Ford years were actually quite sophisticated and stabilizing. But what happens when your threat is a nuclear weapon in a twenty-foot container instead of an ICBM (because some country like North Korea knows we can have 747's with lasers shoot down launching missiles if we launch a first strike)?
Conversely: what goes does a standing army of 1,127,801 people do you if your adversary has nuclear weapons?
OK. Assume China cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific. They position their naval fleets in some aggressive formation over major lines (likely blockading Taiwan or something). Assumedly, they have to sink a ship or at least fire shots and take one captive. The U.S. and Japan respond by moving their forces into aggressive positions threatening China. The situation either A. ends when China or the U.S. back down or B. accelerates into military conflict. The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare, at which point it won't matter how big either standing army is. Again, some assumptions, but not unreasonable.
The same scenario without a large standing army has no "standoff." The "standoff" is MAD from nuclear weapons, and understanding on all sides that military action that threatens any nation's "security" will quickly go from tactical to nuclear.
I suppose I just see the massive standing army (special forces not included) like I see air superiority fighters. There's really no scenario where they are necessary for the defense of any modern nation.
It's not quite as black-and-white as that, as illustrated by the history of the second half of the 20th century: The U.S. and USSR engaged in several proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, arguably Central America), but never came close to nuclear war.
(Neither the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis nor the 1983 Able Archer scare involved a war, and the Korean War of 1950-53 was apparently started on Kim Il Sung's own initiative to the surprise of the USSR, although there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes; when China came into the war in November 1950 it wasn't yet a nuclear power.)
Stalin was careful enough to enlist pilots as "volunteers", suspending their official service in Soviet Army for the duration of mission.
And the U.S. killed more people using conventional ordnance in a single night in Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined from the atomic bombings, so what is it that you're actually upset about? Because it's obviously not the number of Japanese killed.
Think about it: Germany never used nuclear weapons on the U.S.S.R., were they somehow more moble?
If it's a problem to know where all the subs are and what they are doing in my name, then I have a problem.
I don't personally want the launch codes for the missiles, but I want to know who has them, what the policy is for using them, when they are used (each and every time), what was targeted, who was hurt, what the damage was, how much it cost to build them, keep them, use them, and dispose them.
The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.
I'm glad you aren't in the Department of Defense, then.
The military serves at everyone's behest, not of their own accord.
This is a false dichotomy.
It's not a dichotomy, let alone a false one. Please explain your objection.
During the Cold War the Soviets lost a nuclear submarine in international waters. The Soviets couldn't find it, the US (through its network of acoustic listening stations in the oceans) could. There was a multi-year effort to recover the sub, which required an elaborate cover story and operational security.
If the Soviets knew what the recovery ship was doing, they would have blown it out of the water. All the secrecy was necessary to protect the mission.
Edit: If you need to keep public things that secret, maybe you shouldn't be doing them.
(shrug)
Knowing the location of the troops months or years ago isn't likely to cause much harm: A competent enemy can probably know all that anyway, if they care to.
Submarine Spotting
Now a report in the magazine New Scientist says the probable reason for the action is that the scientists are all study bioluminescent plankton which can reveal the whereabouts of submarines.