14 ms·
Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?
- linuxlizard 9y ago"Asking for a friend."
- smacktoward 9y agoIn fairness, nothing ruins Christmas faster than the kids stumbling across the nuclear missile submarine you bought them.
- nasredin 9y agoOMG OMG DAD AM I GETTING A SUB!!!???
- sctb 9y agoPlease don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fuzzfactor 9y agoI'll never forget the scale model of one I found under the tree Christmas morning back in Florida not long after the Cuban missile crisis. Naturally in school we were rehearsing in case of a strike but very few fallout shelters existed so we improved our response time for getting in position safely underneath our desks.
- gist 9y agoI wonder if you could social engineer that. So when you start 'asking for a friend' you don't go with the major item that makes someone think 'wow this must be for him'. You start with lesser items and over time build up to the thing you want 'for the friend'. Hence tenderizing the target and making them less likely to question why you are asking. Because they already 'know you'. I was trying to explain to my wife the concept. The example that I used was the person who wants the retail store password. They don't call the store and say over the phone 'hey I am at the Global Mall Store and forgot my password can I have yours?'. Immediate red flag. They start with something simpler and build a reputation as legit. Something like 'hey I am at the Global Mall Store are they saying you have to work until 7pm on Christmas also?' [1] [1] Then follow that up with other requests over weeks finally culminating the 'password' question.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago>"Orange Squeeze" I am seriously, completely confident that name would fool the person it's meant to.
- influx 9y agoWhat is the purpose of publishing information like this? At best, it’s trivia, at worst it provides advantage to a rogue nuclear power with active concentration camps.
- jlgaddis 9y agoYou honestly think that such a "rogue nuclear power with active concentration camps" couldn't figure this out on their own?
- madengr 9y agoYes
- monocasa 9y agoWhy? It's all public information. And the sense I've gotten is that the North Korean engineers overall seem competent, they just lack resources.
- nugi 9y agoTo play devils advocate, their resources being limited is a huge boon to our reletive superiority. This post does in effect concentrate them into an actionable plan, with minimal effort. That said, I am pretty sure the dark zone is only theoretical, due to limited publicly available data on likely classified access.
- nyolfen 9y agothey can develop a fully-fledged nuclear program with ICBMs and hydrogen bombs but they can't scour public resources about launch detection systems
- nerdponx 9y agoWhich rogue nuclear power with active concentration camps do you have in mind? The USA?
- fpoling 9y agoThe title is very misleading. This just talks about Earth coverage of missile launch detection system according to publicly available information. This has nothing to do with detecting submarines.
- nyolfen 9y agopresumably the reason you would have IR satellites looking for launch plumes in the middle of the ocean is in fact to detect submarine-based launches
- fpoling 9y agoThe deployment of submarines is rather orthogonal to the coverage by early detection warnings. Detection is not helpful if the flight time of missile is less then reaction time. So one wants to deploy close to US coast line irrespective of detection coverage. Besides, launching from South Pacific means US will have plenty of time to detect the warhead with normal radars.
- cocoablazing 9y agoBoth RF and US operate FBM forces as deterrent second-strike forces. This is not only the operational reality but also the treaty-regulated deployed configuration. Optimizing deployment in the manner you describe is not aligned to the current mission of these forces / our deterrence relationship.
- cameldrv 9y agoThat's not necessarily true anymore. The Russians have deployed the Sineva and the Layner SLBMs which have GLONASS supplemental guidance. This makes no sense in a second strike scenario. The Trident II is also plenty accurate for a counterforce first strike and allows less reaction time than ICBMs.
- shifter 9y agoDue to projection distortions, the size of the area was visually misleading. An area-maintaining projection would be a more accurate way to communicate this data. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Projections_by_preservation_of_a_metric_property https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Projections_b...
- teh_klev 9y agoI'll resist the obligatory "Gall–Peters" West Wing/XKCD post :)
- anabis 9y agoI would guess that it would be exactly the area where hunter submarines will be roaming.
- alexhutcheson 9y ago> Where would you direct your submarine, and where would you best fire you missiles, from the perspective of an as-late-as-possible space-based detection of your missile launches? Honest question - is this the function you'd be optimizing for? What are the implications of earlier space-based detection of a launch? Presumably fast detection of a launch plume would help you find and hunt down the sub, but at that point the missiles are already in the air. I would think that the more important factor is where to hide to minimize chance of detection prior to the launch.
- zdkl 9y agoYou want to minimise the adversary's chance to put in place proper evacuation or countermeasures.
- dmurray 9y agoIt's assumed that a submarine can travel in the ocean for long periods without detection. I don't know whether this is still considered to be true by military strategists, but it's a large part of the motivation behind having nuclear-armed submarines in the first place. A submarine is at least pretty stealthy, but the heat signature of a missile launch is impossible to hide. Another way to look at it: the satellite systems described in the article (SBIRS and DSP) are optimised for early detection of a launch. So when considering the deficiencies of those systems, it's correct to consider a hypothetical adversary who optimises for the opposite.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 9y agoUm, it seems to me you'd direct your submarine close to the coast of a city and your missile launch would not need ICBMs. In fact, I am worried about TacNukes - like the kind we see in James Bond movies - being smuggled INTO A CITY! https://www.wired.com/2002/11/nukes-2/ https://www.wired.com/2002/11/nukes-2/ Here is an article about loose nukes. North Korea has ALREADY given Syria nuclear material to build a functioning nuclear weapons facility. Google "operation orchard". I am worried that, as soon as we attack its regime, some sleeper group would use nukes somewhere. And what do we do in general with rogue nukes? How exactly are they accounted for across every country?
- stevenwoo 9y agoIt has been speculated Pakistan is already playing with tactical nukes and using unmarked vehicles to move them around the country, because they fear the USA will disarm them ala the bin Ladin raid on a larger scale. They already do not move nuclear materials in armed convoys because that would make them stand out and a target for anyone in a pretty divided country so they use unmarked vehicles. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/308730/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-all...
- whathaschanged 9y agoYou're probably down voted because actual discussion would lead to the Samson Option.
- observation 9y agoProbably a large portion of the forum thinks the subject is itself immoral. That option isn't specifically anti-semitic even if it gets those undertones, we should expect every nuclear capable state has come up with items of that sort and more like destroying an innocent non-nuclear state to demonstrate convincing evidence for convictions.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoWhat's the Samson Option?
- pps43 9y agoIf you detect a massive ICBM launch from Russia, you know what to do - nuke Russia. You have half an hour to launch before Russian missiles take out all silos. Now what do you do if you detect SLBM launch from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean? Who do you nuke?
- avar 9y agoThe US is peculiar with its nuclear policy in trying to guarantee immediate response, by contrast say the UK only has nuclear submarines at sea, and it's expected that there'll be nothing like an immediate response, rather the captains of those submarines will find out who nuked the UK and respond. So the answer for deterrence purposes is you don't need to nuke anyone right away, immediate response is only one layer of the onion when it comes to nuclear deterrence.
- pps43 9y agoIf you rely only on submarines for deterrence then you don't need satellites detecting launches in the first place. I don't think UK or France have (or need) that capability.
- avar 9y agoThat's not how it works. The US also relies on the ability to promptly respond to a first strike, which say the UK does not. What I'm pointing out is that you've conflated two things. Just because one aspect of your deterrence is the ability to launch your land-based ICBMs within 30 minutes, that doesn't mean that the inability to do so (e.g. because you don't know who struck you) means that you're out of options. Besides, there's no way someone could amass enough SLBMs in the Pacific to take out two aspects of the US's nuclear triad without the US knowing who owns those submarines.
- pps43 9y agoI was trying to explain why it is more important for the satellites to quickly detect launches from land. With SLBMs you have other options. You can have your attack submarine shadowing enemy's ballistic missile submarine, or surface ASW ships patrolling the area that can detect the first launch and try to sink the ballistic missile submarine before it can launch its remaining missiles.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nugi 9y agoI choose to belive this is an amazing disinfo honeypot, and seal teams are waiting nearby with trained dolphins and magnetic explosives. Yes, I am serious. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin
- drdeadringer 9y agoDuring my DoD days, I worked on the first 4 SBIRS satellites as well as some nuclear subs earlier on. I'm glad to see some of my DoD work in the news in a non-negative light.
- PhantomGremlin 9y agoThere is a complementary land based system for detecting ballistic missiles. It's more limited in coverage and also has more-or-less the same blind spot: not much coverage of missiles launching from directly south of CONUS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_State_Phased_Array_Radar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_State_Phased_Array_Radar...