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Tracking submerged boats from space is the holy grail of ASW, and as best as I can tell it doesn't work outside littoral zones (where sometimes you can opticall

Tracking submerged boats from space is the holy grail of ASW, and as best as I can tell it doesn't work outside littoral zones (where sometimes you can optically detect the sub) and contrived tests. It has been tried with SAR, blue/green lasers, IR, all kinds of stuff, and luckily it doesn't work in the real world. When it does, it will be massively destabilizing as it places the "invulnerable" second strike capability that guarantees deterrence against peer states at risk.

baybal2 6y ago
> When it does, it will be massively destabilizing as it places the "invulnerable" second strike capability that guarantees deterrence against peer states at risk. It never been such to begin width, at least by the late cold war, some portion of missile subs were reliably tailed by adversaries without any high tech trickery. North Korea, Russia, and China each already have more submarines than USA, and would have no problem to put 10 subs to tail each Ohio.
- unchocked 6y ago
  Tailing some portion of missile subs won't do - a single missile sub is an existential threat so deterrence isn't destabilized until the adversary can credibly eliminate all of them within ~10 minutes. It takes a nuclear sub to trail a nuclear sub. NK and China have exclusively, and primarily (respectively) diesel subs. These have to surface and run their engines to charge batteries. They cannot make 20+ knots submerged for long, and they cannot track deeply submerged submarines from the surface. Surfacing and running diesels would make their presence known. They cannot range far from port, and certainly cannot track missile boats under the arctic ice. Russia has a sufficiently large nuclear fleet, but it is outdated and probably outclassed by US technology. There is probably greater disparity between the powers than existed during the cold war, at which time deterrence was credible.

baybal2 6y ago

> When it does, it will be massively destabilizing as it places the "invulnerable" second strike capability that guarantees deterrence against peer states at risk. It never been such to begin width, at least by the late cold war, some portion of missile subs were reliably tailed by adversaries without any high tech trickery. North Korea, Russia, and China each already have more submarines than USA, and would have no problem to put 10 subs to tail each Ohio.

unchocked 6y ago
Tailing some portion of missile subs won't do - a single missile sub is an existential threat so deterrence isn't destabilized until the adversary can credibly eliminate all of them within ~10 minutes. It takes a nuclear sub to trail a nuclear sub. NK and China have exclusively, and primarily (respectively) diesel subs. These have to surface and run their engines to charge batteries. They cannot make 20+ knots submerged for long, and they cannot track deeply submerged submarines from the surface. Surfacing and running diesels would make their presence known. They cannot range far from port, and certainly cannot track missile boats under the arctic ice. Russia has a sufficiently large nuclear fleet, but it is outdated and probably outclassed by US technology. There is probably greater disparity between the powers than existed during the cold war, at which time deterrence was credible.