Now that you've got submarines with vertical launch cells like the latest Virginia class I've wondered about some of the possibilities. Since those are capable

Now that you've got submarines with vertical launch cells like the latest Virginia class I've wondered about some of the possibilities. Since those are capable of holding Tomahawks, they certainly are large enough to hold an SM-2 or SM-6 SAM missile (though I doubt they could fire those unmodified). Having a submarine with long range SAMs open up some interesting tactics. You detect a bunch of enemy fighters sortieing out to engage one of your ships with an airborne early warning aircraft or fighter on a long range patrol. All of a sudden, way before they enter range of your ship's SAMs, a submarine surfaces, launches a bunch of SAMs, and the aircraft that detected the enemy fighters guides them to targets using cooperative engagement. With this technique all you need is a submarine and a fighter or early warning aircraft and you effectively get a guided missile destroyer which is profoundly hard to detect. Fighter might be a better choice, so it can chase off ASW helos and aircraft without needing the submarine to surface and waste some of its own SAMs. Lots of things can go wrong of course, and I'm sure it would take a ton of engineering effort to make it happen, but it's certainly an interesting concept.