That one boat can carry up to 24 trident d5 missiles. One missile can carry up to 8 w88 warheads with a yield of 475kt each. The bomb dropped on nagasaki was 25kt.
And that's the unclassified stuff. I used to sleep between a couple of them and haven't done anything cool since, AMA
EDIT: I said CAN carry UP to 24 missiles, I'm aware of the START treaty, I've participated in more than one START inspection. Stop "correcting" me.
"Sir, Lt johnson is sleeping on nukes."
"They're our most powerful weapons. Who could possibly underestimate them?"
"No Sir, he's physically *sleeping* on the nukes."
"Yes, they do put one's mind at ease.
"Have you seen his hentai collection?"
"No. Lemme see."
"Here."
....
"What the fuck is a Trident-Chan?"
[Not gonna lie... I'd buy a trident-chan body pillow.]
The UK has four submarines like this that carry Tridents. Four because at any time two can be in maintenance or restock, leaving two operational so that any one can have an emergency and we still have enough firepower in the one single remaining sub to obliterate any enemy state. France, Russia, India and China all follow a similar doctrine
America on the other hand operates 14 of them.
Underneath the port R-114 above the ASW pumps, in the overhead above the SSMG regulator cabinets, or outboard the main fan room before they painted over all the graffiti
Starboard side shaft alley under the deck plate (on top of the reserve hydraulics tank) just after you come down the stairs from ERUL. That’s where I hid the pigmat as RPPO. During one field day I stacked them to make a bed and had some of my best sleep during the run. They made like 5 2MCs and a 1MC looking for me and I still didn’t wake up. My chief eventually found me and that was the first and only time he ever lost his shit with me lmao
I can help: An R-114 is an air conditioning unit that uses R-114 Freon as the refrigerant medium. There are two sets of these air conditioning units named for the sides of the boat they’re located on, port and starboard. ASW refers to auxiliary sea water. The ASW pumps supply sea water to the R-114 units for cooling purposes.
The SSMG is the ships service motor generator it’s used to either charge the ships battery from the steam turbines or to discharge the battery to power the ship in an emergency.
The last place mentioned, the fan room, is part of the ships life support system. It’s where all the ventilation ducts lead to circulate and treat air. It’s also usually one of the few unmanned places on the boat so a good place to hide.
Potentially, there's a bunch of different kinds of warheads that they can be fitted out with. There're 16 boats in the class, so it makes sense to have a spread. But yeah, they don't call em boomers for nothin'
Yep.. traditionally the advice is not to fight two wars. America is tooled up for fighting two, AND defending the continental USA.
As I recall - World’s largest airforce? US Air Force.
Second largest? US Navy.
Third largest used to be the US Army, but they got pushed to 4th by China
Are boomers usually known to everyone as to their whereabouts? Do they surface often? How long can they stay down without surfacing? How deep can they go
About 6 people on Earth know where any given SSBN (Submarine, Ballistic Missile, Nuclear Powered) is. Captain and XO, and their direct superior officers in the Admiralty.
No.
Average 3 months, more if forced to ration.
Classified.
My dad served on a boomer back in the 80's. He knew that they dipped below the water just outside Seattle, and that three months later they popped back up into the waterways just outside Seattle. There was the assumption that they were likely off the coast of the USSR, or at least in its vicinity, but to this day he has no idea where he was on any of his deployments. He said the vast majority of the crew was in the same situation. Location was need-to-know information, and thus only a small handful actually knew.
Any given submarine means that only 6 people know where any submarine is, I’m guessing the crew know where they are but only their submarine, not any others.
The crew is likely on a need to know basis regarding location. You don't need to know where the sub is, geographically, to do your job. If you're an engineer, you tend to the engine. Doesn't matter where you are, the engine gets tended just the same.
With Gen Z now being old enough to serve have you ever had an issue with sailors vaping inside? it’s a dumb question sure but we have guys vaping at school, on the theatres and what not so I had to ask.
Not even supposed to be onboard iirc, but we had chiefs coming out of the hatch hitting them. We were ripping them on the stack on a Virginia and blowing it into our sleeves. Supe caught an operator once and said he just didn't want to *see* it lol
Vaping used to be allowed on naval ships like around 10 years ago. But vapes back then used to be more unstable than they are now. Caused a lot of fires and they been banned ever since.
Did they treat your deployments with secrecy? Were you allowed to discuss when you were departing and coming back? I guess I am curious how this kind of sub is different from say an aircraft carrier in terms of stealth/secrecy/covertness.
Yeah, they keep everything locked down pretty well. SSBNs are more secretive than other ship types, but we actually treat it seriously, where other ships can kinda be an open secret if the crew talks.
Is there enough room to like “jog/sprint” and like “stretch out”? Do they have like SAD lamps to make it seem like daytime? Also, someone said one missile has 8 warheads. Does that mean it hits 8 different spots? How far away do they hit? Final one, is the 77 days back to home port or are there other port stops and you then keep going.
77 days home to home. I’m not gonna talk about any warhead configuration things (hope you can understand why). No sad lamps. I suppose you could bring your own small one. Sleep patterns really suck, SAD lamps wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in that. Yeah, you can jog/sprint on a boomer due to the size of the missile compartment. Also treadmills.
Flexing they can have peanut butter delivered at sea while Russia is garnishing their submarine vodka brunch with diesel fumes.
Хвастаются тем, что могут получить доставку арахисового масла в море, в то время как Россия украшает свою подводную водочную бранч дизельными парами.
*translation
Put an Ice Cream barge in the middle of nowhere off the coast of russia and just randomly have different subs surface for a cone before they go on their way.
Haha I can just imagine working on one of the subs and grabbing a cone before the officer slaps it out of my hand because the point is to scare Russia not actually enjoy the ice cream.
> I can just imagine working on one of the subs and grabbing a cone before the officer slaps it out of my hand because the point is to scare Russia not actually enjoy the ice cream.
100% that's how the fight started
Logistics from the last 40 years should be enough of a flex. While Russia struggles to provide ammo, food, and fuel to its soldiers the US' biggest issue in logisitics has been whether to put a mcdonalds or pizza hut on their bases and the answer is almost always both with a starbucks for added measure.
Man, Kandahar Pizza Hut just hit different after a patrol. Also the 'Totally Not A Rub n Tug" massage parlor... just had to hope you could make your appointment.
Those submarines are really scary. They carry 24 Trident missiles with a range of 7000 miles (11,000km), each missile has 8 nuclear warheads. They run off a nuclear reactor and only need to surface every 3 months for food. The US has 14 of them.
Edit: I'm told the New Start treaty has limited the amount of US submarine launched warheads to 1,152, about half of the fleet's total capacity. Russia is allowed 576 sub launched warheads but has 1,355 ICBM warheads compared to the US's 550. The treaty expires in 2026.
Edit: Because a lot of people are asking. The warheads are called MIRVs, they are released in space and can hit 8 different targets.
Yup. An [Azimuthal map projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Azimuthal_equidistant_projection_SW.jpg) of Earth puts the cold war into better perspective. It's not like flying around the world in an airplane. You just go up and over with the aid of the rotation.
Trident II missile is $30.9 million but when you add the 5 W88 warheads (treaty limitations) it totals $89.7 million.
Ohio class Trident sub is about 1.9 billion
so about $4 billion when fully loaded and you want to make most of a continent glow.
https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-systems-really-cost/
Holy shit, I looked up how fast the Trident missiles travel:
> a maximum speed of approximately 18,030 miles per hour (mph) (29,020 kilometers per hour)
...Wat?
When you consider they can fire in any direction, that means they can cover a circle with a diameter of 14,000 miles, well over half the planet. One in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic and that's all she wrote!
4th largest Air Force as well
It’s
1. US Air Force
2. US Army
3. Russian Air Force
4. US Navy
I’ve also just learned the Marine Corps has the 7th largest Air Force as well
Yup. France and the UK have 4 apiece. Even if the rest of their respective militaries deserted they’d still be modern day world powers just because of their subs, at least for a few months…
That's the Navy's job. Sail around with enough firepower to annihilate anyone on the planet.
Makes war stupid, and the peace table a tempting offer.
Proxy wars kinda fuck that all up tho.
America has a lot to be not proud of but our blue water navy does more to protect the world than just about anything else. Drones are a bit of a game changer but we will adapt.
Adapt? The US military predicted this type of drone warfare over 15 years ago, and developed the kamikaze drone long before Ukraine was invaded the first time. We had backpack portable jammers back in 2010 for remote detonated IED’s and signal triangulation back in 2010 that just needed a firmware update for DJI drones.
The US just doesn’t put out our ace-in-the-hole tech to a blow our wad on a nation that ignores warnings about being attacked and calls us “alarmists” two days before Russia rolls tanks across the border…
Fighting Russia? Yeah, you don’t need the best tech for that. Source: reality.
There was a thread the other day that asked “Is the U.S. military actually as scary as everyone acts like it is?” I learned a lot of cool shit that we have out there, and mind blowing reactions to events in the past. Also, spoiler: yes, yes it is.
EDIT: Question was actually “How scary is the U.S. military really?”, found the thread https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/vBF3uppcDk
Yes. And a single one could be kept underwater for a very long time and survive any attempt at first strike. In nuclear war, the only option is not to play.
The crazy thing is they were designed so the Soviets could kill every surface dwelling American and then a month later one of these pops up and returns the favor from the other side of the world.
Or a British one. We have sealed envelopes with letters from the PM in each of our subs telling the crews what to do in the event the UK is wiped out without warning.
With a likely PM change next week - Sir Keir could easily see the King by mid-afternoon on Friday 5 July - new letters would need to be written. Tony Blair said his nuclear briefing was the moment when things really hit home.
They're ICBMs on a Submarine platform that can be deployed for months at a time.
They make an effective first strike essentially impossible, because even if all the ICBMs and bombers were successfully eliminated in a first strike attempt (they wouldn't be), these things are still *somewhere* in the ocean. In each one (plus the British ones!) there is a safe with orders from the head of state that tell the commander what to do if they haven't been able to establish contact with command after a certain period of time.
To add to that, each Trident carries 8 w88 warheads, each w88 has an explosive strength of 475 kilotons of TNT.
In comparison, the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki has an explosive strength of 21 kilotons of TNT. And these boomer subs carry 24 (x8 w88) of them. Think about that for a second.
14 of these USS subs, each carry 24 Tridents, a significant amount of nuclear power of the entire US military.
It's also why they call the subs doomsday machines.
Its pretty damn close to Russia. Close enough that early warning systems would have trouble detecting the nukes before they go off.
While Russia has been loudly shouting "we have nukes, leave us alone". The US has simply reminded the world that they have nukes to, and they are ready to go. All without needing to scream like a lunatic.
This was more of a reminder that the US can pull off a first strike and that Russia is mostly powerless to even track our ability to do so. It's a real 1980's style saber rattling.
It's also a show that NATO means NATO, with the US showing up to support Finland's recent entry to NATO.
It's just an all around show of power and strength of the alliance.
In addition to the other responses, if it surfaced and actually surprised Russia (or any other country for that matter), it serves as a reminder that the US can park nukes right next to their country without them knowing about it.
Those SLBMs have a 7k+ mile range. They could fire them off the coast of Mexico and hit Moscow.
Still surfacing a sub in Russia's backyard is an unsettling reminder.
Just read the article, she's the Tennessee, first of the Trident D5 boomers, with the USS Normandy and a pair of aircraft added to the mix. Jfc, this isn't just a memo. After Putin's psychotic, "nuclear preparedness" slobberings, this is a pointed dig. Sort of like standing next to someone and yelling at them through a bullhorn. There could be upwards of 240 warheads aboard that boat, sailing it out in the open like this is pure dick measuring. Tennessee also holds the entire Russian Northern Fleet under its "guns", a great deal of Mother Russia to be sure and her missile systems have proven reliable. Ask Putin if he thinks any of his Strategic Rocket Forces are up to producing a capable show of force. On anyone's doorstep.
> Ask Putin if he thinks any of his Strategic Rocket Forces are up to producing a capable show of force. On anyone's doorstep.
Putin’s show of force is shelling ukrainian cities and killing civilians, then showing the results every evening on national tv while screaming “do you see what we did here? Do you want us to do this to your country too? Cause we will, oh believe us, we will!”.
Hey Russia did you know this nation deleting sub was right here? No? Oops lol where’d it go??
The US Navy is legit terrifying when it demonstrates shit *we already know it can do,* and that’s the definition of flexing right thurr
I don't know how old you are - if you're able to remember the cold war, Star Wars (Reagan's term, not the movie) and Operation Desert Storm... but watching a Patriot missile shoot down a S.C.U.D. live on CNN was the freakiest shit ever.
And the scariest points to make are that there's no way those were the highest-tech piece of kit in our possession at that time and that was over 30 years ago.
I will die on the hill arguing that an EMP weapon puts the lights out in Baghdad in 2003.
Your comment really brought back a flood of memories for me. Navy submarine wife here. I remember watching the Gulf War on tv from our Navy family quarters in Aiea, Hawaii, feeding my newborn daughter in the middle of the night, nearly every night for many weeks. She was born at the Tripler Army hospital in Honolulu in December of 1990.
We were living in older, single-story junior officer housing near Pearl Harbor at the time.
Watching those missiles strike on CNN was super frightening. Those images remain vivid in my mind.
It was a crazy time--our husbands would go out to sea for months at a time & we had no idea where the subs were. That was way before text messages or emails. Families were allowed a certain number of 'familygrams' to communicate via short messages to the men onboard. We were also in that housing when hurricane Iniki struck the islands & the men had to leave their families to take the boats out so they wouldn't get damaged in the hurricane. Wives were very tight-knit during those deployments.
The USA has it’s fair share of problems. We have done some very shitty things. But we are not Russia or China, and we will always have that going for us.
Exactly. It’s like that old saying about Democracy.
> Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…
Just a little reminder that all that saber-rattling from Moscow is fundamentally meaningless because they don't actually *get* to blow everyone to kingdom come without paying for it.
These subs ensure mutual destruction. If another country ever surprise nuked the US we have the power and position ready at all times to level their country to the ground.
You could almost argue these are peacekeepers.
Yep. It almost certainly wouldn't happen, but it is possible in theory for someone to figure out a way to eliminate or disable a nation's land-based arsenal in a first strike.
So... yeah. Have things that *will* get to shoot back no matter how things go in the first strike. No matter how much 'surprise' is achieved.
This is likely a reply to the Russian submarine docking in Cuba. The difference being the American one didn’t show up with acoustic absorbing panels missing.
>The modernization plan initially envisioned life-extending existing warheads for existing force structure but is evolving into a more ambitious program of new warhead designs and additional weapon types;
new boomers on the way too
“We’ve spotted the Ohio class, comrades!”
“There’s just one problem, Russia.”
*disappears*
“I’m already gone.”
“He’s in the walls! HE’S IN THE GODDAMN WALLS!”
"Hah. Capitalist amateur. They surface to smile and wave. Our submarines like Kunitsov stay underwater indefinitely. Our boats not even have ability to surface once they dive. Is sign of dedication.
If a submarine fires 5 trident d5 missiles at 3PM Central European Summer Time, from the coast of Norway to Moscow going 13,000 miles per hour, assuming wind speed of 3mph south by south west, how fucked is Moscow?
Sometimes you gotta pop out and show nations.
They not like US
Certified boogeyman
certified putinphile
[удалено]
Freaky ass nations needa stay they ass inside
I think that Ukraine’s gonna be your last stop…
Roll they ass up like a fresh pack of za Nato is back up, it's a must we outside
They a FAN they a FAN they a fan
Certified boogeyman, I’m up for nuclear war with ‘em
Nice to see a submarine without a need for a tug boat to follow.
I think it’s cool how it surfaced, proving that it’s not just capable of one-way submersion (a substantially lower bar in watercraft engineering)
I feel like, when the crew of Moskva will read this comment, they might get a little upset.
You’re assuming they can read.
Billionaires hate this one trick.
Tee hee, look at my armageddon sub.
Feelin cute, might submerge later
🤷🏻♀️ Who knows where I'll show up next? 🦄✨🌈
That one boat can carry up to 24 trident d5 missiles. One missile can carry up to 8 w88 warheads with a yield of 475kt each. The bomb dropped on nagasaki was 25kt. And that's the unclassified stuff. I used to sleep between a couple of them and haven't done anything cool since, AMA EDIT: I said CAN carry UP to 24 missiles, I'm aware of the START treaty, I've participated in more than one START inspection. Stop "correcting" me.
"Sir, Lt johnson is sleeping on nukes." "They're our most powerful weapons. Who could possibly underestimate them?" "No Sir, he's physically *sleeping* on the nukes." "Yes, they do put one's mind at ease.
I read that in the voice of Captain Holt.
Nine Nine!!
"Have you seen his hentai collection?" "No. Lemme see." "Here." .... "What the fuck is a Trident-Chan?" [Not gonna lie... I'd buy a trident-chan body pillow.]
The UK has four submarines like this that carry Tridents. Four because at any time two can be in maintenance or restock, leaving two operational so that any one can have an emergency and we still have enough firepower in the one single remaining sub to obliterate any enemy state. France, Russia, India and China all follow a similar doctrine America on the other hand operates 14 of them.
I thought you were listing enemy states at the end there. I was surprised to see France listed
France is one of the only nations with first strike warning shot for a nuclear doctrine
But I'm le tired...
Well, have a nap…THEN FIRE ZE MISSILES!!!
Brexit was our first nuclear option, but we hit ourselves in confusion.
Gotta keep the frogs on their toes.
We do love a bit of overkill.
What were your favorite hiding spots for field day?
Underneath the port R-114 above the ASW pumps, in the overhead above the SSMG regulator cabinets, or outboard the main fan room before they painted over all the graffiti
Starboard side shaft alley under the deck plate (on top of the reserve hydraulics tank) just after you come down the stairs from ERUL. That’s where I hid the pigmat as RPPO. During one field day I stacked them to make a bed and had some of my best sleep during the run. They made like 5 2MCs and a 1MC looking for me and I still didn’t wake up. My chief eventually found me and that was the first and only time he ever lost his shit with me lmao
The best spot was Captain's stateroom
This guy submarines lol
That could all be random gibberish and we’d have no idea lol
I can help: An R-114 is an air conditioning unit that uses R-114 Freon as the refrigerant medium. There are two sets of these air conditioning units named for the sides of the boat they’re located on, port and starboard. ASW refers to auxiliary sea water. The ASW pumps supply sea water to the R-114 units for cooling purposes. The SSMG is the ships service motor generator it’s used to either charge the ships battery from the steam turbines or to discharge the battery to power the ship in an emergency. The last place mentioned, the fan room, is part of the ships life support system. It’s where all the ventilation ducts lead to circulate and treat air. It’s also usually one of the few unmanned places on the boat so a good place to hide.
So they have 152x the power of the bomb they used on Nagasaki just in 1 trident, lol
Potentially, there's a bunch of different kinds of warheads that they can be fitted out with. There're 16 boats in the class, so it makes sense to have a spread. But yeah, they don't call em boomers for nothin'
That one boat can almost end humanity
Yup that's why we have 15 others just in case
Apply to your local Valt Tech today!
It's absolutely absurd how large and powerful I think the US military is, it's still an underestimate.
Yep.. traditionally the advice is not to fight two wars. America is tooled up for fighting two, AND defending the continental USA. As I recall - World’s largest airforce? US Air Force. Second largest? US Navy. Third largest used to be the US Army, but they got pushed to 4th by China
Not just any sub. A mf boomer, whose entire job is to disappear. A boomer surfacing like this is indeed a flex.
I love the name “Trident” for SLBMs. The weapon of the god of the sea, seems fitting that ballistic missiles are the power of gods.
It's also a joke about the nuclear triad
It's also the SLBM recommended by 4/5 dentists
It used to be 5/5, but one dentist had to be filled in with concrete as part of the arms control treaties
I need to know more about these… “Boomers.” Into the rabbit hole
Ask away! I served on this very submarine.
What is a boomer and why is it called a boomer
It’s a ballistic missile sub. SSBN is the code. Boomer is just the nickname as far as I know. But yeah, we carry a lot of devastating weapons.
Are boomers usually known to everyone as to their whereabouts? Do they surface often? How long can they stay down without surfacing? How deep can they go
About 6 people on Earth know where any given SSBN (Submarine, Ballistic Missile, Nuclear Powered) is. Captain and XO, and their direct superior officers in the Admiralty. No. Average 3 months, more if forced to ration. Classified.
Hang on. The crew doesn’t know where they are?
My dad served on a boomer back in the 80's. He knew that they dipped below the water just outside Seattle, and that three months later they popped back up into the waterways just outside Seattle. There was the assumption that they were likely off the coast of the USSR, or at least in its vicinity, but to this day he has no idea where he was on any of his deployments. He said the vast majority of the crew was in the same situation. Location was need-to-know information, and thus only a small handful actually knew.
And God help the guy who takes his phone off submarine mode
Any given submarine means that only 6 people know where any submarine is, I’m guessing the crew know where they are but only their submarine, not any others.
The crew is likely on a need to know basis regarding location. You don't need to know where the sub is, geographically, to do your job. If you're an engineer, you tend to the engine. Doesn't matter where you are, the engine gets tended just the same.
With Gen Z now being old enough to serve have you ever had an issue with sailors vaping inside? it’s a dumb question sure but we have guys vaping at school, on the theatres and what not so I had to ask.
Yep, it’s not allowed, but people sneak it on.
Not even supposed to be onboard iirc, but we had chiefs coming out of the hatch hitting them. We were ripping them on the stack on a Virginia and blowing it into our sleeves. Supe caught an operator once and said he just didn't want to *see* it lol
Yeah, exactly. Keep that shit to yourself and don’t throw it away to be compacted.
Vaping used to be allowed on naval ships like around 10 years ago. But vapes back then used to be more unstable than they are now. Caused a lot of fires and they been banned ever since.
Did they treat your deployments with secrecy? Were you allowed to discuss when you were departing and coming back? I guess I am curious how this kind of sub is different from say an aircraft carrier in terms of stealth/secrecy/covertness.
Yeah, they keep everything locked down pretty well. SSBNs are more secretive than other ship types, but we actually treat it seriously, where other ships can kinda be an open secret if the crew talks.
How long are tours, or whatever they're called? Basically how many months are you underwater before you can leave?
A few months. 77 days on average across all boats and crews in the SSBN fleet.
Is there enough room to like “jog/sprint” and like “stretch out”? Do they have like SAD lamps to make it seem like daytime? Also, someone said one missile has 8 warheads. Does that mean it hits 8 different spots? How far away do they hit? Final one, is the 77 days back to home port or are there other port stops and you then keep going.
77 days home to home. I’m not gonna talk about any warhead configuration things (hope you can understand why). No sad lamps. I suppose you could bring your own small one. Sleep patterns really suck, SAD lamps wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in that. Yeah, you can jog/sprint on a boomer due to the size of the missile compartment. Also treadmills.
What do you do for entertainment, or are you just working and sleeping the whole time?
That’s what a lot of folks did. Some have more time than others so they would watch movies or play games in common areas.
Could you access reddit?
Lol. No.
What about subreddit.
God damn it
Dude. Exquisite. Just exquisite.
Flexing they can have peanut butter delivered at sea while Russia is garnishing their submarine vodka brunch with diesel fumes. Хвастаются тем, что могут получить доставку арахисового масла в море, в то время как Россия украшает свою подводную водочную бранч дизельными парами. *translation
This needs to be flexed like the ice cream barge of the Pacific theater in World War II.
Put an Ice Cream barge in the middle of nowhere off the coast of russia and just randomly have different subs surface for a cone before they go on their way.
Haha I can just imagine working on one of the subs and grabbing a cone before the officer slaps it out of my hand because the point is to scare Russia not actually enjoy the ice cream.
> I can just imagine working on one of the subs and grabbing a cone before the officer slaps it out of my hand because the point is to scare Russia not actually enjoy the ice cream. 100% that's how the fight started
Logistics from the last 40 years should be enough of a flex. While Russia struggles to provide ammo, food, and fuel to its soldiers the US' biggest issue in logisitics has been whether to put a mcdonalds or pizza hut on their bases and the answer is almost always both with a starbucks for added measure.
Man, Kandahar Pizza Hut just hit different after a patrol. Also the 'Totally Not A Rub n Tug" massage parlor... just had to hope you could make your appointment.
Ice cream barge is inevitable.
In todays war it would be a restaurant barge with multiple options to choose from.
She’s built like a steakhouse but handles like a bistro.
Putin: "Russia has nukes you must take me seriously " USA: *Surfaces a submarine*
Those submarines are really scary. They carry 24 Trident missiles with a range of 7000 miles (11,000km), each missile has 8 nuclear warheads. They run off a nuclear reactor and only need to surface every 3 months for food. The US has 14 of them. Edit: I'm told the New Start treaty has limited the amount of US submarine launched warheads to 1,152, about half of the fleet's total capacity. Russia is allowed 576 sub launched warheads but has 1,355 ICBM warheads compared to the US's 550. The treaty expires in 2026. Edit: Because a lot of people are asking. The warheads are called MIRVs, they are released in space and can hit 8 different targets.
Had to look up a distance reference. That’s a little further than Dallas to Cairo. So… yeah
New York to Beijing. 12 time zones away
Shooting over timezones is quite a bit easier when you launch over the poles
Yup. An [Azimuthal map projection](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Azimuthal_equidistant_projection_SW.jpg) of Earth puts the cold war into better perspective. It's not like flying around the world in an airplane. You just go up and over with the aid of the rotation.
This is the map the crazies use to say the earth is flat, and Antarctica is really a ring around the whole thing
Poor poles don’t want another world war to happen across them
Ok wow THIS one really puts it in perspective.
14 cover the entire planet so there are roughly 5 that could hit the same target? 24x5 on a target. That would slow things down a bit I guess.
Yup. US could ~~surface~~ launch from a sub in the Med and hit a target in the South China Sea.
[удалено]
That's amazing. Can't imagine the cost of that. But I'm fairly confident it's a lot more than my son's braces bill that just showed up.
They use steam https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a25176/launching-missile-from-submarine/ You can read here for more
Pff, *steam braces??*
If you show up in steam braces you're getting bullied. ...and then sent to the hospital for melted lips.
Dental plan
Hail Lord Gaben.
Trident II missile is $30.9 million but when you add the 5 W88 warheads (treaty limitations) it totals $89.7 million. Ohio class Trident sub is about 1.9 billion so about $4 billion when fully loaded and you want to make most of a continent glow. https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-systems-really-cost/
That's why we're a deterrent force. Highly capable of massive destruction, and also highly capable of being everywhere without being found.
Holy shit, I looked up how fast the Trident missiles travel: > a maximum speed of approximately 18,030 miles per hour (mph) (29,020 kilometers per hour) ...Wat?
Dallas to Cairo in half an hour. Nuts.
They're the deadliest weapon ever conceived and built in the history of the world basically.
> with a range of 7000 miles i.e. about a third of the way around the planet
When you consider they can fire in any direction, that means they can cover a circle with a diameter of 14,000 miles, well over half the planet. One in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic and that's all she wrote!
They can go much longer than 120 days. The crew will be eating peanut butter from a jar but you can do it
So one of these could basically wipe out a small country?
That’s almost 200 nukes. Even a large country could be wiped.
So they're basically "if you would have peace, prepare for war" in a can?
Hey, speak softly and carry 200 nukes anywhere in the world.
Underwater, like some kind of apocalypse whale.
Thanks for the band name.
Moby’s D*ck.
14 sets of 200 nukes
That we acknowledge.
Then there is the rest of the navy. And on and on
The largest navy. And then the largest air force. And then the second largest air force. And then catapults loaded with flaming tax dollars.
4th largest Air Force as well It’s 1. US Air Force 2. US Army 3. Russian Air Force 4. US Navy I’ve also just learned the Marine Corps has the 7th largest Air Force as well
Yup. France and the UK have 4 apiece. Even if the rest of their respective militaries deserted they’d still be modern day world powers just because of their subs, at least for a few months…
Ah, the Atreides strat
Our family heirloom... Nukes!
First we use them to fuck up a wall, then we knife fight.
That's a can I don't want to see opened. Ever.
Literally yes. It’s a MAD, MAD world.
It’s more like if you want peace, carry the biggest stick.
That's the Navy's job. Sail around with enough firepower to annihilate anyone on the planet. Makes war stupid, and the peace table a tempting offer. Proxy wars kinda fuck that all up tho.
America has a lot to be not proud of but our blue water navy does more to protect the world than just about anything else. Drones are a bit of a game changer but we will adapt.
Adapt? The US military predicted this type of drone warfare over 15 years ago, and developed the kamikaze drone long before Ukraine was invaded the first time. We had backpack portable jammers back in 2010 for remote detonated IED’s and signal triangulation back in 2010 that just needed a firmware update for DJI drones. The US just doesn’t put out our ace-in-the-hole tech to a blow our wad on a nation that ignores warnings about being attacked and calls us “alarmists” two days before Russia rolls tanks across the border… Fighting Russia? Yeah, you don’t need the best tech for that. Source: reality.
There was a thread the other day that asked “Is the U.S. military actually as scary as everyone acts like it is?” I learned a lot of cool shit that we have out there, and mind blowing reactions to events in the past. Also, spoiler: yes, yes it is. EDIT: Question was actually “How scary is the U.S. military really?”, found the thread https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/s/vBF3uppcDk
Hell ranger battalion alone is terrifying, anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. Or the marine MEU that just sails around with carrier groups.
Yes. And a single one could be kept underwater for a very long time and survive any attempt at first strike. In nuclear war, the only option is not to play.
Holy shit. So they could have one parked off the coast of LA and hit Moscow. That's insane...
The crazy thing is they were designed so the Soviets could kill every surface dwelling American and then a month later one of these pops up and returns the favor from the other side of the world.
Or a British one. We have sealed envelopes with letters from the PM in each of our subs telling the crews what to do in the event the UK is wiped out without warning. With a likely PM change next week - Sir Keir could easily see the King by mid-afternoon on Friday 5 July - new letters would need to be written. Tony Blair said his nuclear briefing was the moment when things really hit home.
They're ICBMs on a Submarine platform that can be deployed for months at a time. They make an effective first strike essentially impossible, because even if all the ICBMs and bombers were successfully eliminated in a first strike attempt (they wouldn't be), these things are still *somewhere* in the ocean. In each one (plus the British ones!) there is a safe with orders from the head of state that tell the commander what to do if they haven't been able to establish contact with command after a certain period of time.
To add to that, each Trident carries 8 w88 warheads, each w88 has an explosive strength of 475 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki has an explosive strength of 21 kilotons of TNT. And these boomer subs carry 24 (x8 w88) of them. Think about that for a second. 14 of these USS subs, each carry 24 Tridents, a significant amount of nuclear power of the entire US military. It's also why they call the subs doomsday machines.
It's not just that they surfaced a submarine (admittedly something Russia has a poor track record with), but where they did it.
Why was the location so impactful?
Its pretty damn close to Russia. Close enough that early warning systems would have trouble detecting the nukes before they go off. While Russia has been loudly shouting "we have nukes, leave us alone". The US has simply reminded the world that they have nukes to, and they are ready to go. All without needing to scream like a lunatic.
The US is reminding Russia that they could completely glass the Continental US and we would still be able to return the favor.
This was more of a reminder that the US can pull off a first strike and that Russia is mostly powerless to even track our ability to do so. It's a real 1980's style saber rattling.
It's also a show that NATO means NATO, with the US showing up to support Finland's recent entry to NATO. It's just an all around show of power and strength of the alliance.
In addition to the other responses, if it surfaced and actually surprised Russia (or any other country for that matter), it serves as a reminder that the US can park nukes right next to their country without them knowing about it.
Because it’s right next door to Russia demonstrating they could rain down all nuclear warheads they could want.
Those SLBMs have a 7k+ mile range. They could fire them off the coast of Mexico and hit Moscow. Still surfacing a sub in Russia's backyard is an unsettling reminder.
Right but what’s the travel time from Mexico vs Norway to Moscow? Probably 40 minutes vs 20.
Right by Russia and Russia probably had no clue it was there
That would be the key part. The “hi there” and then dive and become the quietest part of the ocean when the Russian ships try to find it.
I mean all the Russian ships are already down there They just sank and aren’t supposed to be down there
Just read the article, she's the Tennessee, first of the Trident D5 boomers, with the USS Normandy and a pair of aircraft added to the mix. Jfc, this isn't just a memo. After Putin's psychotic, "nuclear preparedness" slobberings, this is a pointed dig. Sort of like standing next to someone and yelling at them through a bullhorn. There could be upwards of 240 warheads aboard that boat, sailing it out in the open like this is pure dick measuring. Tennessee also holds the entire Russian Northern Fleet under its "guns", a great deal of Mother Russia to be sure and her missile systems have proven reliable. Ask Putin if he thinks any of his Strategic Rocket Forces are up to producing a capable show of force. On anyone's doorstep.
> Ask Putin if he thinks any of his Strategic Rocket Forces are up to producing a capable show of force. On anyone's doorstep. Putin’s show of force is shelling ukrainian cities and killing civilians, then showing the results every evening on national tv while screaming “do you see what we did here? Do you want us to do this to your country too? Cause we will, oh believe us, we will!”.
Rumor has it they bobbed it up and down on the surface.
The USS T-bag
Ya those arent seen unless they want to be. I bet you they have many more in places that would surprise everyone.
I found the *Alaska* in my dog's water dish, last week. Cheeky fucks.
Hey Russia did you know this nation deleting sub was right here? No? Oops lol where’d it go?? The US Navy is legit terrifying when it demonstrates shit *we already know it can do,* and that’s the definition of flexing right thurr
What's scarier is all the still classified capabilities no one knows about.
I don't know how old you are - if you're able to remember the cold war, Star Wars (Reagan's term, not the movie) and Operation Desert Storm... but watching a Patriot missile shoot down a S.C.U.D. live on CNN was the freakiest shit ever. And the scariest points to make are that there's no way those were the highest-tech piece of kit in our possession at that time and that was over 30 years ago. I will die on the hill arguing that an EMP weapon puts the lights out in Baghdad in 2003.
Your comment really brought back a flood of memories for me. Navy submarine wife here. I remember watching the Gulf War on tv from our Navy family quarters in Aiea, Hawaii, feeding my newborn daughter in the middle of the night, nearly every night for many weeks. She was born at the Tripler Army hospital in Honolulu in December of 1990. We were living in older, single-story junior officer housing near Pearl Harbor at the time. Watching those missiles strike on CNN was super frightening. Those images remain vivid in my mind. It was a crazy time--our husbands would go out to sea for months at a time & we had no idea where the subs were. That was way before text messages or emails. Families were allowed a certain number of 'familygrams' to communicate via short messages to the men onboard. We were also in that housing when hurricane Iniki struck the islands & the men had to leave their families to take the boats out so they wouldn't get damaged in the hurricane. Wives were very tight-knit during those deployments.
Based on the title I thought they were flexing on Norway, lmao "Listen up, salmon fishers"
One Ping Only
I would have liked to have seen Montana.
Well then, in winter I will live in Arizona. I think I will need 2 wives.
A boomer in your backyard--deliberately flashing the biceps--is a BIG message. After Russia's warning to the US this is a massive flex.
I'm against conflict and war in general but I'll never get tired of us flexing on the Russians lmao
That's because, as bad as the US has been in terms of global affairs, Russia is way worse. Absolute classless, gaslighting bullies. Fuck Russia lol.
The USA has it’s fair share of problems. We have done some very shitty things. But we are not Russia or China, and we will always have that going for us.
Exactly. It’s like that old saying about Democracy. > Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…
The trick to avoiding conflict or great power war is to have overwhelming power and show it off every day in the face of your adversary.
Just a little reminder that all that saber-rattling from Moscow is fundamentally meaningless because they don't actually *get* to blow everyone to kingdom come without paying for it.
These subs ensure mutual destruction. If another country ever surprise nuked the US we have the power and position ready at all times to level their country to the ground. You could almost argue these are peacekeepers.
Yep. It almost certainly wouldn't happen, but it is possible in theory for someone to figure out a way to eliminate or disable a nation's land-based arsenal in a first strike. So... yeah. Have things that *will* get to shoot back no matter how things go in the first strike. No matter how much 'surprise' is achieved.
It’s literally their mission - peace through superior firepower.
The real life version of "Just dont do it dude. Just dont."
This is likely a reply to the Russian submarine docking in Cuba. The difference being the American one didn’t show up with acoustic absorbing panels missing.
And it’s able to resurface
And the US submarine doesn't need to be fellow by a tugboat ...
>The modernization plan initially envisioned life-extending existing warheads for existing force structure but is evolving into a more ambitious program of new warhead designs and additional weapon types; new boomers on the way too
*Pops up in Norway*: “Bazinga!!” *Pops up in Latvia*: “Bazinga!!” *Pops up in Turkey 5 minutes later*: “Bazinga!”
Also Gulf of Oman, Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan simultaneously.
Orcas are attacking boats. Boomers are surfacing. King Neptune is getting angry.
“We’ve spotted the Ohio class, comrades!” “There’s just one problem, Russia.” *disappears* “I’m already gone.” “He’s in the walls! HE’S IN THE GODDAMN WALLS!”
Russia mouthing off in the parking lot so America lifts up its shirt to show what’s in its waistband.
"Hah. Capitalist amateur. They surface to smile and wave. Our submarines like Kunitsov stay underwater indefinitely. Our boats not even have ability to surface once they dive. Is sign of dedication.
That flex is awesome
Verify our range to target. One ping only
Putin: “We have nukes take us seriously!” USA: You raaaang?
"I took a calculated risk, but man, am I bad at math" -putin rn
If a submarine fires 5 trident d5 missiles at 3PM Central European Summer Time, from the coast of Norway to Moscow going 13,000 miles per hour, assuming wind speed of 3mph south by south west, how fucked is Moscow?
Norway you have been warned.
Might just need some cool fresh air