US Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine surfaces off Norway in unusual flex as 'Doomsday' plane flies overhead
US Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine surfaces off Norway in unusual flex as 'Doomsday' plane flies overhead
The show of force comes amid continued tensions with Russia and follows the recent visit of a Russian navy flotilla to Cuba.
- A US Navy nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine surfaced in the Norwegian Sea.
- It was accompanied by a guided-missile cruiser and two naval aircraft.
- The show of force came weeks after Russia sent a submarine and naval fleet to Cuba.
Direct response to this https://www.newsweek.com/us-navy-monitoring-russian-warships-submarine-near-miami-1914616 and not much more than saber rattling
Speaking of saber rattling, I found this quote mildly amusing:
The flex notably comes amid persistent tensions with Russia, which has been rattling the nuclear saber lately
"lately"? I mean, if you're saying repetetive nuclear threats for 2 years + since starting a war with Ukraine, then sure?
Even Yeltsin made a few nuclear threats in his time.
And frankly those threats were more meaningful, with all the bravado of today Yeltsin's poor depressive Russia was much stronger militarily than the one we have.
The Media doesn't really allow itself a long memory in the current news cycle
I've never wanted to be wrong about anything more than WW3...
But I keep seeing all these articles that make it really look like WW3 is right around the corner...
Like, the entire point of SSBNs is to hide and no one knows where they are. Popping up just to flex is not a good sign. It's trading the actual point of their existence (no one knows where our nukes are) for a show of force.
It's not a rational choice to do this, Russia knows we have SSBNs all over the globe, they don't need to actually see one and know where it is
if it helps give you any comfort WW3 has always been around the corner in one way or another for as long as most of us have been alive. if you are reading articles about it. Then it's not going to start and if it does start it will all be over before you even hear about it. So try your best to just live the life you can.
I've been paying attention for decades, hell, I was in the military. I definitely paid more attention to geopolitics back then. Because even idle threats and shows of force directly effected my life.
Shits not how it used to be. It's a lot worse now. And people ignoring it just makes it keep getting worse.
If Russia and the west start shooting eachother, one of four things will happen.
1 - Russia grows a brain and backs down when they horribly lose a conventional war. (Unlikely, unless someone takes command authority away)
2 - Russia kept their nuclear arsenal up to date, and a tiny remnant.of humanity gets to enjoy the Stone Age again. It won't hurt if you live in a city though.
3 - Only a tiny fraction of their nukes launch, and the west responds proportionally. A lot of people die, but at least we'll fix global warming.
I mean, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, everyone didn’t immediately go “welp time to start up our World War”. Nor did that happen when Nazi Germany got rolling on Anschluss.
If WW3 starts, we’ll eventually determine some specific event that got it rolling irrevocably in that direction. Could be the annexation of Crimea in 2014, or the Ukraine invasion in 2022, or something in the future (PRC annexing Taiwan - or trying to and failing; North Korea finally pulling the trigger and trying to finish the Korean War; India and Pakistan finally coming to nuclear blows; any number of other things). Nobody will know until it’s already history.
Knowing they're there and seeing they're there are very different things. Don't dismiss the psychological value of the latter.
And don't dismiss that they'd kill to know the location of a SSBN at any time under normal conditions.
Like, I don't know how high of a federal clearance you e ever gotten, but literally everything about a SSBNs schedule is at least secret. The people on them don't even know where they are 99% of the time.
Russia isn't shooting down a nuke anyways, it doesn't matter where it's coming from, it's hitting what it's aimed.
It's literally an intercontinental ballistic missile...
https://www.salon.com/2022/03/03/why-scientists-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-intercept-icbms/
America isn't even confident we could shoot one of NK's down. We could launch from a SSBN literally on the other side of the planet and absolutely nothing would stop it from hitting Moscow.
We gave up valuable intelligence for literally zero reason.
It shows that we're irrational for doing it. Or even worse, that we thought Russia is so irrational that they needed to see it. Making both of us irrational.
The entire reason SSBNs are the threat they are, is you can only beat a ICBM by taking it out before it launches, and no one has a clue where the SSBNs are.
When were acting rational and want a show of force. We park an LHD or even Aircraft Carrier squadron off a coast.
Edit:
Like, if Russia happened to have sonar going in that area, and they just saw it surface...
They can compare sound signatures of that time period and may possibly isolate the distinctive sound of a SSBN. Something they've been trying to find for decades and could possibly lead to them being able to find SSBNs out in the wild.
This is a god awful decision that has potentially huge ramifications...
I get people wouldn't know about all of this, but that doesn't mean it's not a big deal.
Sending messages like this isn’t uncommon.
Back in the early 1960’s my dad had a high level security clearance at a defense contractor. He was one of a handful of people who knew the full details of a project to “identify, track, and destroy a hostile satellite”. This was in direct response to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik. The President of the US was another one of the handful that knew the full details of the project.
After a lot of R&D work a test was performed. A rocket was launched from somewhere in the South Pacific. It tracked a derelict satellite used as a target, closed on it, and disabled it. At that point my dad’s involvement on the project ended.
A few months later while at home he & my mom were listening to a speech by the President. In the middle of the speech he announced to the American public that the USA now had the ability to identify, track, and destroy hostile satellites. My mom says all the color drained from his face but she had no idea why since the entire project was still highly classified. In fact when my dad got to work the next day there was a memo waiting on his desk telling him that he was not to confirm, deny, or even discuss anything he may have heard on the radio or tv the previous night.
The President didn’t make that announcement for the benefit of the American people. He was sending a very public message to the leadership of the USSR.
(And my dad never told this story until well after the 25 year time frame established for routine declassification of such materials.)
The good thing about it is you are wrong. So take comfort in that.
businessinsider. What a bizarre rise and weird existence.
Pivots are easy and URLs ain't cheap.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A US Navy nuclear-powered ballistic submarine popped up in the Norwegian Sea this week in a rare show of force.
Multi-Domain Readiness in action 🚁🌊🔱 @USNavy 🇺🇸 guided-missile cruiser #USSNormandy (CG 60) and ballistic missile submarine #USSTennessee (SSBN 734) steam alongside in the #NorwegianSea while a P-8A Poseidon and E-6B Mercury fly overhead, June 23, 2024. pic.twitter.com/8Uttvmkny9
Like the Air Force E-4B "Nightwatch," the Navy plane is sometimes called the "Doomsday plane," as it can relay National Command Authority directives to US submarines as part of the "Take Charge and Move Out" mission and fulfill "Looking Glass" obligations, which involves directing nuclear forces if the ground-based options are gone.
The US has made similar revelations in other parts of the world with its Ohio-class cruise-missile submarines, which carry 154 land-attack Tomahawks.
Russia made a show of having one of these vessels, the first-in-class Severodvinsk, surface off Norway in July 2022, and another one of these submarines, the Kazan, was spotted in Cuba earlier this month during a five-day official visit.
Other Russian vessels, such as the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, joined the Kazan during the visit ahead of an air and maritime exercise in the Caribbean.
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Weird flex but ok.