Boomers In Large Deep Lakes?

On Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:54:54 -0800 (PST), frank
wrote:

I know they're out of the inventory, but nuclear depth charges were
pretty much the more probable usage of nuclear weapons. Great sub
killers. Put the sub in a lake its pretty much dead. Not to mention
you'd have to build it in place. Add on all the maintenance and other
facilities, yeah, its a dead duck. Much easier than there's a boomer
in the Barents or under the ice cap.

I've been out of the inventory for a while, too, but nukes were NOT
great sub killers and carried a whole bunch of limitations. They were
always a weapon of last choice. The specifics of why are not suitable
for discussion in a public forum.

Tell a targeting geek there's a sub in these lakes, much easier than
there are X number of subs dispersed off the coasts. You could even
find those nasty types that like putting nukes in place just drooling
to put them in the lake to be detonated as needed. Not that we ever
did stuff like that ... yeah right.

No, not really. The size of Lake Superior was noted in a post below.
A sub could also transit into Lakes Huron and Michigan. That's a
pretty big "pond." Maybe not as big as the Pacific Ocean, but plenty
big enough to generate a virtually insoluable targeting problem.

Seeding the Lakes with some sort of "time release mine" is a pretty
far fetched concept given that such an activity would likely generate
notice and a reaction.

When I was drilling at NAS Detroit we participated in the surveylance
of some Russion merchant ships (with significant AGR capability) while
Ford was President, as he spent a lot of time in MI and I'm sure there
was lots of electronic talk. The VP squadrons from NAS Glenview did
the same.

Thing about silos was you build to survive. Which makes the concrete
contractors happy. Get to the point where you have reliable silo
busters, you start dealing with launch on warning or launch under
attack. Much dicier. And each side thinks they're the rational ones
that would play nice, its the other guy that you don't trust.

Underwater silos are, IMO, not such a good idea. They can be located
and hit and are tough to build. Expensive and not much additional
protection.

Big part of having these is they're NOT used and keeps the pin striped
types talking a lot longer than usual. As the bumper sticker said, one
nuclear bomb will ruin your entire day.

Indeed. Seeding the Lakes will cause difficulties for Lake margin
dwellers and Lake dwelling species. Won't do much for Lake operating
subs, however.

Even the guys who build one pretty much figure out people who count
warheads in their arsenal in the thousands don't see you as much of a
threat. Its a real wakeup call for military decision making. You start
locking the suckers up and coming up with a really good command and
control. Which is why the whole Iran can't get a bomb is pretty much a
non issue. What are they going to do with it? Sell it to Al Quada? And
if they're dumb enough to use it, its the Irradiated Peoples Republic
of Iran.

Assuming we apply MAD and actually DO it. The last President whom I
would trust to do that was Ronald Regan.