U.S. Nuclear subs patrol more than any period in Cold War

U.S. Nuclear subs patrol more than any period in Cold War

www.russiatoday.com

America’s strategic submarine fleet, armed with Trident II ballistic missiles, spends more time these days in the deep sea than they did during the Cold War.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has published information indicating that 14 American Ohio class submarines conducted 31 deterrent patrols in 2008 which lasted, for every submarine, longer than during the years of the US-USSR military stand-off.

(visit the link for the full news article)

If some twenty years ago American submarines were spending 50-70% of the year offshore, nowadays it could be as high as 90% of the year. Annually, the American nuclear submarine fleet conducts more patrols than Russian (2008 – three times the number of patrols of the Russian navy), French, Great Britain’s and the Chinese combined, though it must be noted that the Chinese are just preparing to put their nuclear submarines on deterrent patrols.

I think this is good stuff, I don't know how accurate is as it's from a Russian News source, and some of the things I have seen on there have been well, exaggerated.

www.russiatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yeah. That's the very reason that most of these renegade countries continue their existence in fifteen minute increments.

Once the order to be fired is given, any one of those subs can practically take out an entire rogue nation, such as North Korea, Iran, or California.

Did I say California?

reply to post by dooper


Totally agree. The capability and stealth of these subs is unmatched. The scary thing though is that you never know where they are, they could be at home or sneaking around your back door.

Well they also have 4 less so if they are maintaning cold war op tempos that going to go up per sub.

4 Ohio class SSBM's were converted to SSGN's and now carry 154 tomahawk cruise missiles each.

While the source is Russian, the FAS is not and im not surprised thier op tempos per boat are up beyond the reasons noted above. They represent the bulk of our Strategic Deterence and its the safest of the triad. Also with the Trident D-5's hard kill capacity (Ability to counter battery Soviet and Chicom missile silos) its the most valuable at this stage.

[edit on 3/16/09 by FredT]