Living Underwater: How Submarines Work

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In all of World War Two, the world used about 5 megatons of explosives.

Now, this is a Trident II missile, capable of carrying 12 nuclear warheads together equivalent

in power to about 5 megatons of explosives.

A single American Ohio Class submarine can carry 24 Trident II missiles.

A single submarine can carry a devastating, catastrophic, inconceivable amount of firepower.

While in reality due to arms reduction treaties and practicality these boats often carry far

less than their maximum armament, submarines can still creep up anywhere, undetected, ready

to unleash their firepower, more powerful that the entire arsenal of some countries,

in an instant.

Submarines are different in purpose to some other elements of a navy.

While an aircraft carrier, for example, is intended to be big, foreboding, and noticeable

as a means to display a nation’s power to the world, submarines are meant to to be unseen,

undetected, an invisible, silent force that could or could not be anywhere at any time.

In a way, submarines almost serve a purpose of psychological warfare—an enemy can never

know for sure whether a submarine is looming off its shore.

While dozens of countries operate submarines, the most powerful and often largest of these

boats are those capable of firing ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads.

Only six nations are confirmed to have these submarines—The US, UK, France, India, Russia,

and China.

In addition, analysts have found evidence suggesting that North Korea and Israel also

each have nuclear-missile capable submarines.

Nowadays, there are essentially two different types of military submarines with two different

missions.

The attack submarine, the more common kind, is generally smaller and, in combat, attacks

other close-range targets like ships using torpedoes, shorter range missiles, and other

armaments.

The other, often larger type of submarine are those ballistic missile submarines which

essentially serve the purpose of being a mobile, hidden launch platform for nuclear missiles.

The idea is that, as a stealth launch platform, a country’s submarines would survive any

nuclear first strike and therefore be able to retaliate against an aggressor.

Ballistic missile submarines are therefore crucial to the idea of mutually assured destruction—if

anyone attacks with nuclear weapons, assuming those attacked had nuclear weapons that would

survive a strike and they retaliated, both the attacker and those attacked would be destroyed.

Therefore, many consider these nuclear missile equipped submarines to actually be a form

of nuclear deterrence—they say they reduce the likelihood of others using nukes since

they assure their subsequent destruction.