from Hacker News

Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?

by infosecrf on 12/21/17, 7:56 AM with 58 comments

• by pps43 on 12/24/17, 6:18 PM

  If you detect a massive ICBM launch from Russia, you know what to do - nuke Russia. You have half an hour to launch before Russian missiles take out all silos.

  Now what do you do if you detect SLBM launch from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean? Who do you nuke?

• by nugi on 12/24/17, 7:29 PM

  I choose to belive this is an amazing disinfo honeypot, and seal teams are waiting nearby with trained dolphins and magnetic explosives.

  Yes, I am serious. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin

• by alexhutcheson on 12/24/17, 5:24 PM

  > Where would you direct your submarine, and where would you best fire you missiles, from the perspective of an as-late-as-possible space-based detection of your missile launches?

  Honest question - is this the function you'd be optimizing for? What are the implications of earlier space-based detection of a launch? Presumably fast detection of a launch plume would help you find and hunt down the sub, but at that point the missiles are already in the air. I would think that the more important factor is where to hide to minimize chance of detection prior to the launch.

• by shifter on 12/24/17, 3:28 PM

  Due to projection distortions, the size of the area was visually misleading. An area-maintaining projection would be a more accurate way to communicate this data.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection#Projections_b...

• by anabis on 12/24/17, 3:45 PM

  I would guess that it would be exactly the area where hunter submarines will be roaming.

• by drdeadringer on 12/24/17, 8:30 PM

  During my DoD days, I worked on the first 4 SBIRS satellites as well as some nuclear subs earlier on. I'm glad to see some of my DoD work in the news in a non-negative light.

• by _0w8t on 12/24/17, 3:18 PM

  The title is very misleading. This just talks about Earth coverage of missile launch detection system according to publicly available information. This has nothing to do with detecting submarines.

• by PhantomGremlin on 12/25/17, 10:15 AM

  There is a complementary land based system for detecting ballistic missiles. It's more limited in coverage and also has more-or-less the same blind spot: not much coverage of missiles launching from directly south of CONUS.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_State_Phased_Array_Radar...

• by EGreg on 12/24/17, 6:06 PM

  Um, it seems to me you'd direct your submarine close to the coast of a city and your missile launch would not need ICBMs.

  In fact, I am worried about TacNukes - like the kind we see in James Bond movies - being smuggled INTO A CITY!

  https://www.wired.com/2002/11/nukes-2/

  Here is an article about loose nukes.

  North Korea has ALREADY given Syria nuclear material to build a functioning nuclear weapons facility. Google "operation orchard".

  I am worried that, as soon as we attack its regime, some sleeper group would use nukes somewhere.

  And what do we do in general with rogue nukes? How exactly are they accounted for across every country?

• by linuxlizard on 12/24/17, 2:51 PM

  "Asking for a friend."

• by FLUX-YOU on 12/24/17, 2:55 PM

  >"Orange Squeeze"

  I am seriously, completely confident that name would fool the person it's meant to.

• by influx on 12/24/17, 3:09 PM

  What is the purpose of publishing information like this?

  At best, it’s trivia, at worst it provides advantage to a rogue nuclear power with active concentration camps.