Israel Deploys Nukes on German Submarines
German has decided to sell Israel some diesel electric subs which can be fitted with nukes.. but don't believe what the news reports are telling you.
But first, a little backstory on one of my favorite machines...
The cool thing about diesel electrics is that they are great at fighting in the littoral zone (the continental shelf more or less, as well as some of the shallow seas, gulfs, and straights).
They are so badass that an entire NATO invasion exercise had to be re-run because the "defense" had a little Dutch submarine which kept blowing up the aircraft carrier. NATO's solution? Run the exercise without the submarine. The US was so intrigued they borrowed the sub for two years.
If you want to read more about theses amazing machines, I got a great post for ya: (it's funny, I promise)
http://bookofnorm.blogspot.com/2010/08/romeo-oh-romeo.html
But back to the point of this post: Israel has "nuclear missile submarines." If you read some main stream media article on this, you probably would come away thinking that Israel has a new class of Ohio or Typhoon running around with it's huge ICBMs pointed at the sky. Which is really, really far from the truth.
The submarines which Germany sold Israel (with a "we're still sorry" 1/3rd off discount) are based off the very very good Type 209 class, which Germany has exported for years. Not quite as good as the new Type 214 with its very cool hydrogen fuel cells, but as far as I understand it the Dolphin is sort of a 209+, with a lot of the modern enhancements of the 214. But one thing should stand out looking at the picture above: this is not a big submarine.
In fact, it only weighs about 1,600tons, which is more or less identical to the German Type XXI Elektroboote from WWII (the grandfather of all modern diesel-electric submarines). It can't carry nuclear missiles in the traditional sense. Heck, it would probably have a hard time carrying an extra ham sandwich. These things are not made for long deployments of sitting under the ice cap waiting for the launch orders to come or Denzel Washington to take over the boat: these are coastal defense boats.
What they have is something the US was the first to develop but now a number of other nations (Israel in this case) have also figured out: they can launch cruise missiles from their torpedo tubes.
The next step in the chain is that those cruise missiles can be fitted with tactical nuclear weapons.
This is not nuclear deterrence in the Russian/Biblical/OMFG sense we are used to from the Cold War. This is nuclear deterrence in the sense of "if we go to war and I lose, I am going to blow up your biggest city, jackass."
It's an interesting development, but in reality no different than those missiles being put on planes (which they already could have been) in a tactical sense.
But first, a little backstory on one of my favorite machines...
The cool thing about diesel electrics is that they are great at fighting in the littoral zone (the continental shelf more or less, as well as some of the shallow seas, gulfs, and straights).
They are so badass that an entire NATO invasion exercise had to be re-run because the "defense" had a little Dutch submarine which kept blowing up the aircraft carrier. NATO's solution? Run the exercise without the submarine. The US was so intrigued they borrowed the sub for two years.
If you want to read more about theses amazing machines, I got a great post for ya: (it's funny, I promise)
http://bookofnorm.blogspot.com/2010/08/romeo-oh-romeo.html
But back to the point of this post: Israel has "nuclear missile submarines." If you read some main stream media article on this, you probably would come away thinking that Israel has a new class of Ohio or Typhoon running around with it's huge ICBMs pointed at the sky. Which is really, really far from the truth.
The submarines which Germany sold Israel (with a "we're still sorry" 1/3rd off discount) are based off the very very good Type 209 class, which Germany has exported for years. Not quite as good as the new Type 214 with its very cool hydrogen fuel cells, but as far as I understand it the Dolphin is sort of a 209+, with a lot of the modern enhancements of the 214. But one thing should stand out looking at the picture above: this is not a big submarine.
In fact, it only weighs about 1,600tons, which is more or less identical to the German Type XXI Elektroboote from WWII (the grandfather of all modern diesel-electric submarines). It can't carry nuclear missiles in the traditional sense. Heck, it would probably have a hard time carrying an extra ham sandwich. These things are not made for long deployments of sitting under the ice cap waiting for the launch orders to come or Denzel Washington to take over the boat: these are coastal defense boats.
What they have is something the US was the first to develop but now a number of other nations (Israel in this case) have also figured out: they can launch cruise missiles from their torpedo tubes.
The next step in the chain is that those cruise missiles can be fitted with tactical nuclear weapons.
This is not nuclear deterrence in the Russian/Biblical/OMFG sense we are used to from the Cold War. This is nuclear deterrence in the sense of "if we go to war and I lose, I am going to blow up your biggest city, jackass."
It's an interesting development, but in reality no different than those missiles being put on planes (which they already could have been) in a tactical sense.
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