Biden Publicly Announcing Nuclear Missile Submarine Visits

ANALYSIS – For the first time since the 1980s, a U.S. Navy nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) will visit South Korea. The visit of the Ohio-class sub was announced by Joe Biden.

This and other public announcements are prompting debate about the wisdom of a heightened public role for what’s long been known as the Navy’s “silent service.”

SSBNs, nicknamed Boomers, carry an awesome arsenal of nuclear firepower but rely on secrecy and rarely make public stops in foreign ports.

And this isn’t the first recent incident of a very public sighting.

While the U.S. has occasionally openly surfaced its submarines in the past, the pace picked up in the last year with publicized port visits by nuclear-armed Ohio-class submarines as well as Los Angeles-class subs carrying conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles.

One nuke sub even popped up near the Strait of Hormuz not far from Iran.

Ronald O’Rourke, the chief naval forces analyst for the Congressional Research Service, cited “unusual Navy actions late last year to publicize the presence” of nuclear-armed vessels “in the Arabian Sea, at Diego Garcia, at Gibraltar and in the Atlantic,” The Japan Times reported.

Team Biden’s  Nuclear Posture Review endorsed such demonstrations last year, saying: 

We will work with Allies and partners to identify opportunities to increase the visibility of U.S. strategic assets to the region as a demonstration of U.S. resolve and commitment, including ballistic missile submarine port visits and strategic bomber missions.

O’Rourke added that it’s unclear whether this planned South Korea visit is part of this new “public signaling strategy” or a unique decision “reflecting circumstances specific to the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.”

Joe Biden and South Korea’s president jointly announced the visit on April 26, part of Washington’s pledge to deploy more so-called “strategic assets” – aircraft carriers, submarines and long-range bombers – to South Korea to deter the nuclear threat from North Korea.

However, in Team Biden’s typical backtracking form, a senior U.S. official, speaking anonymously, told reporters that there is “no vision for any regular stationing or basing of [strategic] assets and certainly not nuclear weapons” in South Korea.

This and any future deployments will just be periodic visits.

So, what is wrong with this? One is added risk.

The Japan Times reported that “Increased visibility could have its downside, especially the South Korea visit, said Brent Sadler, the Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow for naval warfare and a Navy veteran with numerous submarine tours.”

The outlet added that Sadler said the “visit would expose the vessel to North Korean or Chinese monitoring” and quoted him as saying our adversaries “could use the knowledge to hold our submarines on deterrent patrols far away at risk.”

The strategic messaging of support for South Korea “would be minimal” for the U.S. “to take some significant risks to send such a boat that far forward,” Sadler concluded.

However, the submarine visit is also seen as a way to reassure South Korea and quell talk in Seoul about developing its own nuclear weapons.

On April 18, days before the U.S.-South Korea proclamation, the Navy also announced that the Ohio-class USS Maine made an on-surface logistics stop at the naval base in Guam.

The Navy has 14 SSBNs. Ohio-class submarines are nuclear monsters, the Navy’s largest ever. At 560 feet long and displacing 18,750 tons when submerged, they dwarf WWII cruisers and destroyers.

Each Ohio-class SSBN has a crew of 15 officers and 144 enlisted sailors. Ohio-class submarines have 24 missile tubes but only carry 20 Trident D5 missiles with eight multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs) each.

Under New START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty caps the number of nuclear warheads that the U.S. and Russia can deploy, and four missile tubes are deactivated. 

Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart (Dmitry Medvedev at the time) signed New START in 2010.

However, Vladimir Putin recently suspended Russia’s participation in New START after accusing the West of attempts to attack its strategic air bases.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project argues in The Japan Times that the subs’ new public mission “contradicts their core mission of staying undetected.”

But he added that “nuclear signaling is now considered so important because of competition with Russia and China that even the silent service will occasionally show itself.”

The Japan Times also notes that it “also may reflect efforts to counter the reality that the U.S. submarine force is shrinking and having readiness problems,” according to Bryan Clark, a naval fellow with the Hudson Institute.

“Those concerns are true, but U.S. submarines are still the quietest and most sophisticated in the world,” he added.

Whatever the pros and cons, it seems we will be seeing more of these nuclear sea monsters publicly, at least under Biden.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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