Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Run Silent, Run Kosher”

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August 25, 2006

Run Silent, Run Kosher

Hatched by Dafydd

MAJOR UPDATE: Commenter Jay Tea of WhizBang notes that the German Dolphin submarines are not boomers at all but fast-attack subs; they can fire torpedo-tube launched Popeye Turbo cruise missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. So ignore all the poetic gunk about boomers (which I don't want to delete, as I kind of like it); but the rest of the post, including the point about nuclear second-strike capability, still stands, I believe!

Israel, alone among all the civilized nations in really taking Iran as seriously as it deserves, has just ordered two more nuclear-capable Dolphin submarines from the Germans.

I do not except even the United States. I believe that George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld truly take Iran as seriously as they ought; but they're not the whole government or even the whole of the Executive. In particular, Congress does not really grasp the enormity of the threat from Iran. And since we are not a dictatorship, the president cannot simply decree an appropriate response.

But Israel lies under such immediate and obvious existential threat, that there is likely not a single member of the Israeli cabinet who does not feel Persian fear in the pit of his stomach. They may disagree over what to do, but that is for the same reason that different bomb-squad members may disagree over which wire to cut: everybody understands how dangerous a bomb is, but nobody wants to snip the wrong wire.

However, there are some things everyone in Israel can agree upon; and one of those is that they desperately need a "second strike" capability. To the extent that the Iranians have any rational survival instinct left, if they believe they would be wiped out by Israeli retaliation, they might think a second time about launching a first nuclear strike, should they manage to obtain (by cyclotron or A.Q. Khan) nuclear weapons.

Hence the Dolphins. You will hear a lot about the "first strike" capability of the German subs; but that's not important. The Israelis already have a first-strike ability via land-based missiles. But under an Iranian nuclear strike, all known or even vaguely suspected Israeli missile silos will be hit many times.

Now the "temple weapons" are buried deep and hard; but it's still possible that several nuclear warheads dropped atop them would crack or seal off the top of the silos, rendering the Israeli weapons completely useless. In fact, it doesn't even need to be true: it's a catastrophe even if the Iranians just falsely think it's true.

But even the most powerful nuclear weapon, hundreds of megatons, has one terrible flaw that spoils everything: you must have at least some idea of where your target is in order to shoot at it! That, of course, is precisely the point of a nuclear submarine.

Subs come in two basic flavors: fast-attack and boomers. The former are tactical weapons: you use them to attack surface shipping, other subs, and maybe even aircraft, depending on their armament. They move quickly, and they spend a lot of time at the surface.

A boomer has but one mission: to get lost. It finds a nice, shady, well-protected spot, then sinks to the ocean floor... and stays there, silent, still, waiting with a terrible patience for the end of the world.

Every so often, it will raise a wire antenna just far enough to be able to communicate in short burst-transmissions with the high command, to find out if they still exist. If they do, off to Davy Jones' locker goes the boomer once more, hibernating until the next contact.

If contact is lost, the captain of the sub has to make a decision that spells life or death not just for the sub (a trivial concern) but for potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of other people.

God forbid a captain guesses wrong -- in either direction.

While the rest of the world plays diplomatic footsie with the mad mullahs, Israel, at least, is trying to drag them forward in time. Not to the present; nobody thinks the Iranians are ready for a twenty-first century world. But at least into the era of modernity... the days of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, the geomilitary theory which prevented the West and the Soviet Bloc (and later Red China) from engaging in actual nuclear warfare.

MAD is a deterrant strategy: no bloc can launch a nuclear attack against any of the others, because the attack is certain not to be 100% successful... and the survivors will still have a robust and functional retaliatory capability. Thus, the only certainty is that the attacker will be counterattacked by nukes from a country he just nuked. A country which has already suffered the worst has no reason to shrink from killing tens of millions of the enemy... including as many of the Dear Leaders as they can get.

But MAD is also a quintessentially 20th century strategy; thus, a secondary effect of Israel's move towards a fleet of boomers is that Iran may be dragged, against the will of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his sock puppet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at least into the last century... which would be a heck of an improvement from its current 7th-century worldview.

(That has always been my biggest objection to the term "Islamofascist": it fools us into believing the jihadis are more sophisticated than they really are, mistaking them for a 20th-century socialist perversion. We mislead ourselves into thinking that they think like we, when in fact they think like bloodthirsty satraps from the Dark Ages.

(The error may be fatal to our civilization. After "know thyself," the second most important dictum in warfare is "know thine enemy like thyself.")

Let's hope the Israelis have the right idea, and that Persia can be delivered, headfirst and screaming, into modernity, like a squawling newborn shoved from the dark womb into the bright light of the outside world. If so, that's more than half the battle -- because we already know how to deal with a modern, totalitarian dictatorship.

Oh, for the good old days of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 25, 2006, at the time of 6:03 AM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman

I miss the Soviets a society built on atheism needed to world to stay in existance for the Victory of the Revolution to occur

But someone who thinks Armageddon is a really great idea is another thing.

The above hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman at August 25, 2006 7:40 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman

I miss the Soviets a society built on atheism needed to world to stay in existance for the Victory of the Revolution to occur

But someone who thinks Armageddon is a really great idea is another thing.

The above hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman at August 25, 2006 7:40 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman

I miss the Soviets a society built on atheism needed to world to stay in existance for the Victory of the Revolution to occur

But someone who thinks Armageddon is a really great idea is another thing.

The above hissed in response by: Dan Kauffman at August 25, 2006 7:40 AM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

Israel can do what it wants with it's defense budget, of course... but doesn't this smack of the classic "Fighting the last battle" syndrome?

Of course I'm not referring to any kind of "Final Battle" scenario, I'm referring to the problem of organized militaries planning their futures using the needs of their previous battle experience as a map to the future. Sure, using what works is better than sticking with what didn't... but can we assume that a plan used by the U.S. against the Soviet Union is the model Israel is using in their plans for these subs?

My guess is that the missiles will not (only) be aimed at Tehran, but at every capital of every Arab and Persian Nation that is working against Israel's Right to exist.

MAD by proxy, as it were. The potential of nuclear devistation may not inhibit the Persians, but the prospect of being forever damned by the Moslem World... well that would interfere with the plans for the Caliphate, wouldn't it.

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael at August 25, 2006 8:33 AM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

MAD was always a tough game to play. There used to be a card game called Nuclear War. Very amusing illustration of how MAD was supposed to work. About 2/3 of the games ended with everyone dead. The Israelis may be up to this game, but I worry about the Iranians.

Think about this - Iran has the potential to be one of the richest countries in the world. They have oil. They have many other resources. They are strategically positioned. They have a clever and hard-working people. The U.S. and E.U. are begging them to be civilized, to accept gifts and favorable trade deals. All they would have to do is not get nuclear weapons, and stop supporting terrorism.

But they won't do it. Not now. Not ever.

I accept your explanation of disliking the term "Islamofacist". While they share many of the same characteristics with the Nazis, why recycle terms? They have plenty of their own stupidity to add to the mix.

I prefer "Jihadis", though "Splodydopes" has a certain ring...

The above hissed in response by: Big D at August 25, 2006 9:49 AM

The following hissed in response by: Norman Rogers

Good Post!

A couple of things:

According to Tom Clancy, the motto of our Boomer fleet is, "We hide with pride."

Our boomers are powered by atomic reactors -- which make nearly limitless electricity for "hotel" services, including oxygen generation by electrolysis of seawater. Hence, these puppies can stay submerged indefinitely (till the food runs out).

The German manufactured subs that Israel is buying are diesel hybrids. They use noisy diesel engines for conventional power on the surface and while "snorkling" and storage batteries for operating submerged. But they also have an auxialliary "slow-mo" propulsion system powered by fuel cells running off stored hydrogen and oxygen. So they can stay submerged for quite awhile -- but nothing like the range of our boomers.

The Germans have an extensive technological and engineering history designing and building "underwater boats". And they did have a late model sub that might have turned the tide for them in the battle of the Atlantic in WWII, had they got it into production earlier. This puppy was fueled with hydrogen peroxide and offered really extended submersed operations.

The above hissed in response by: Norman Rogers at August 25, 2006 9:57 AM

The following hissed in response by: Stephen Macklin

I doubt the effectiveness of MAD when one side is certifiably mad.

Iran doesn't want the bomb to scare anyone. Iran doesn't want the bomb to threaten anyone. Iran doesn't want the bomb to deter anyone.

Iran wants the bomb to kill.

The above hissed in response by: Stephen Macklin at August 25, 2006 2:29 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Of course the Israelis wouldn't need their own second-strike capability if George Bush would do what he should have done months ago and promise that the day a nuke goes off in Israel the U.S. will incinerate the capitols of every Islamic nation in the Mideast. I excerpted and linked at Old War Dogs.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith at August 25, 2006 6:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: Jay Tea

To expand on Norman Rogers' comment, the "boomer" name is usually associated with submarines that launch ballistic missiles, not cruise missiles. Except for a few Ohio-class conversions, nearly all the cruise missiles carried on submarines are aboard Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines.

I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that the Dolphins would be equipped with cruise missiles that can carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead -- much like our Los Angeles subs and their Tomahawks. Only the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France make boomers.

The above hissed in response by: Jay Tea at August 26, 2006 1:11 AM

The following hissed in response by: ursa5000

Israel has multiple options for MAD counter-strikes.

One unclassified option are the approx dozen hot F-14's that are on the runway right now, engines warm, with a couple of (insert estimate here) megaton devices attached. In practice alerts these jets are airborne in less than....er...well..let's just say well before the Iranian inbounds cross Jordan. Twenty - four very big bangs, less what the (sarcasm alert) vaunted Iranian Air Force can intercept. What's that you say... refueling... only an issue if the pilots need to return to Israel, not Bagdad or a US carrier.

Option two is discussed late at night, in the smoky bars, where all the spooks hang.
Israel has placed nucs in all the major Mid East capitals that don't start with a "J". Just an encrytpted burst signal, and Ka-BOOM. Oh yea, some others are very near the Saudi "M" twins, and the Iranian "Q", and you get the idea..there will be some very pissed off Euros, when they find out these are already installed their capitals too. Boo fricken hoo M. Chirac.

Option three are the (insert estimate here) cargo ships owned by the Israeli Navy with nuc-capable Jerico ICBM's. Hello Islamabad...er goodby Islamabad, Jakarta.. and whoever else Israel thinks needs a good reminder that you can't play with fire with out getting a 4,700 degree sunburn...

Da Bear

The above hissed in response by: ursa5000 at August 26, 2006 7:07 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if he ever became the supreme decision maker in his country, would "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel," Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Playing silly word games with Iran (and North Korea) is a waste. If they want nukes, then give them a taste of nukes until they shut up...

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist at August 27, 2006 6:34 AM

The following hissed in response by: DaSarge

This boat is NOT a "fast attack" boat. It's underwater power is battery-driven & it cannot achive the 30+ kts that a nuke can. Still, given the waters it will sail in, it is likley plenty fast enough.

The above hissed in response by: DaSarge at August 27, 2006 10:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: photoncourier.blogspot.com

I agree that it's wise for Israel to have a submarine-based deterrent.

But I do worry that the Iranian regime may not be deterrable...and that many Cold War habits of thinking are not applicable. See my post Of Witchcraft and Weaponry.

The above hissed in response by: photoncourier.blogspot.com at August 27, 2006 12:44 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

DaSarge:

This boat is NOT a "fast attack" boat. It's underwater power is battery-driven & it cannot achive the 30+ kts that a nuke can.

Yeesh. Enough already! This is Big Lizards, not Jane's All the World's Submarines!

It's a fast-ish attack-ish deterrenty kind-of underwater boat. There, how's that?

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at August 28, 2006 12:03 AM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

Voyage to the bottom of the blog...

The above hissed in response by: Big D at August 28, 2006 11:32 AM

The following hissed in response by: Trickish knave

Iran already has its own fleet of diesel boats so Israel getting some would even the odds a bit.

Being a sumbariner myself I will not bore you with what Dafydd so eloquently pointed about but there does need to be some submarine De-Clancification from time to time.

The German's make a pretty good boat and will make a formidable foe against Iran's Russian built subs. I recall a story about an Egyptian merchant running over Iranian Kilo's moored offshore. Classic. I don't know how much money Iran is pouring into its submarine defense program but I doubt it is very much.

I would imagine that tomahawks would end up on the list of supplies to Israel. We gave some to the Brits in '95. Hell, Norway and even Spain are getting the tommy rockets now.

IMO, we are in a very dangerous time right now. Iran has Russian cruise missiles that could devastate the U.S. Navy and won't think twice about using them- just one of the uncalculated post Cold War problems.

That part of the world is a mess with no cleaning lady in sight.

The above hissed in response by: Trickish knave at August 28, 2006 11:58 AM