comments:
Decent book on our Nuclear god emperor. Seriously the Navy’s nuclear protocol being so safe is basically him. As to the tactics…honestly you’d be deep diving a lot into wonky Naval society tactics discussions. But subs are pretty self explanatory. A sub that has to surface all the time both means it’s depth is more predicable, it has to regularly stick shit above the surface that’s detectable and you can slowly starve them of battery power by pressing them back down with anti submarine assets until they’re dead in the water and can’t move. A nuke sub has none of those downsides and has more independence to back off if an attack doesn’t work out right or seems un advantageous. An aircraft carrier having to rely on gas means they must be economical with fuel when cruising and can’t travel fast all the time. And carriers use their 33kt “top speed” to basically create distance from threats. So a carrier that can motor at 33kts without worrying about fuel can have planes up more, tank less from the oiler (which is a vulnerable time) and basically play keep away. We think there’s a submarine over there? Well good luck getting a torpedo solution as we motor 33kts in a different direction. Enemy recon plane or satellite picked us up and the attack is going to reach you in 2 hours? Well if we move at 33kts in a random direction that’s now a 13,666 square mile circle to relocate us. The ocean is way goddamn bigger than people give it credit and we aren’t anywhere near at the stage where recon and drone assets have a total blanket coverage. Tests 20 years ago showed carriers can actually motor fast enough to avoid recon satellite passes if you know the trajectories . Yes you can solve that issue by maintaining a LOT more recon satellites but now you just imposed a major cost on your enemy (the USSR wasn’t able to keep up to make up that difference and the Chinese are just now at the stage they could get enough coverage if they wanted to.) The other issue is cost. Nuclear carriers are just cheaper in the long run and can maintain more sorties. (Sortie rate is basically “how many aircraft can we keep in the air over the fleet indefinitely.” And it’s a huge part of the math in keeping your ships from being made sweet love to by enemy missiles. Nuclear carriers just have better sortie rates.)