Hopefully the officers on duty will avoid getting rammed - unlike those on the Fitzgerald.

If a boomer gets rammed by a ship @ -600' it's because the sub gutted the bottom of the hull out of it first.

Since I am ignorant about it, just wandering why do you say "land attack"? Is there a difference between land attack and say, for ship attack?

Tomahawk cruise missiles aren't normally the kind of missiles that a submarine like the Michigan would carry. They primarily are fired off and directed toward targets on land. They fly too slowly, and can be shot down by fighter jets, even, to be much effective against naval surface ships. That's why they're land attack missiles.

My current knowledge of naval anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare is very limited, and never was very extensive to begin with, but such targets are usually attacked with ASROC and SUBROC rockets, at least they were back
in my day.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Yes. The tomahawk originally in two versions conventional and nuclear. They added an antiship version but I'm guessing its performance was not as good relative to other options since the program was terminated (mu guess is it was too slow and not maneuverable enough)

Didn't they convert some SLBM subs to fire only cruise missles?

check this out

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SmUw1zPiPcg

yes. they carry land attack cruise missiles, SDVs and SEALs. They even have a professional publication suite so the SEALs can work on their memoirs before returning to port post-mission.

/r

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Steve

Bottom line is that there are different variants of cruise missiles, and a variety of naming conventions based on the type of target they are intended to prosecute or the method/platform they are launched from. There are Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM), Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (ASCM), Submarine Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCM), Air Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCM), etc, etc. Different countries build different missiles for different purposes, and sometimes a single family (like Tomahawk) of missiles might have different variants within that family. For example, there have been Tomahawk land attack variants and anti-ship variants, and there have been designs for ground and air launched versions although only ship and submarine launched versions are in service right now.

Cruise missile is just a general description for a missile that spends most of it's transit to target at a constant speed and remains within the atmosphere.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

" Professional publication suite." Don't get me started on that nonsense, please. I was watching a news show the other night after the New York City attack and the operator who supposedly killed Osama Bin Laden was opining about the NYC terrorist. That man should have taken his part in that operation to his grave.

As far as that submarine goes, you can see that it's been modified to carry SDVs, or SEAL delivery vehicles. There used to be a couple of Polaris class missile submarines that were outfitted in the same fashion. I can see why they would want to convert a few of these Trident missile submarines for guided missiles and Navy SEAL special warfare activities. Very big and relatively spacious platforms that are ultra quiet when in the water.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

It was less want and more that due to the SALT treaties that the older boomers needed to be repurposed when the later boats were launched. I was at Electic Boat for the last Ohio class launch, the Louisiana, which was 20yrs ago now. At that time we had started the preliminary design work for the tomahawk and SEAL pods and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember...

I was a department head in Groton, just down the road from EB. Loved that area. I see that both Ohio, the lead boat in the class, and Michigan were both converted from SSBN to SSGN.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

It was my first real job. Pretty cool, launched the Seawolf, Louisiana and had the SSN-22 in process, while designing what was the Centurion, NSSN, and finally launched as the Virginia class. But that was not a good time in the defense world. We were at 12k people, down from 50k on our way to 6k. And that area had the worst male:female ratio in the whole US, or something like that... beautiful area to have a family, crappy to be single!

I was up in Newport for a time in the early 80s. I remember all those bases, as well as EB (NUSC in Newport) and so forth, were TEEMING with employees. Like you note, that's sadly no longer the case.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Dude.

The original block III tomahawk cruise missiles had several variants:
A nuclear version that has been retired from service.
An Anti ship version that has been retired from service.
A land attack unitary warhead version.
A land attack submunition version. (several different submunition packages)

The anti-ship version was retired in the 90's because of cost and that the soviet naval threat no longer existed. The new version is the block IV "tactical" tomahawk.

The block III's were able to complete their mission without GPS. They had a terrain following radar an old school INS and a DSMAC visual camera for waypoint updates and terminal guidance. Very impressive precision without GPS which makes it easy.

That's great stuff.

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War is god

I'm sorry, but that just feels wrong

#GoBlue

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin