| The Importance Of Trident Submarines In Nuclear Deterrence |
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The US Navy is presently equipped with 14 Trident nuclear powered submarines. These submarines are part of the US Department of Defense's three pronged strategic nuclear missile deterrence shield initiative. The other two are of course the US Air Force (USAF) bombers carrying nuclear warhead tipped missiles and the fixed silo nuclear warhead tipped ballistic missiles stationed deep below ground level in the US and in Europe.
With a number of countries in the world armed with nuclear warhead tipped long-range ballistic missiles, the threat of nuclear war can be kept at bay only by the strategic capability of assured mutual destruction. Towards this initiative, the US DoD (Department of Defense) has put in place umbrella protection vide the above triad components. The Trident submarines are especially important for the strategic nuclear defense of the US because they are the only ones that cannot be foreseeably attacked by an enemy. The reason for this is that they operate deep below sea level and are constantly moving so a pre-empting strike on them is just not possible. The other aspect is that they can remain under sea level for an indefinite period of time being nuclear powered, so it is difficult to attack them unless and until they surface. In contrast with this, the USAF bombers armed with nuclear warhead tipped ballistic missiles can be attacked by potential enemies as they are visible on radar. A heat seeking ballistic missile from a potential enemy can cripple them. Similarly, the land based fixed silo nuclear ballistic missiles can be essentially crippled through a pre-emptive strike, although some of these missiles are also of the movable type. The Trident submarines are known as the SSBNs. The SS stands for a submarine ship, the B in the term stands for ballistic missile carrying, and the N of course stands for nuclear powered. Earlier at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the US Navy had used a total of 18 Trident submarines to patrol the oceans, but four of them have been retired since the end of the cold war. The advantage of the Trident submarines is in their sheer survivability and completely assured rapid response system. Moreover, each such submarine carries a total of 24 D5 nuclear warhead tipped long range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Another aspect that is the most important is that they can launch their ballistic missiles without the need to surface at all. A Trident submarine has shown how undetectable it is because even US forces have not been able to detect it on sonar most of the time unless it beamed in its precise location. All these tenets carry the promise that Trident submarines are going to be the National Command Authorities (NCA) principal nuclear deterrence vehicle right into the middle of the 21st century. Related Articles
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