As far as I can see, submerged submarines normally operate alone since
they can't communicate with each other (well, the only way would be
underwater telephony which gives a gratuitious acoustic signature).
Would it be an advantage if there was some means of communication?

mawa
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Though the "are you an international terrorist" bit isn't bad
either...

Per Andersson

Per Andersson

Any terrorist organization with even a modicum of street smarts could
easily get the info from the local Mexican smugglers on who is bribable
and who is not.  Then they just grease the right palm, and US Customs
lets a truck full of plutonium and/or nerve gas enter this country...
all the while thinking that the truck they let slip by was just another
common drug runner.

Hell, I don't even need to bribe the Customs guy... I just seal the
plutonium in the bed of the truck and drive on through. So they inspect
me.  So what?  That dog is trained to sniff out drugs, not plutonium.
He won't pick up a single thing.

<snip>

And second, why are you restricting the max level of expertise available
to the terrorists to "a competent Electrical Engineer?"   I think that a
high-end terrorist group wouldn't have too much trouble finding
themselves, at minimum, a grad student in nuclear engineering...

<snip>

Posit -- I just nuked Norfolk, VA *and* San Diego.  The carrier strength
of the US Navy just got cut at least in half, and let's not even discuss
the other ship losses... and what's worse, *shipyard* losses.  The
effects of that on our ability to project power in the world are?

Posit -- I just nuked Chicago, IL.  The US air transport network just
lost its key hub, O'Hare Airport.  Imagine the effects.

Posit -- I just nuked Kansas City. MO... on April 16th.  The IRS's
central processing center is there.  Every tax return filed for that
year in the country just got blown to vapor.  The US Treasury has just
entered temporary financial paralysis... because not only has over half
of that year's tax revenue gone down the tubes, but the expense required
to reconstruct those records (and they must be reconstructed) will run
into the multi-billions.

Posit -- I just nuked Omaha, NE.  The network communications hub for
half the US government is in there.  Plus the central Federal Reserve
data network transfer node, if I'm not mistaken.

Posit -- Fort Meade and Fort Holabird both turn into plasma.  That's the
NSA central data-processing facility *and* the backup.  The US
intelligence community just lost at least half of its SigInt capacity
and practically *all* of its code-breaking capacity ('cause those two
sites contain most of our cryptographic supercomputers)... and a loss
like that would be catastrophic.

The above is nowhere near a complete list of possible targets...

<snip>

Of course, the average terrorist would ignore all of the valid strategic
targets above in favor of blowing up New York or somewhere...

Second, the US is supposed to care about loss of innocent life.  That's
why we're the good guys.  :-)

So when the possibility exists that some psycho will vaporize New York
city, we're supposed to be concerned about it.

Big damn nuke.   Probably not an IND (Sum of all fears notwithstanding).

Make much more sense just to disperse the radioactive elements
effectively preventing use of the area (albeit with MOPP suits,
it could still be used).  In fact, this is a much more likely
scenario than an explosive device - one can obtain industrial
radioactive isotopes such as strontium, cesium, even tritium and
simply use regular explosive devices to distribute the
radioactivity over a large area.

You're also assuming that half the carriers are in port at the time.

|> Posit -- I just nuked Chicago, IL.  The US air transport network just
|> lost its key hub, O'Hare Airport.  Imagine the effects.

Kinda like a pilots strike, eh.

(Hmm..  Technically, could a strike by airline pilots be considered
a terrorist act?)

|>
|> Posit -- I just nuked Kansas City. MO... on April 16th.  The IRS's
|> central processing center is there.  Every tax return filed for that
|> year in the country just got blown to vapor.  The US Treasury has just
|> entered temporary financial paralysis... because not only has over half
|> of that year's tax revenue gone down the tubes, but the expense required
|> to reconstruct those records (and they must be reconstructed) will run
|> into the multi-billions.

Not quite.  There are a number of centers which handle returns (mine
go to Sacto, Ca.).   Note also that the IRS is likely to have
standard d.p. disaster recovery mechanisms in place.

(it would be a good opportunity to dump the 30 year old Univacs, however :-)

|>
|> Posit -- I just nuked Omaha, NE.  The network communications hub for
|> half the US government is in there.  Plus the central Federal Reserve
|> data network transfer node, if I'm not mistaken.
|>

One requirement (or condition?) of the AT&T monopoly in the bad-old-days
of the cold war was to provide nuclear-hardened facilities for the
long-lines division.  As I recall, the locations of these facilities
were not widely known, and the network was such that 'broken' facilities
could be routed around.    This was specifically to provide governmental
communications in the event of an national disaster (such as a nuclear strike).

Ever wonder why most phone company switching centers don't have
windows?

|> Posit -- Fort Meade and Fort Holabird both turn into plasma.  That's the
|> NSA central data-processing facility *and* the backup.  The US
|> intelligence community just lost at least half of its SigInt capacity
|> and practically *all* of its code-breaking capacity ('cause those two
|> sites contain most of our cryptographic supercomputers)... and a loss
|> like that would be catastrophic.

They may have lost people (probably the most irreplacible asset); but
with the exception of custom hardware, most of the NSA assets could be
made available via other government agencies (such as the Blue
Mountain system (48k processor shared memory system) in LANL).

Note also there are downlink sites in Colorado and Sunnyvale.

|>
|> The above is nowhere near a complete list of possible targets...

And to destroy them, would require some very large nuclear devices,
probably multi-stage weapons.

Pearl Harbor, anyone?

Per Andersson

<Snip a lot of crap that doesn't bear repeating.>

*PLONK*