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Jim Beaux wrote:There are buoys in the gulf that measure wave action, tide, & temperature, so it's not a stretch to assume that there are also sentinel buoys.

surprise_i'm_armed wrote: Can someone please define "boomer"?

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:

Jim Beaux wrote:There are buoys in the gulf that measure wave action, tide, & temperature, so it's not a stretch to assume that there are also sentinel buoys.

http://www.sippican.com/
The above link is to Sippican Systems, a Lockheed Martin company, based in Marion, Mass., on the Atlantic Ocean between Cape Cod
and New Bedford, Mass. I believe that one of their products is a "sonobuoy", which is distributed by the US military into oceans around
the world. They can detect submarines of which we wish to be aware.

Just as a little aside, their job application has a question about cigarette smoking. If you are a smoker, they will not hire you, even if you
don't light up on company property.

Sippican is an Indian name for a river on which our summer house was located. The Weweantic (say wee-wee-antic) was the Indian name for
the river on the other side of our point. That one always gets a chuckle. Oh, by the way, Marion's shorefront is on Buzzards Bay, a 225 square mile
expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Can someone please define "boomer"?

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A picture is posted above and mentions "Crazy Ivan". My understanding of this term is that when a US sub was closely following a Russian sub,
the Russians would sometimes pull a fast 180 and go zooming back toward the US sub. I don't know if they were aware of the US sub, or if the
Russians just did it once in a while.

SIA

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:Can someone please define "boomer"?

The Annoyed Man wrote:

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:Can someone please define "boomer"?

Ballistic missile sub, as opposed to a fast attack sub. The former are a leg of America's nuclear weapons delivery systems. The latter are primarily for (but not entirely confined to) anti-shipping/anti-submarine use.

Here is a pretty impressive picture montage of a Trident ballistic missile from underwater launch to reentry. The lower right image in the montage is of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) from a couple of Trident missiles.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ontage.jpg

Each individual bright streak is an individual reentry vehicle would would contain one nuclear warhead if fired in anger. A typical Ohio Class boomer would be armed with 24 of these Trident missiles. The US has 18 Ohio Class submarines.

18 subs x 24 missiles x either four .5 megaton or eight 100 kiloton MIRVs per rocket..... and you can see why the Soviets worried about these things.

Another incredible picture of MIRVs on reentry: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... esting.jpg

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:TAM, C-dub:

Thanks for the definitions and the pix.

Does anyone remember that President Jimmy Carter was a US Navy officer on nuclear submarines?

Another sub story memory of mine is that when that rotten American turncoat traitor named Walker was giving
away US military secrets for money, he provided the Russkies with a lot of information on our submarines, including
how we made ours quieter.

Henceforth the next generation of Russian subs was derogatorily referred to by some USN people as the "Walker class".

SIA

Carter served on surface ships and on diesel-electric submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. As a junior officer, he completed qualification for command of a diesel-electric submarine. He applied for the US Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program run by then Captain Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover's demands on his men and machines were legendary, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on him. Carter has said that he loved the Navy, and had planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations. Carter felt the best route for promotion was with submarine duty since he felt that nuclear power would be increasingly used in submarines. Carter was based in Schenectady, New York, and working on developing training materials for the nuclear propulsion system for the prototype of a new submarine.

On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown. The resulting explosion caused millions of liters of radioactive water to flood the reactor building's basement, and the reactor's core was no longer usable. Carter was now ordered to Chalk River, joining other American and Canadian service personnel. He was the officer in charge of the U.S. team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor.

Once they arrived, Carter's team used a model of the reactor to practice the steps necessary to disassemble the reactor and seal it off. During execution of the actual disassembly each team member, including Carter, donned protective gear, was lowered individually into the reactor, stayed for only a few seconds at a time to minimize exposure to radiation, and used hand tools to loosen bolts, remove nuts and take the other steps necessary to complete the disassembly process.
During and after his presidency Carter indicated that his experience at Chalk River shaped his views on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including his decision not to pursue completion of the neutron bomb.

The Annoyed Man wrote: Here is a pretty impressive picture montage of a Trident ballistic missile from underwater launch to reentry. The lower right image in the montage is of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) from a couple of Trident missiles.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ontage.jpg

Each individual bright streak is an individual reentry vehicle would would contain one nuclear warhead if fired in anger. A typical Ohio Class boomer would be armed with 24 of these Trident missiles. The US has 18 Ohio Class submarines.

18 subs x 24 missiles x either four .5 megaton or eight 100 kiloton MIRVs per rocket..... and you can see why the Soviets worried about these things.

Another incredible picture of MIRVs on reentry: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... esting.jpg