Not a paragraph I normally see in military reporting.
Sentinel ICBMs, B-21 bombers, and Columbia Class SSBNs.
"The Air Force told Congress January 18 that the newly estimated cost of each LGM-35A Sentinel has jumped from $118 million in 2020 to $162 million today. That’s a 37% spike."
... The service’s original 2016 estimate for the program was $62.3 billion. Then it ballooned to $95.3 billion. The latest projection suggests its new cost could be nearly $132 billion."[1]
[0]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-1-5-tr...
[1] https://www.pogo.org/newsletters/the-bunker/the-bunker-the-s...
The Russians themselves are aware of that gap and have started to try and close it, they've just launched two new nuclear submarines recently [1] and others are on their way.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/12/12/putin-views-rus...
Alas, America doesn't have one of those any more - so it has to rattle sabres to get its way, instead.
The cost of half a submarine such as this would go a long way to restoring peace in the world, were it spent on diplomacy and good will instead of jobs programs for domestic war profiteers...
Firstly, they're always aboard US boomers, which are immensely spacious by submarine standards (lol'd at "The ship seemed cramped, with narrow passageways."). You can walk two-abreast in some US boomer passageways, a completely unheard of feat on any other class of sub. They also have relatively relaxed, predictable schedules, with deployments rarely lasting more than 3 months. It's easy to say you've got good food when you're not rationing beans because the 4 month deployment became a 5 1/2 month deployment.
Secondly, one of the core social divides in the US submarine force is between members of the engineering department ("nukes", also A-gangers, though they exist in a sort of limbo) and everyone else on the boat ("coners"). These pieces only ever interview and report on coners (not in small part due to the intense security concerns surrounding nuclear propulsion technology). The lives of the submariners on either side of the watertight door are different in many significant respects, there's no nuke in the fleet that appreciates being represented in the public eye by sonar techs and torpedomen, but nukes only get talked about when they're killing themselves [1].
This is the nature of the secrecy surrounding US subs of course, and I'm not complaining, but it's weird. These articles show the best possible life aboard a US submarine, likely the best possible life aboard any submarine. It's the US Navy putting its best foot forward for the benefit of reporters. Note they talk about the integration of US boomers, but don't mention that US fast attacks remain male-only with no plans to change in the near future. It is, without attaching any sentiment to the word positive or negative, propaganda.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nuclear-trained-sailors...
In any case, WW2 submarines were torpedo boats only diving when necessary. The battery capacity of a German Type VII or an American Balao class was measured in hours, not days. Before snorkels reached operational status, boats had to completely surface for recharging; that is not the case anymore.
I think life on a Type VII was much nastier than on a modern Type 214. The engine was extremely loud, exhaust fumes were regularly in the air, and it was cold and incredibly cramped. Living conditions are much better on modern subs, even if space is still at a premium, especially on smaller boats.
What surely remains is the sense of camaraderie because of a shared fate; each sailor's life depends on the boat functioning as a unit. In that sense, nothing has changed.
Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39400834 (February 16, 2024 — 4 points, 12 comments)
The last crew member of a submarine, possibly gone insane, hiding out from the world above:
Now there's nobody from the crew left
Five hundred years supply of food just for me
Is it just me, or are they all key blanks? I.e there's no pin bitting?
>>> Nothing was fired, of course. The keys inserted were effectively blanks.
Seems like they used special exercise keys, and that's probably the ones in the photo.
1. They don't want to post the launch codes to the internet, or
2. The code is just 000000 (hey it's not the worst I've ever seen)
https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link
> According to nuclear safety expert Bruce G. Blair, the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command worried that in times of need the codes for the Minuteman ICBM force would not be available, so it decided to set the codes to 00000000 in all missile launch control centers. Blair said the missile launch checklists included an item confirming this combination until 1977.[7] A 2014 article in Foreign Policy said that the US Air Force told the United States House Committee on Armed Services that "A code consisting of eight zeroes has never been used to enable a MM ICBM, as claimed by Dr. Bruce Blair."[8] The Air Force's statement (that 00000000 was never used to enable an ICBM, i.e. the weapons were not actually launched) does not contradict Blair's statement (that 00000000 was the code for doing so).
Dang, they're still having retention problems in the sub force?
Also Boomer life is like the Waldorf Astoria in comparison to a fast attack's Motel 6.