USS Carl Vinson Heading To North Korea

You're kidding right?

No I'm not, but which specific part are you referring? I made three different points.

Volpone disagrees!

I think that's pretty clear, yes.

Apparently it's a new concept to Dayton.

His dad was ex-Navy who served on a sub, so I figure he might know a thing or two about it.

Or it's a cardboard dummy filled with styrofoam. Who knows.

I'd think that an aluminum shell is more likely than either of those. The North Koreans have probably eaten all the cardboard and styrofoam by now.

Missiles? Those are pinatas! Imagine the looks of joy on the faces of the kids when these get busted open and flood the party-goers with tasty treats like tree bark, foam packing peanuts and discarded Q-tips! You people have the NK regime pegged all kinds of wrong.

It's always been public knowledge that subs are part of Carrier Strike Groups.

Yeah, but certain specifics about that aren't public knowledge. Like if those subs are boomers or not.

They won't be SSBNs (boomers).

Why would ballistic missile subs be escorting a Carrier Battle Group?

Given that your military experience consists of fapping to copies of Armchair General, I'm not gonna take your word on this.

Shit, man, why the fuck should the military do half the shit it does? Whole bunches of the stuff the military does is little more than dick waving. If Trump can order a CBG to skip it's port of call and head to Korea, he can certainly order a boomer to the same waters. Did he? I dunno. Would I expect a President (regardless of party) who thought he might have a "hot war" on his hands to do so? You're fucking right I would.

I read books written by people who are experienced in the operation and deployment of submarines.

I could suggest various books if you wish.

But what purpose would it serve?

What makes you think the SSBN commander would comply?

There is no way for the president to know whether that kind of order is being carried out or not.

Most of the crew of an SSBN don't even know (within several hundred miles) where their submarine is when on patrol.

Given that you've not mentioned James F. Dunnigan until after I brought him up, I think I'm going to pass on this. I suspect that I have a broader depth of knowledge on the subject than you do. Even if I don't, your abilities to interpret what someone says have been shown to be so decrepit that you're not worth listening to on this subject.

Elon Musk tell you that?

Dick waving. One of the reasons people are claiming that Trump used the MOAB on Afghanistan was to send a message to North Korea. Certainly sounds plausible to me (and this is without making any kind of judgement on if Trump was right to use the MOAB or not). If he was serious about telling NK to not test another nuke, why wouldn't he send a boomer?

Why would a sub commander disobey an order to travel to a new location?

Oh, yes there is. All submarines are required to report their location at scheduled intervals.

And? What's that got to do with them being ordered to be in a specific location?

In order for it to be dick waving, wouldn't Trump need to announce that he's sending a boomer? And even if he is sending one, why attach it to a Carrier Battle Group?

Because you don't need to "send" an American "boomer" anywhere.

I imagine even the North Koreans know that an American Ohio class SSBN with Trident II D-5 missiles doesn't have to move beyond the near coastal waters of the U.S. to hit North Korean targets with its nuclear warheads.

American SSBN commanders have a very wide latitude in interpreting their orders as long as they are in and out of their designated patrol boxes at the ordered times.

Note, "patrol boxes" can be thousands of square miles.

Only if you think that it's unlikely the Chinese and the Russians couldn't figure out such things on their own. As for attaching it to a CBG, why not? It can be seen as a training exercise. Where the sub is to try and shadow the CBG without being detected. I believe that this is, in fact, something that the Navy routinely does, but I could be wrong about that.

So, given that the US military had to know that the Tomahawk missiles used against the Syrian airbase wouldn't render it inoperational for a significant period of time, would you say that it wasn't dick waving that we used them? After all, we could have picked a number of different weapons, or different targets, had we wanted to. We didn't. We made a statement (ie dick waved) about what we could do in hopes that Assad would stop using chemical weapons. So far, it appears we've made our point.

I think it's highly unlikely that they could figure it out on their own. The whole point of us having SSBNs is that no one ever knows where they are.

That would be using a ballistic missile sub in the role of an attack sub. That wouldn't make a lick of sense. Ballistic missile subs don't "shadow" surface fleets. They lay low independently of other units in case they need to launch their missiles.

And? You don't think that the Vinson is going to be patrolling thousands of square miles? Additionally, it's one thing to know that a sub can hit you with nuke from tens of thousands of miles away, it's another thing to have said sub cruising hundreds of miles off your coastline.

No.