What SSBN weapons crews need isn’t intensive training, but ongoing training (which they already receive) and ongoing deployment experience to maintain their ‘edge’.

The same goes for the weapons themselves. To a large extent they are either ready, or they are not – and it only takes a few hours to flip between states. It’s not really possible to hold the crews ‘more ready to make the weapons ready’. You can (with minimal modification to non flight hardware) make it harder to get ready (by requiring certain information from off hull) but that’s about as far as you can go.

The real (and unique) problem however lies not in the weapons crews, but in the boat and non weapons portion of the crew. Some of the options presented in the EWI report are not really practical for SSBN’s. Missile and bomber support crews can practice loading and readying inert weapons. Missile crews can spend a few hours a week in a simulated ‘hole’. Bomber crews can fly their aircraft unloaded or armed with inert weapons for however many hours a week doctrine requires…

But no equivalent exists for an SSBN, whose weapons system depends heavily on direct support by non weapons crewmembers and the unique mindset of the submariner. The only way to gain experience operating ships systems and confidence in the ship and themselves is to take the boat to sea. A crew sitting pierside or shoreside with little chance or intent of going to sea for months on end is a crew whose experience and confidence is steadily and surely atrophying and whose morale and motivation almost measurably decrease daily. Worse yet, it takes months to restore those things.

I can see no clear way to decrease weapons readiness onboard (maintaing them at ‘low alert’ as defined in the EWI report) SSBN’s while maintaining the required skillset and ‘edge’. The time required to transit from a safe operational area to the weapons/refit facility, load the weapons safely, and return to a safe operational area place them firmly in ‘de-alert’ status. Otherwise, the best that can be done is to maintain ‘medium alert’.

(Disclaimer: Former SSBN weapons crewman.)

Is this the first time that experts acknowledged a high-alert DF-5 force and silo-based DF-31s?

Reply: Yes it is a strange claim. I don’t know who suggested this, but the claim contradicts everything we know, estimate, and assume about the Chinese. For one thing, the 18 DF-31s exceed the “less than 15″ DF-31s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated in June this year that Chinese has deployed. I’ll take the claim with a very big grain of salt until I hear more about who said it and whether the U.S. intelligence community agrees. HK

Reply: I don’t understand why training and some level of readiness could not be maintained if the force is de-alerted. HK