Sky! How would they know?

Just tell the crew it's a torpedo exercise ... point and shoot :yep:

Only the CO, XO and sonar know the truth of course you still need the POTUS/Joint Chief's of Staff/COMSUBPAC/Submarine Squadron 1/SUBRON 7 and a few helicopters to look for debris, other than that it would be a breeze.

Everyone shrugs :yep:

That seems pretty ageist to me.

Buddhists have no SSNs, and the Red Cross does not use them either.

In a moral sense, it was none of their business.

Hence why a NK should be sunk in deep water.

However, I wouldn't put it past Russia to go looking for its wreck to show to the North Koreans.

Ironically the SSBs are not even there to deter or threaten US and allies, it is there to deter PRC as it is harder to PLA-N to operate in the Sea of Japan, in an extensive ASW operation precisely because of US and US allies there.

Nor is this technology development really new, they have been working on large diameter solid fuel rocket motors for a while now (and with good results), as this is the pathway for a reliable alert light ICBM as well (hence why Russia, China and US also went that way).

In terms of deterrence choices the combination is fairly standard - deterrence by punishment (fear inducement mostly here rather than cost inducement), deterrence by uncertainty/ambiguity. The later had also been used by US, the so called “madman doctrine” by Nixon.