The Russians claim the Sea of Okhotsk as territorial waters. The United States does not recognize that claim. It's a fine legal point, over what closure rule you think is appropriate. In either case, it's relatively shallow water, a little too shallow for a submarine commander to be completely comfortable, all the more so since the Russians regard it as home waters, hold exercises there, and probably have it thoroughly wired for sound.
But at some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s, a U.S. SSN (perhaps USS
Sure enough, the phone line was used by the Soviet Navy, and so secure did they believe the phone line to be that the data on the line was not encrypted. Everything the Russians knew and did at sea came across that telephone line, and after a brief handling delay, all of that data reached the U.S. Navy's intelligence headquarters at Suitland, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., not far from the Smithsonian Institution's Silver Hill Annex.
Of all the intelligence operations conducted by the United States since World War II-at least, all those that have come to the light of day-this is probably one of the most productive, and certainly the most elegant. Which is not to say it was easy. On at least one occasion when a U.S. sub was trying to retrieve the data on the cassette, a Soviet live-fire exercise was underway overhead, and the American crew had no option other than to hug the bottom and hope the Soviet weapons were working properly, because to move away would have presented their counterparts with a target upon which they might have fired live weapons. It became dicier still later. A spy by the name of Ronald Pelton, an employee of the National Security Agency, revealed Ivy Bells to the KGB-for which he was paid the princely fee of perhaps $15,000; the KGB was never generous to its spies-and the tap was discovered. At this writing, Mr. Pelton lives in the basement level of the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.
What happened when the next submarine went in to download the monthly 'take'? That's an untold part of the story. Suffice it to say that Mr. Pelton, in addition to denying his country a hugely valuable source of information, placed over a hundred men at the gravest risk. Was the data worth the risk? Yes. Can submarines still do things like that? What do you think?
Mission #4 — Precision Strike: Tomahawk Attacks
As was shown in Desert Storm, a submarine can do many things. Let's say there is a building you don't like. The other guy has lots of radar around it, and maybe the F-117A stealth fighters can't get there. (One needs to remember that the so-called black jet is invisible on radar, but the aerial tankers it refuels from are not.) And you want to do this job with minimum notice to the other side.
A submarine approaches the coast-not all that close, actually-probably at night, and launches a UGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM). For the first few seconds of flight the bird rises rapidly on its rocket booster. Then the wings and tail deploy, the intake for the turbofan engine opens, and the Tomahawk settles down, easily to within a hundred feet or so of the surface. It's a small missile, difficult to detect, especially with the new stealth features added to the Block III missiles now in production. The missile, knowing exactly where it launched from because of GPS satellite fixes (another Block III innovation), then follows a path defined by its inherently accurate terrain-following navigation systems. How accurate will it be? On a good day, a Tomahawk can fly into the door of a two-car garage at a distance of several hundred miles. And that can ruin your whole day.
Tactical Example — Execution of a TLAM-C Strike on an Enemy Airfield
It is not often remembered that the majority of attack aircraft employed by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pearl Harbor attack were tasked to counter air missions so that the remainder could attack the U.S. Navy in relative peace. Enemy aircraft are always the most enticing of targets, especially when they are sitting still. But your aircraft also have flight crews, and their lives are precious. That makes them targets also. I will, for once, blow my own horn. I was the first, I think, to consider this possibility in the open media when I included it (as Operation Doolittle) in my second novel,
The only hard part of the operation is timing. You want all the missiles to arrive within a very short time of one another. The accuracy of Tomahawk means that it can fly right down the center not just of runways but also of taxiways, sprinkling cluster munitions (in the case of the TLAM-D version) as it goes, to attack the world's most delicate artifacts-high-performance aircraft. The truly adventurous can aim the TLAM-C versions (with 1,000-lb
