Alternative Title: SLBM
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...mutually assured destruction, ensured that each side would remain vulnerable to the other’s strategic offensive forces. Another part of the SALT I agreement froze the number of each side’s ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) at current levels. The SALT II agreement (1979) set limits on each side’s store of multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), which were strategic...
Simultaneous with the early Soviet and U.S. efforts to produce land-based ICBMs, both countries were developing SLBMs. In 1955 the Soviets launched the first SLBM, the one- to two-megaton SS-N-4 Sark. This missile, deployed in 1958 aboard diesel-electric submarines and later aboard nuclear-powered vessels, had to be launched from the surface and had a range of only 350 miles. Partly in response...
Chinese intelligence gathering
...the U.S. Titan and Minuteman I and the Soviet SS-7 and SS-8, they were placed in hardened underground silos so that it would require an unlikely direct hit to destroy them. Even less vulnerable were submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) such as the U.S. Polaris and the Soviet SS-N-5 and SS-N-6, which could take full advantage of the ocean expanses to hide from enemy attack.
missile launching systems
...ballistic missiles are launched directly from their canisters, while “cold-launched” missiles are ejected from the canisters by compressed gas before the rocket engines ignite. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are ejected in this manner to the ocean surface from tubes within the submerged vessel.
The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China keep a considerable strategic deterrent force at sea in the form of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The safeguarding or threatening of nuclear submarines has inspired a set of tactics unique in history. These tactics are among each nation’s most closely guarded secrets and have never been used in anger, so that...
submarine weapon systems
...primary antisubmarine weapons. Attack submarines are armed with torpedoes and, in some cases, with antiship missiles. Strategic submarines may carry similar weapons, but their primary weapons are submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), such as the U.S. and British Trident.