The Hunt for Red October and The Art of Modern War

In my head, Red October is still the best Clancy picture, by far. Harrison Ford was too Mr America, and Ben Affleck was too jock. There’s no way around it, Jack Ryan is a Baldwin. The movie was so good it inspired me to read the book, the book was so good that I read the sequel. It was a bummer when they didn’t make Cardinal of the Kremlin into the second Ryan pic.

I’ve seen the film a solid dozen times, but a watching the other day revealed the story’s fatal flaw for the first time. The urgency of the story is fueled in part by the Russian Navy’s pursuit, but also in the 4-day window in which they estimated it would take him to get to where he could fire his missiles. Which makes sense, they can entertain creativity as long as it doesn’t get in the way of security. But why 4 days?

No reason whatsoever. Based on an assumption that that’s how long it would take him to sail right up to the East coast, perhaps. But he’s in 1986 with a boat full of nuclear missiles for which there’s no defense regardless of source. So why assume he needs to be right off the coast in the first place? He could launch at any time at all if he wanted to, he wouldn’t need to wait four days. Even if he did care about evading problems, he’s running a stealth boat. He could secretly launch from anywhere if he wanted to.

But of course Connery’s intent was never to launch, but to defect. So the nonsense 4-day thing winds up being a nonissue. But again, stealth boat. If Ramius really is such a master of Soviet tactics, then why the hell doesn’t he sail around the whole shebang – in stealth mode – and surrender at San Diego or Pearl?

ANYWAY.

Watching the film, the whole trick is the Red October’s silent drive, because of course locating and tracking things underwater is based on sound. And I started to wonder if that shouldn’t still be the case. Electromagnetic research produced radar and the ability to overcome optical deficiencies through a gas medium. When does our discovery of all these new fantastic particles give us a way to overcome audio deficiencies through a liquid medium? Have we found anything more subtle than audio waves that will pass thru water and not steel?

Above sea level even, there are applications. Radar has limitations, we take advantage of them with stealth construction methods. But what about a detection method that relies on a different spectrum? Even stealth technology could be made obsolete.

But what would happen then? What happens when we know where every threat is at all times? First, let’s be clear on what we’re talking about- what happens when we know the whereabouts of every threat we can defend against? Simple, they stop being threats. But does that make things safer? When you remove the things you can defend against from the practice of war, all you leave are those threats you can’t defend against. If the enemy can’t get close, he’ll just invest more in missiles than in planes. We’re seeing that already with Russian hypersonic advancements as Patriot-like systems such as those in Israel provide a viable defensive bubble.

So the end result of those advancements, of that invention, might be a safer world but a far more dangerous one. When there are no more “local tensions” to bleed off steam from “worldwide apocalypse”, there’s less to defuse the tensions that accumulate into catastrophe. Everyone lives longer, but the bad years are very, very bad.

How about a nice game of chess?