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French M45 SLBM and M51 SLBM

Submarine-launched ballistic missiles or SLBMs are ballistic missiles delivering nuclear weapons that are launched from submarines. Modern variants usually deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) each of which carries a warhead and allows a single launched missile to strike several targets.

A Trident II D5 nuclear missile system. It is capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads up to 8000km. They are carried by fourteen US Navy Ohio class submarines and four Royal Navy Vanguard class submarines.

As early as 1934, H. G. Wells predicted, in his The Shape of Things to Come, the use of submarines carrying "long-range air torpedoes with directional apparatus". Though he envisaged these as carrying chemical rather than nuclear warheads, he grasped the far reaching strategic implications. "The smallest of these raiders carried enough of such stuff to 'prepare' about eight hundred square miles of territory; it could have turned London or New York into a cityful of distorted corpses. These vessels made London vulnerable from Japan, Tokyo vulnerable from Dublin; they abolished the last corners of safety in the world."

The first successful tests of a submarine-based launch platform were by German U-boats in World War II using a submarine towed launch platform. These and other early SLBM systems required vessels to be surfaced when they fired missiles, but after World War 2, launch systems were quickly adapted to allow underwater launching. In September of 1955, the Soviet Union was the first country to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine.

Ballistic missile submarines have been of great strategic importance for the USA and Russia since the start of the Cold War, as they can hide from reconnaissance satellites and fire their nuclear weapons with virtual impunity. This makes them immune to a First Strike directed against nuclear forces, allowing each side to maintain the capability to launch a devastating retaliatory strike, even if all land-based missiles have been destroyed. This relieves each side of the necessity to adopt a launch-on-warning posture, with its grave attendant risk of accidental nuclear war. Additionally, the deployment of highly accurate missiles on ultra-quiet submarines allows an attacker to sneak up close to the enemy coast and launch a missile on a depressed trajectory - a very close range attack which will hit its target in a matter of minutes, thus opening the possibility of a decapitation strike.

Montage of the launch of a Trident C4 SLBM and the paths of its reentry vehicles.

Specific types of SLBMs include:

• French:
  • M45 SLBM
  • M51 SLBM
  • M-4 SLBM

• India
  • Sagarika

• People's Republic of China:
  • JL-1
  • JL-2 (under development)

• Soviet Union/Russia:
  • SS-N-4 R-13
  • SS-N-5 "Sark",R-21
  • SS-N-6 "Serb",R-27
  • SS-N-8 "Sawfly",R-29
  • SS-N-17 "Snipe",R-31
  • SS-N-18 "Stingray", R-29,RSM-50
  • R-39 missile, SS-N-20 "Sturgeon", RSM-52
  • SS-N-23 "Skiff", R-29RM,RSM-54
  • SS-NX-30, 3M30,R-30,RSM-56

• US and UK:
  • Polaris missile
  • Poseidon missile
  • Trident missile - current

Specific types of ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) include:

• Benjamin Franklin class submarine - former, US
• Triomphant class submarine - current, France
• Redoutable class submarine - current, France
• Ohio class submarine - current, US
• Resolution class submarine - former, UK
• Vanguard class submarine - current, UK
• Xia class submarine - current, China
• Jin class submarine - current, China
• List of NATO reporting names for ballistic missile submarines - current and former, Russia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Submarine-launched ballistic missiles

• ICBM
• nuclear navy
• nuclear warfare
• nuclear strategy
• submarine
• submarine-launched missile
• vertical launching system

• Video showing the launch of a Trident SLBM.
• Estimated Strategic Nuclear Weapons Inventories (September 2004)
• Sagarika Missile

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