LocalFluff- “Whiskey (on the rocks)” hahahahahaha!

US subs, even the smaller hunters that go after other subs, have nuclear propulsion. Completely quiet. They, and surface ships and naval bases and airplanes, have torpedoes with 100s of kilometers range. And the US has sonars all over the oceans that register exactly which ship is where when. There are no more than about 50,000 ships at sea in the world to track. There’s no doubt in my mind that the US Navy truly rules the waves. (I bet they know exactly where that passenger jet crashed in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, it’s just classified).

In 1981 a Soviet submarine went ashore near the main Swedish naval base in Karlskrona. It was a Whiskey (on the rocks) class sub built in the 1950s. It had torpedoes with nuclear warheads. After the fall of the wall some guy bought such a Russian Whiskey sub and turned it into a museum I visited. I’m not kidding, the cook could fry potatoes while sitting on the loo. The stove and the porcelain chair were opposed and on each side of the narrow corridor that defined the sub. It was just like in a classic WW2 submarine war movie. Russians youth were forced to do 2 year conscription in these metal coffins, sailing the Atlantic. I think that is what NK has today. Cannon fodder without any ability to harm their enemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

How noisy are North Korean submarines? I seem to recall that Soviet subs were fairly noisy until Toshiba helped them out by selling them propeller milling machinery in the mid-1980’s.

Are the NK subs equal to, say, Russian subs from the 1980’s?

It’s funny you should say that, because I keep hoping that Japan will do something along those same lines to the North Koreans before things get out of hand.

The Americans fielded a flying torpedo more than a half-century ago (and nuclear-tipped, no less) as an anti-submarine weapon against Soviet subs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroc

While neither a torpedo or a cruise missile, my personal favourite submarine-bourne flying object is the submarine-towed V2 that the Germans were working on (but never completed) near the end of WWII as seen near the middle of this page:

http://www.uboataces.com/articles-rocket-uboat.shtml

It would have been a highly interesting development for convoy escort crews if the Germans had ever decided to deploy the Type 41 rockets that they did successfully test in 1942 as seen at the top of that same page. Can you imagine being on watch and suddenly seeing a half-dozen rockets erupting from the sea? Terrifying.

An arape in space
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/20132345746618903.html

Kim Jong-Un’s comment: “And they say that I am crazy!?”

They can be launched through torpedo tubes horizontally or vertically, although I do not know which is more difficult.

If Iran is launching missiles from midget submarines, then I’d be damned! I call it impossible.