send off, and recover "Slocum" autonomous oceanographic data gathering probes -- or counter-mine unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) too large to fit through a Virginia's already extra-wide torpedo tubes.  These adjuvant vehicles add tremendously to a submarine crew's tactical situational awareness -- and thus to the effectiveness of the entire networked joint force with which that submarine stays plugged in.

This discussion can't wrap up without mentioning 200-knot supercavitating underwater weapons and similar ultrafast mini-vehicles.  Suffice it to say, regarding rocket propelled torpedoes such as the Russian (ex-Soviet) Shkval, that the U.S. Submarine Force would already have similar but much better armaments if they genuinely wanted them -- but they don't.  The latest Mod 7 Improved Advanced Capability Mark 48 torpedo, with littoral-capable mode and open computer architecture, is the American submariner's anti-submarine weapon of choice.  An R&D project shared between the Navy and DARPA, called Underwater Express, on the other hand is looking at a passenger and cargo minisub that could move at 100 knots via supercavitation.  Initial design, control, and stability analyses have already been funded.  Underwater Express is being advocated as a huge step forward in theater logistics mobility.  Certainly, at a minimum, investigations into its practicality will generate valuable science and engineering insights as spin-off benefits. 

This glittering constellation of next-generation sensors and armaments, with accompanying operational know-how, ought to convince anyone who's paying attention that nuclear subs these days are lightyears ahead of whatever the U.S. Navy commissioned during the Cold War.  A difference in degree of this magnitude does make a difference in kind.  With 70 percent of Planet Earth covered by water, and the rest of it accessible by electronic or kinetic means from submarines lurking down in the ocean, it ought to be evident to even the most contrarian skeptics that nuclear subs are very much 21st Century undersea capital ships.