Since it’d been a few days since we learned the President had given away information he shouldn’t, Donald Trump recently bragged during a phone call with Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. has two nuclear submarines stationed off the coast of North Korea, which goes against standard policy of not saying where submarines are.
Underplayed from Trump-Duterte call: he told Duterte we have 2 nuclear submarines near N. Korea. That's…not usually something we talk about. pic.twitter.com/Qiqgcj6NOk
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 24, 2017
Shockingly, according to BuzzFeed, officials at the Pentagon are apoplectic that the President did this.
“We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military’s belief that keeping submarines’ movement stealth is key to their mission.
The reasoning for this is pretty clear: unlike aircraft carriers that are huge and imposing, submarines are “a furtive complement to the carriers, a hard-to-detect means of strategic deterrence.”
Trump has, in a sense, blabbed about military plans after criticizing the Obama administration for announcing military plans throughout the 2016 campaign. Further, a country, like China, that wants to develop anti-sub measures could find the location of two nuclear subs very useful for its purposes. On the plus side, since the call took place in April, the submarines might not be there anymore.
Typically, the Navy announces when a submarine is returning to base in order to give sailors’ families a heads up.
Read the full transcript of Trump’s call with Duterte at The Intercept.
(via BuzzFeed & The Intercept)