President Donald Trump recently broke with decades of strategic silence when he publicly revealed the repositioning of U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in a thinly veiled warning to Russia.
The announcement — targeted at Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former President Dmitry Medvedev after his latest nuclear threats — sent shockwaves through the defense world not just for its provocation, but for the sheer fact that it was said out loud.
Presidents have long moved military assets like aircraft carriers and bombers to signal resolve. But submarines, especially the covert, nuclear-powered kind, are rarely mentioned.
“We rarely, if ever, talk about submarine movements unless there’s been an undeniable accident,” Gene Moran, a former Navy captain and Pentagon strategic advisor, told Fox News Digital.
Plenty of other military assets — Patriot batteries, aircraft carriers, even B-52 bombers — are deployed publicly to send a diplomatic message. But this time, the secretive nature of the nuclear submarine positioning may have been the reason for the choice.
“Submarine deployments are unverifiable,” said Moran. “That’s what gives them strategic value, but also what makes this announcement clever — if you’re aiming for a headline.”
TRUMP CONFIRMS 2 NUCLEAR SUBMARINES ARE ‘IN THE REGION’ TO COUNTER RUSSIA
Vice Admiral Mike Connor, former commander of U.S. submarine forces, said Trump’s statement may have sounded bold, but was in fact consistent with long-standing doctrine.
“He didn’t really give away too much,” Connor, who now serves as CEO of maritime tech company ThayerMahan, told Fox News Digital. “It’s generally understood, by our potential adversaries, that our submarines are out there, have been out there for 60-plus years, and are able to strike pretty much where they want, when they want, if needed.”
“It’s a more gentle message done this way,” Connor added. “It’s not really in your face. It’s just a reminder of what already exists.”
The president was vague in revealing his plans, only announcing that nuclear submarines would be positioned in the “appropriate regions” following Medvedev’s accusations that he was escalating the war. Trump told reporters Sunday the submarines are “already in the region, where they should be.”
Moran said Trump may have simply aligned a routine rotation with a strategic message.
“It doesn’t cost anything,” he said. “But if you do it repeatedly, it begins to reveal where your thresholds are. That has long-term consequences.”
He also cast doubt on the depth of coordination behind the announcement, saying “Submarines don’t just move at the snap of a finger.”
Matthew Shoemaker, a former defense intelligence official, echoed that point.
“It’s certainly unusual to announce it from an operational perspective,” he said, “which means this is primarily about sending a message to the Russians rather than trying to achieve a military goal.”
TRUMP REPOSITIONS 2 NUCLEAR SUBMARINES AFTER ‘HIGHLY PROVOCATIVE’ RUSSIAN COMMENTS
Meanwhile, Trump’s frustration with Putin has grown in recent weeks amid stalled negotiations to end the war, prompting him to scale back the deadline for Russia to agree to a peace deal.
Trump’s disclosure of the submarine presence puts additional pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table, according to Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and director of the Hudson Institute think tank’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.
“We have used very sparingly submarines to try to influence adversary behavior before, but this is pretty unusual, to do it against a nuclear-powered adversary like Russia in response to a nuclear threat by Russia,” Clark told Fox News Digital Monday. “So I think this is trying to essentially push back on Russia’s frequent and long-standing threats to use nuclear weapons in part of the Ukraine conflict.”
Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes it’s more likely that two already-deployed U.S. submarines were repositioned rather than any new vessels dispatched.
“At any one time there are about a dozen U.S. submarines deployed,” he said. “We probably just moved two of them to different spots. There hasn’t been any report of new submarine sailings — you’d have heard about that.”
Retired Navy Capt. Todd Sawhill, who served as a targeting expert with the Joint Staff and U.S. Central Command, said there’s precedent for moving submarines in response to tensions — but rarely is it spoken of this openly.
“It is atypical to have a sitting president telegraph it so plainly,” Sawhill said. “It’s consistent with Trump’s desire to direct-message, so in that sense it’s not surprising. But it’s not how these things are usually done.”
Experts agree that once a U.S. submarine leaves port, it becomes difficult — though not impossible — for adversaries to track.
“These are very tightly controlled pieces of information,” Cancian said. “The U.S. has good confidence that deployed submarines aren’t being followed — though we’ve been wrong before.”
Shoemaker noted that geography plays a significant role. “The closer one gets to an adversary’s shores, the more likely they can find and track our subs,” he said. “So it depends on where exactly these subs are sent near Russia.”
Moran added that both sides exaggerate their tracking capabilities.
“It’s easy to claim you know where your adversary is,” he said. “But with modern submarines, that’s a very difficult task.”
Connor also pointed to a recent case that underscored the low-profile potency of submarines.
“A few weeks ago, there was a strike on Iranian nuclear weapon component manufacturing sites,” he said. “There was a lot of noise about the fact that some Air Force planes flew from the U.S. and struck two deeply buried targets. And it was more or less a side note that a submarine — who knows which one or where it was —struck 30 targets at the same time.”
“It’s a capability that’s always there, not often used and doesn’t need to be talked about too overtly to be effective.”
But unlike the Iran strikes, it appears improbable that the submarines dispatched in response to increased tension with Russia would see the same kind of action, according to Clark.
That’s because the U.S. hasn’t directly intervened militarily to back Ukraine, and the locations where these submarines operate are not best suited to launch attacks against Russian adversaries, since the cruise missiles would go over NATO countries like Romania, Clark said.
“It’s unlikely to be a cruise missile attack that we threaten or even conduct,” Clark said. “I think it’s much more likely that we will be using attack submarines to sort of convey to the Russians that we can hold important targets of their own at risk if they do decide to escalate.”
Asked whether Russia might respond with its own maneuvers, Shoemaker was unequivocal: “Yes, almost certainly. Russia routinely and historically likes to do comparable responses to American actions.”
Moran pointed to a recent example from 2024: “Russia moved ships near Cuba, and we responded by surfacing a submarine in Guantanamo Bay. That’s a case of operational schedules aligning with an opportunity to send a message.”
But such cat-and-mouse signaling carries risk.
“Missteps can be made. Things can be misinterpreted,” Moran warned. “We’ve been here before.”
Connor agreed that the oceans will remain a chessboard of silent signaling.
“Both countries have the freedom to operate as they would like in international waters,” he said. “They’ve done that for decades and will likely continue to do so.”
The move appears to be part deterrence, part diplomacy.
Trump “is showing annoyance with Russia’s unwillingness to negotiate seriously on Ukraine,” said Cancian. “But more significantly, he’s pushing back on Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling — a pattern that’s existed since the beginning of the war.”