Israeli Second Strike Assets

Robert Farley, over at Lawyers, Guns and Money (go Zevon!) comments on a post by Peter Juul at Wonkroom regarding Israel and U.S. nuclear guarantees. Farley agrees that Israel has a diverse nuclear weapons infrastructure, but says Israel's sea based leg is deficient, compared with U.S., U.K and French boats, consisting as it does (or probably does) of cruise missile arms aboard the Israeli Navy's three Dolphin class SSKs. I would point out that Israel is not attempting to defer an adversary anywhere near the capability of the U.S.S.R., which is what the other three forces were aimed at, so the size and weapons load of its deterrent aren't as important. He identifies their opponent as Iran, which is sensible, and does admit that few weapons are required to credibly threaten states the size of Iran and Israel.

I would note that there is one thing more important to Israel in a deterrence situation than weapons load, and that is survivability. Given that they are restricted to using diesel/electric boats with an endurance of weeks, the primary issue is ensuring that these assets are available in the case of surprise assault. The main concern Israel should have, therefore, is not necessarily to produce a larger or more capable sea-based triad leg (since there are many competing demands on their resources) but to simply maximize the likely survival of their existing leg - and they can do that with an aggressive patrol/availability schedule. A quick nonscientific glimpse at Haifa on Google Earth shows only one asset in port which I can ID with high confidence as a submarine, meaning two Dolphins are available and likely patrolling (the image is listed as being taken in 2008). All Israel needs to do is keep a single submarine out of port to provide credible threat.

In addition, in the case of a regional nuclear confrontation, Israel's submarine assets can likely expect to find exogenous support - U.S. fleet assets, for example - especially if their primary purpose is to maintain their own safety until they can receive instruction. While the U.S. would likely balk at providing a priori nuclear guarantees to Israel (and should, in my opinion) it is no stretch at all to imagine Israeli naval assets seeking and receiving protection and resupply from U.S. naval forces in the event they are unable to use their home port.

For completeness sake and to deflect any armamentophile arguments, I should clarify that the weapons in question here are tube-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. The Dolphin has four 650mm tubes in addition to its 533mm tubes, and German sources involved in the construction of the Dolphins have noted that there was 'intent' to sleeve the 650mm tubes for use with Israel's existing Harpoon inventory - but there is no reason those sleeves could not, on removal, allow larger weapons to be fired. Speculation involves U.S. navy admissions that it monitored cruise missile tests in the Indian Ocean of a weapon with a range over 1,000 km - likely, if Israeli, a refinement and new version based on the Popeye Turbo, an indigenous Israeli cruise missile.
Image of Dolphin-class from Israeli Navy website