Nuke missiles

F-35 shown obsolete on previous post

   The best lace to hide for protection nuclear missiles for the US is to place them on submarines in Lake Superior.  That would require an agreement with Canada which owns half of that lake.  The second best option is to place them in Lake Michigan, which is wholly American owned.

  The sketch to right shows a submarine hull with missile launch tubes.  The current missiles have a range of 6500 nautical miles according to Jane's.  That is a range of 7500 statute miles or 12 500 kilometers.  A range of 9000 statute miles would allow all targets except Australia, New Zealand and a large part of Indonesia to be reached.  Increasing the range can be achieved by reducing the warheads to 2 or 3 and increasing the fuel in the last stage by the amount of weight saved.  If that does not produce the 9000 miles, a new, bigger, missile would have to be designed.
    To allow the submarine to remain submerged, a nuclear reactor is one possibility, but nuclear reactors in Lake Superior are politically impossible.  The other option are hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
   The missiles would require a hull of probably at least 15 meters in height.  Allowing 5 pressure tanks for gas on each side for a total of ten, and since H2O is water, that would allow 6 hydrogen and 3 oxygen  tanks.   Liquid hydrogen has a density of about 70 kilograms per cubic meter.  A standard volume of gas is 22.4 liters or about 45 standard volumes per cubic meter, hydrogen has an atomic weight of 2 so that yields 90 grams per cubic meter at standard temperature and pressure.   Standard industrial gas cylinders are routinely pressurized to 400 atmospheres so 500 atmospheres should be obtainable.  That would be 90 X 500 / 1000 = 45 kilograms of hydrogen per cubic meter.  Allowing each cylinder to be 3 meters in diameter (3 X 5 = 15 meters the height of the hull) and allowing a length of 50 meters for each cylinder, there would be 3 X 3 // 4 X pi X 50 = 350 cubic meters.  For 6 cylinders, that would be 2 100 cubic meters total and a gas wight of hydrogen of at least 90 000 kilograms.  the energy content of hydrogen is 141 Megajoules per kilogram dividing by 3600 seconds per hour and 1000 to convert to kilowatts yields
39 kilowatt hours per kilogram.  Allowing even 60% efficiency for the fuel cells gives 24 kilowatt-hours per kilogram or (X 90 000), a total of 2 200 000 kilowatt-hours.  Allow 700 000 kilowatt hours for movement, that would be 930 000 horsepower hours or 460 hours at 2000 horsepower or 230 hours out and back each.
If the submarine deploys for 100 days that would allow 600 kilowatts continuous usage, a typical American home uses 1 kilowatt.  The submarine could deploy for a considerably longer time.
   The tenth cylinder could be half potable water and half sewage tank, although the fuel cell would produce even more water.  Of the 350 cu-meters, at least 160 could be potable water or 160 000 liters.  If the crew has 25 members and they use 40 liters per day, it can probably be reduced to 20 liters a day, 4 for drinking, 6 for a very efficient lather and rinse shower and some for cooking and washing clothes, that water being used to flush toilets, that would be 1000 liters per day usage or enough water for 160 days.

   The submarine to the right would not be a thing of beauty.  It would be designed to travel to a given location and then settle on the bottom for 2 to 4 weeks.  At the end of that time it would rise up and sail back to port.  The crew would spend a total of maybe 4 months away from their families, but in short periods of 2-4 weeks.  At least one other crew would operate the submarine and the rest of the year might be for maintenance.  Illustrated are 6 rows of missile tubes tubes to the front of the sub and an area to the back with the crew on the upper level and the fuel cell, motors and mechanical equipment on a lower level.   To the rear of the sub could be attached an escape capsule for the crew in case of casualty.
     Lake Superior cavers 32 000 square miles, about 80 000 sq kilometers.  Lake Michigan is about 22 000
sq miles.  Both of them are too large to be targeted with nuclear missiles, they can also be placed under fairly high security watch.  It may require that no one can use sonar in the lake without permission to prevent accidental discovery, that would include fish finders which would produce an uproar.  The deepest point in Lake Superior is about 1000 ft, 300 meters, a pressure hull can withstand that pressure.
From what I have read, Lake Superior never freezes, so ice would not interfere with missile launches.