In August of this year, ex-President Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea on a diplomatic mission to free a captive American.  Now the submarine which bears his name is reported to be nearing North Korea as well.   Following the shelling of a South Korean island by North Korean military, a US naval task force lead by the aircraft carrier George Washington has joined ongoing South Korean naval exercises.  The Seawolf Class submarine Jimmy Carter is also believed to be operating in the area. The Jimmy Carter is longer than the other two Seawolf Class ships due to an additional hull section known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows the launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces.

Super-Silent Jimmy Carter Ready to Spy on North Korea

According to plugged-in naval blogger Raymond Pritchett, word’s going around Navy circles that the first surveillance assets that the United States had in the air over yesterday’s Korean island battle were drones launched from the Jimmy Carter.

“North Korea couldn’t detect the USS Jimmy Carter short of using a minefield, even if they used every sonar in their entire inventory,” Galrahn writes. That’ll matter in case North Korea decides to launch another torpedo attack from a submarine, as it did in March to sink the South Korean corvette Cheonan.

The Navy doesn’t say much about what the Jimmy Carter can do, but the consensus is that it’s used for “highly classified missions.” Reportedly, it can tap undersea fiber-optic cables, potentially intercepting North Korean commands.

It carries Navy SEALs to slip into enemy ports undetected. And its class of subs have 26-and-a-half-inch-diameter torpedo tubes, wider than the rest of the submarine fleet, in case the Carter has to take out rival ships. “That’s a Seawolf, the most powerful attack sub in the world,” says Robert Farley, a maritime and international-relations scholar at the University of Kentucky.

Thanks to Irwin Bryan for passing the article along.