Under cover of darkness, I boarded a Navy vessel at a heavily guarded military base along the Eastern Seaboard. The location and time of departure, as well as the direction and distance of travel, were unknown to me. Adding to the sense of secrecy, a towering sailor in camouflage stood in the rain, examining my belongings for electronics that might leave a digital trail an adversary could intercept and exploit.

Buffeted by strong winds and high Atlantic seas, the support ship sailed through the night for more than 15 storm-tossed hours toward a destination somewhere off the continental shelf. Just after dawn, a sleek, inky object appeared in the distance, right above the waterline. It was the protruding bridge of what sailors call a “boomer”—a submarine armed to the gills with nuclear missiles—which is considered the most lethal, stealthy, and survivable weapon in America’s strategic arsenal.

Photographer Philip Montgomery and I had been granted permission to chronicle life aboard a boomer—at a perilous time. Our embed was unique: The arms and technology on board, along with the ship’s routines and missions, are among the government’s most closely guarded secrets. We’d been told that the number of civilians who had been given this level of access (carrying cameras, no less) was roughly the same as that who have walked on the moon.

Last summer, when I’d placed a request for the voyage, America was confronting two superpower threats: Beijing’s increasingly bold advances in the South China Sea and Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Then, in October, the Israel-Hamas war added new urgency. US warships were drawn to the region, projecting force in case the conflict escalated. In short order, American vessels began intercepting long-range missiles that Iranian-supplied Yemeni rebels fired on Israel and on the ships themselves. When other Tehran-backed militias attacked US outposts in Iraq, Syria, and then Jordan, killing three service members in late January, it was apparent the reprisals from American fighter jets had not been a sufficient deterrent. President Biden, with carrier strike groups already in place, decided to retaliate forcefully, on multiple targets.

In October, we’d been slated to board a sub in, of all places, the Middle East. But when American vessels came under attack, our trip was scrubbed. “You’d have been out at sea for months,” one of our handlers worried. In November, though, we were given short notice to fly to a Southern city in the US where we would be met, escorted to a ship, and then ferried to a boomer. A senior officer, we were told, was heading out to conduct an evaluation of a rookie submarine captain, and we would be along to observe. The sub would surface for a short time—so as not to draw unwanted attention. We were to climb aboard and the ship would submerge.

To prepare, I had interviewed more than two dozen current officials responsible for US nuclear doctrine and warfare. And as I looked at the hulking slash on the horizon, the words of one naval captain resonated with me: “When a single boomer goes out to sea, it does so as the sixth-largest nuclear nation on earth.”

Now, literally in the middle of nowhere, we made our rendezvous. A lashing rain seemed to be coming at us sideways. But suddenly, as we approached the sub, the sun broke through. Idling on our starboard like some leviathan loomed the missile deck of the USS Wyoming. A multibillion-dollar behemoth that is slightly longer than the Washington Monument is tall, the ship can carry up to 160 thermonuclear warheads, roughly the same firepower as India, a country that has been stockpiling nuclear arms for half a century.

As wars—hot and cold, visible and invisible—were being waged on land and at sea, it felt like an opportune time to meet the men, the women, and the weapons system that, in Pentagon terms, “provide 24/7 deterrence to prevent catastrophic actions from our adversaries.” The military’s rationale for offering us access seemed clear. The brass, apparently, wanted to help get Americans accustomed to the increasingly real prospect of conflict with a genuinely powerful opponent. They wanted to humanize the otherwise inhuman—some would say inhumane—reality of nuclear deterrence. And, finally, they wanted to convey a message to China and Russia about US forces and their strategic capabilities, resolve, and, for the moment at least, superiority.

Sub Lord

As the ominous backstop to America’s national security, the Department of Defense relies on a triad: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bombers, and submarines. The latter are considered the triad’s least vulnerable leg and carry 70 percent of all deployed nuclear warheads in the inventory. Boomers are officially known as Ohio-class SSBNs—Navy-speak for “submersible ship, ballistic, nuclear”—and were built, as even the juniormost sailor will tell you (without a hint of irony), to “preserve the peace” and, in the event of strategic attack, to inflict unimaginable destruction. “We are prepared to unleash hell,” Admiral William Houston told me, adding that, of course, “We never want to do it. Those sailors know if their weapon system is ever used, they are probably not coming home to their families. And so they take their business very, very seriously. It’s what we refer to as a no-fail mission. You are working directly for the president when you’re out there.”

Starting in 2021, Houston, 55, headed the US submarine force—25,000 strong, involved in the operation of 65 subs—and the Allied Submarine Command, which made him the principal undersea-warfare adviser to all of NATO’s strategic commanders. Awarded his fourth star in December, he became director of the Navy and Energy Department’s nuclear naval reactor program, a position once held by Admiral Hyman Rickover, a towering if controversial figure who is considered the father of the nuclear navy.

While boomers may be the deadliest ships at sea, the sub command also operates Virginia-class hunter-killer subs (SSNs), which track and are prepared to sink enemy subs and surface ships, as well as guided-missile subs (SSGNs), among them the USS Florida, which in early November popped up in the Middle East. The Florida’s very public passage through the Suez Canal, Houston insisted, was a “message to remind people that you have an incredible warship right there that you can’t do anything about. We’re telling our adversaries: You have to be aware of its destructive capability if leadership decides to use it.” This was no idle threat. In January, after myriad attacks by the Houthis—the Yemen-based rebel army supported by Iran—against vessels flying a variety of flags, American officials, in a tandem strike with the UK, ordered the Florida to launch Tomahawk missiles at Houthi targets. In February, after the Houthi assaults continued, two destroyers, the USS Carney and Gravely, hit more sites in Yemen.

“My predecessors, some of them called themselves Underlord,” Houston explained—a reference to mythic characters in the multiverse—“and that has a dark connotation.” The admiral added with a grin, “I’m just waiting for somebody to give me some respect and call me Sub Lord. I’m a huge Marvel fan.” His staff ribbingly slapped the moniker on his parking spot in front of his Norfolk, Virginia, headquarters.

Houston’s path to the Navy was unexpected. In high school in Buffalo, he and some buddies ditched lunch on a hot day to hang out in the college guidance office, the only spot with air-conditioning. They pretended to be flipping through ROTC applications when they were called on the carpet by an administrator who, as Houston recalled, told them that they could stay so long as they completed the paperwork. Houston wound up with an ROTC scholarship to Notre Dame and, during a monthlong voyage to Japan, fell in love with submarine culture. “So, yeah, I’m in the Navy because I skipped lunch,” he deadpanned. Later, when we returned to the subject, he observed, “When people ask me why am I in the military, I go, ‘Go to the Holocaust Museum in DC. There is evil in the world. There is pure, unadulterated evil.’ ”

Two decades ago, as a deputy squadron commander, he helped integrate women into the all-male submarine service. The Wyoming, he noted, was an obvious early vessel to be chosen since its namesake was the first state to allow women’s suffrage. (The goal, moving forward, is for every ship to be gender-agnostic in its commands and roles.)

Nearly all Ohio-class subs are emblazoned with the name of a US state. The admiral spoke admiringly of the boat to which we’d been assigned. “Wyoming is the most powerful warship ever created,” he told me. “It is the ultimate guarantor of our strategic deterrence.” Hidden in its hull are 20 Trident II D5 ballistic missiles tipped with independently targetable warheads, each with many times the destructive power of the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Tridents are so accurate, Houston said, they can hit a stadium on the other side of the globe. The central mission of the service’s 14 boomers is to clandestinely plumb the world’s oceans, waiting to respond if ever an enemy—for whatever reason, including a fit of pique or miscalculation—initiates a first strike. At that point, the president could decide to order the Wyoming, or one of its fellow subs, to launch in retaliation.

For further context, I dropped in on a Navy captain named Dan Packer. His assessment was even more blunt than Houston’s. “My job is to come up with ways to kill people and to find friends to help me kill people,” he said when we first met. Until October, he was the director of plans and policy for the sub force—responsible for writing the playbook for undersea warfare—and has stayed on as a top civilian adviser. During his career, he served on four classes of submarine before returning to his alma mater, the Naval Academy, as dean of math and science. The man is a bit of a legend—a sailor and a scholar who literally grew up in the shadow of the atomic enterprise in a small South Carolina town just down the road from the Savannah River Site, where, since the 1950s, reactors have churned out plutonium and tritium for warheads.

On 9/11, Packer, then a lieutenant commander, was the engineer officer on the USS Ohio, an SSBN that was in the Pacific for a worldwide war game. Early that morning, the captain took to the PA to prepare the crew for the drill. Thirty minutes later, Packer said, the commander picked up the mic again to say, “Cancel the exercise. The United States is under attack.” Over the next few hours, the Ohio received fragmentary reports: The twin towers had been hit; the Pentagon had been struck (true) and destroyed (not true). They also understood that the president was airborne—another portentous sign to those who wait on orders from the National Command Authority, which the president directs. The Ohio, Packer recalled, began the march from DEFCON five. To four. To three. “You take actions to make the platform more ready to complete its mission. You open safes and look at and access war plans that are normally not known or accessible.” When I asked how unusual those actions were, he replied, “I’d never seen those things. Ever.” Sailors on the Ohio began to speculate about who was behind the attacks. “The consensus on the boat was that it was Iran. And, as far as we were concerned, they were going to be radioactive glass,” Packer remarked, painting an image of the hellscape that would result if the Tridents were launched. “If you ever wonder if people would be ready to employ these weapons, the answer is yes.” (When I mentioned to a senior national security official that I was meeting with the country’s top nuclear strategists, his eyes went wide. “Get ready for some straight talk,” he advised. “They never let these guys out of the cage. They aren’t supposed to talk to anyone. So if you have them, expect to get an earful.”)

Packer, like so many others interviewed for this story, told me he is bracing for a very different battle than the ones fought in the aftermath of 9/11. “2027 is the year Xi Jinping said they need to be ready to go to war,” he noted, referencing China’s president. “We use that as a benchmark.” With that date only three years off, Packer is now the sub force’s civilian lead on AUKUS, a trilateral security pact through which the US and UK are helping Australia field a fleet of nuclear subs in an attempt to check China’s ambitions. He is also working on incorporating AI into aircraft that scour the South China Sea for acoustic signatures emanating from Beijing’s subs.

While public attention is focused on Ukraine and the Middle East, the Western submarine community is busy analyzing the threat posed by China’s industrial base, which is churning out surface ships and undersea vessels at an astounding clip. The Chinese navy, in fact, is the world’s largest, consisting of more than 370 vessels. American shipyards simply cannot keep pace.

The good news, Packer and others believe, is that for all its capacity, Chinese naval prowess, when it comes to submarines and seasoned sailors, is lacking. While that could change, it is unlikely to do so, many experts contend, on Xi’s timeline. That gives America’s so-called Silent Service an advantage. “In the Taiwan fight,” Packer maintained, “we’re prepared to go into the jaws of the Chinese undersea forces and take them all out.” All the surface ships as well.

Black Hull, Orange Tubes

On the voyage out to the Wyoming, I was accompanied by Commander David Burke, 42, the deputy of Submarine Squadron 20, a seat Houston once occupied. Burke was coming out to conduct a spot inspection to make sure the crew and its new commanding officer (CO) were up to snuff.

Burke would know. In February 2022, while in charge of an Atlantic fleet boomer, the USS Rhode Island, he received an urgent message that Russia was invading Ukraine. If the US made certain moves, Vladimir Putin warned, forces might be met with a nuclear response. “That was a turning point,” he recalled, “a serious reminder of why our job is so important on an SSBN.” Months later, when Burke surfaced the Rhode Island in Gibraltar, the meaning was clear: America’s boomers can show up anywhere, any time. Last July, the USS Kentucky, a sister ship assigned to the Pacific, made a port call in Busan, South Korea, the first such visit in more than 40 years.

As our support ship approached the Wyoming, Burke, a plainspoken Illinoisan with piercing blue eyes, was candid about the sacrifices submariners make by being out of touch for long stretches. “I have an eight-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. Through her fourth birthday I was probably gone 50 percent of her life—so it’s tough,” he conceded. “If I’m going to be away from my family, I want it to be both professionally rewarding and challenging.” He was less candid about his accomplishments. Only later did I learn that Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to head naval operations in the service’s 248-year history, had just given him the coveted Stockdale Award, presented annually to the most inspiring leaders in the Navy. In short, the sub force command was sending a golden boy to put the Wyoming through its paces—with a Vanity Fair reporter and photographer in tow. The new CO was about to be tested in real time and on the record.

After a night and a morning at sea, our embarkation had arrived. As whitecaps crashed against the Wyoming’s hull, Burke went aboard first. I followed, traversing a rickety drawbridge from ship to ship, aided by a line of sailors fanned out across the sub’s vast deck. Some were toting automatic weapons, a precaution when a boomer is on the surface. A rescue diver was ready if a swell took one of us overboard. The ship’s slightly curved surface, like a giant whale’s, was matte black, covered with special material that absorbs sound waves and masks the craft’s sonar signature. The hull itself was punctuated with two rows of 12 round lids, like giant manhole covers.

Upon reaching the hatch, I carefully descended several vertical ladders that were slick with sea spray. Stepping off, it felt like I was stepping back in time. I was surrounded by walls with exposed pipes, old-school circuitry, panels full of analog dials, switches, and gauges. It felt part boiler room, part brewery, part mad scientist lab from a 1950s sci-fi film. The explanation: When the devices on this class of sub were devised in the ’70s and ’80s, they were quite modern. Some have been upgraded; others remain unchanged (one uses a crank!) because they’re reliable, durable, and easy to replace at sea. Here and there, I passed men and women in coveralls who were receiving instructions on throwback speakers and talking into vintage telephones. Save for the advanced systems in the control and sonar rooms (bristling with screens labeled “secret” and “top secret”), everything about the boat—down to the Wyoming’s stated mission (to be “on scene and unseen”)—harkened back to the Cold War. Maybe, I thought, we were being cast in the sequel. Or maybe the original never ended.

My first impressions were predictable: The ship seemed cramped, with narrow passageways. I was surprised, though, that the boomer’s four decks, with 14-foot ceilings, also made it seem cavernous, even airy, in certain spots. Offsetting the retro-tech vibe were odd trinkets hanging from the walls: cowboy boots, lariats, spurs. This was, after all, the Wyoming, and as a way of paying homage to the state—and providing a touch of home—these voyagers had gone out of their way to set a Western tone to the decor. The ship’s motto, I soon discovered, was “Cowboy Up.” And ever since the boat was commissioned in 1996, crew members have made pilgrimages to the state, meeting officials and supporters and taking in the rodeo.

In short order, we were cruising at dozens of miles an hour and depths of several hundred feet. And, unavoidably, the missiles remained front of mind. Every few steps I encountered what looked like curved walls, painted orange. These were the missile tubes, as massive as the trunks of redwoods. (An arms control pact with the Russians dictates that only 20 of the 24 missile tubes can be operable.) I also toured the torpedo room where the Mark 48s—with their 650-pound high-explosive warheads—are stored.

The missile tubes were ubiquitous—so much so that the bathrooms and crew quarters were situated right beside them. In fact, the compartment where I would spend the night—which contained six small, curtained-off bunks, as if on a train’s sleeper car—was effectively wedged between two Tridents.

Chessmaster

Those orange tubes—those missiles—were the reason I was now hours from shore. But to understand their use, I wanted to meet the man who was in day-to-day control of them. And to that end, a month before my voyage, I paid a visit to landlocked Omaha.

There, I was invited into the buzzing corridors of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), the nerve center of America’s nuclear arsenal, located at Offutt Air Force Base. This is the place that produced the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the place where President George W. Bush had taken temporary refuge on 9/11.

When I arrived, I spotted mechanics attending to two aircraft on the tarmac. One was an E-6B Mercury, a nondescript plane that, if needed, can serve as both a communications relay for ballistic-missile subs like the Wyoming and as an airborne launch control for land-based ICBMs. Nearby was a heavily militarized version of a Boeing 747, the E-4B Nightwatch, which houses the National Airborne Operations Center, which, according to its mission statement, “provides a highly survivable command, control and communications center…in case of national emergency or destruction of ground command and control centers.” Its nickname: the Doomsday Plane.

STRATCOM—with its 150,000 service members and civilians—is led by an Air Force four-star, General Anthony Cotton, who ushered me through his sprawling outer office, swarming with airmen, sailors, soldiers, and Marines, before taking me into his inner sanctum, a hushed, wood-paneled oasis in the eye of the storm. Cotton, along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Charles Brown Jr., is part of a trio of Black leadership atop America’s national-security pyramid. And it was a point of pride, clearly, that of all the Black four-stars, as Cotton told me, “there’s only been 10 in the history of the Air Force, and I’m number 10.”

I asked what drew him to the service. “Simple,” he said, walking over to a display case containing a folded flag with a picture next to it. “That’s my dad. He joined in 1942. As you can see, he was a diamond-wearing African American that was in World War II in the Army Air Corps, made the transition to the Air Force, and retired as a chief master sergeant in 1974. So I came out of the womb as a member of the military.” He was emotional as he recalled how, in 2000, his father passed away a month to the day after his mother. “He didn’t see me make lieutenant colonel, but I buried with him my promotion recommendation form.”

I found Cotton, from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to be open, gregarious, and quick to laugh—traits that might seem at odds with the solemnity of his mission. “I don’t want to walk the halls of the Pentagon and when people see me, they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s General Cotton, the nuclear guy,’ ” he said.

Cotton, 60, recounted how he’d first felt the weight of command as a 22-year-old on his inaugural ride out to a missile field in Minot, North Dakota. “You’re jumping in that Suburban,” he said, “knowing that you’re responsible to execute, under presidential authorities, the most powerful weapon on the face of the globe. You see the humming of the launch control center and you see 10 green lights and know that on the other side of that green light is a Minuteman III, with warheads on board. It all becomes real at that point.” Cotton would eventually hold a string of lofty leadership posts, most recently running the Air Force Global Strike Command, responsible for the country’s bombers and ICBMs.

His job as STRATCOM chief: preparing and, if necessary, turning to the tools at his disposal, from conventional long-range strike weapons and multiplatform nuclear arms to joint electromagnetic spectrum operations, which involve exploiting and attacking enemy frequencies (as well as protecting our own). Being able to provide those options to the commander in chief “is what I do,” he explained, before taking stock of the geopolitical moment. “That’s important, especially now as we see the threat vectors to rules-based international order.” Translation: Over the second half of the last century, Western national security officials were preoccupied with trying to keep one adversary (the USSR) in check, even as the dueling nuclear powers ratified landmark arms control treaties. With those efforts now in eclipse and nuclear proliferation a chilling reality, America and its allies are currently contending with two near-peer opponents, Russia and China, as well as their own set of allies with nuclear aspirations, including North Korea, Iran, and, by extension, the Axis of Resistance—a term that encompasses armed groups like the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

That’s quite a roster. Who, I wondered, did Cotton have on speed dial? He chortled at the question before turning it back around, “Who do you think?” He then showed me a bank of phones with buttons for, among others, Biden, Austin, Brown, the leadership of the US intelligence community, and the 10 combatant commanders who, along with Cotton, command and deploy the nation’s armed forces. “Are you the guy nobody wants to hear from?” I asked, half in jest. “Yeah, actually it does kind of suck,” he said with a smile.

Shortly before my visit, the Florida had made its presence known in the Suez. Only hours after I departed, the B-21 Raider, which will replace the B-2 as a strategic bomber, made its first public flight. Cotton was eager to convey the range of options he can summon if required: missiles, bombers, subs. “For me, being the chessmaster, [and] being able to offer those effects, if warranted, is incredibly important. Because at the end of the day, I’m supposed to be able to hold people at risk, and I can do that with the triad.”

Still, the chessmaster doesn’t sleep soundly. “Even at the height of the Cold War, you had conversations with your adversaries,” Cotton said, alluding to the red phone, a hotline set up in 1963 between Washington and Moscow that allowed dialogue and de-escalation in times of crisis. “We’re not seeing that with China. I would love to have my counterpart come visit me to understand what we’re doing so there’s no miscalculation.” (In December, Joint Chiefs chairman Brown spoke with a top Chinese general about reestablishing ad hoc communication, which Beijing had suspended after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon.)

Sub Species

In the Wyoming’s wardroom I met Jeremy Garcia, the sub’s new CO. Like others who hold the rank of commander and helm a sub, he is addressed as “captain” on board. Burke was cordial to Garcia, but he was also there to give an unvarnished evaluation. So he hung back a bit.

Garcia, 44, tall and bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Tim Robbins, had not been given much notice about our visit or the decision to pair it with Burke’s drop-by. But he seemed like the kind who rolled with the punches. He’d already had his trial by fire: His first week on active patrol at sea, Hamas and Israel had gone to war, and the Wyoming was prepped in case it might be tagged for duty there, if only to surface and convey a strategic message. Garcia was unflustered and welcoming. Off the bat, he urged me to speak with any of the 163 sailors on board—without any PR minders. I then accompanied him around his ship.

A Bellevue, Washington, native, he’d enlisted in 1998 as a nuclear engineering and electronics technician. He made his bones on fast-attack and ballistic-missile subs before finally assuming the Wyoming’s reins. The best part of the gig, he told me, is “growing an amazingly talented and proficient team of warriors.”

Talented, indeed. The threshold for a billet on a boomer is, in part, one’s range. Crew members must be comfortable spending months in a confined space (typically 70 to 100 days), pitching in on various assignments, and being knowledgeable about nuclear physics. Before submariners receive their insignia—a patch or pin showing a sub flanked by marine creatures—they must “earn their fish”: demonstrating proficiency as first responders across departments, ever mindful of the threat posed by fire or a breach in the hull. Cooks, for example, can serve as EMTs if a sailor ever needs treatment by the onboard medic, who runs what amounts to an urgent care clinic. The wardroom can be converted into an operating theater. (With elaborate systems for swapping in crews and rations, subs, unless they require maintenance, can conceivably remain at sea, indefinitely, during times of heightened tension.)

Walking the ship, I met mariners who were Asian, Black, Latino, immigrants, first-generation Americans, third-generation sailors, and so on. This was a point of pride for the captain and the sub force. And yet the culture has become so ingrained that merely inquiring about it—or the 13-year effort to integrate women on subs—was met with eye rolls. A distinct message was coming through to me: The perils and impediments of life underwater trivialized any fissures that might otherwise exist on land. “A submarine is always trying to kill you and our job is trying not to die,” asserted Jonathan Omillian, a salty missile technician, who noted that crew members were united in purpose. “The reason that we are out here is so that we have a place to come home to. We are pretty much the big guys standing up to the bullies saying, ‘Hey’—excuse my language—‘Fuck off. Don’t fuck with us. We are bigger. We are better.’ ”

His ship’s leader has a command philosophy that might seem counterintuitive to those on shore. “I’m a big fan of pushing responsibility down to the lowest level,” Garcia said, “and the lowest level does not mean rank. It means technical expertise and experience. So if that means a very important program can be run by a first-tour individual of any rank, then I’m fine with that—as long as they own it.”

The job of diving and steering, for example, is not in the captain’s remit. He has put that chore in the hands of the juniormost people (albeit with a senior officer seated behind them). Garcia, like a dozen other COs I spoke to, takes people who are too young to legally drink, metaphorically drops them in the deep end, and says, “Swim.” True, other branches of the military imbue airmen, soldiers, and Marines with outsize responsibility. But I am hard-pressed to think of another mission as daunting as testing a teenager’s mettle underwater with a nuclear reactor in back and thermonuclear warheads in front.

Beyond their duties, the Gen Z’ers—and the millennials who supervise them—must contend with a life that is practically monastic. They are completely removed from meaningful connectivity, including social media. Their only contact with the outside world involves infrequent (and heavily monitored) emails with family when the sub is at a depth and a posture that permit it. There is also little privacy beyond the confines of a draped bunk that can feel like a coffin. Deprived of many other creature comforts, sailors can avail themselves of exercise gear, which is spread around the boat, including treadmills and free weights—but not when the sub is running silent so as to evade detection.

When I first entered the command-and-control room, called “the conn,” a young ensign named Kirsten Barber was moving with purpose between banks of displays and the sub’s twin periscopes. She was standing watch, scanning for vessels—on the surface or submerged—that might approach the sub or compromise its position. “Knowing that we’re out here basically keeping the entire United States safe,” she told me, “is pretty awesome, actually.” Barber answers to the nickname Chop, a title submariners assign the chief supply officer, a job vital to the ship’s operation and the crew’s morale.

“Some of the smartest people I’ve met are younger than me,” Barber said, gesturing toward the stern. “I’m 23 and there are some people back aft running a nuclear reactor that just blow me away every day. They have to be smart to be on this boat.” I was reminded of a conversation I had when I first visited sub force command. Over lunch, a young Annapolis grad—an astrophysicist who evidently has a couple of satellites named after her—discussed her plans to possibly switch gears and become an astronaut. She was reciting, rather than bragging about, her time at school and at sea, when a captain sitting next to her piped in wryly, “I have the same credentials. Other than the satellites.”

At one point on the trip, I found myself marveling over, of all things, a biscuit. Not only was it gluten-free, it was delicious. When I shared my surprise with Barber, she beamed. Of all her roles, none looms larger than overseeing the galley. She took me on a tour of the cavernous refrigeration and freezer compartments that are manned by “Jack of the Dust,” the sobriquet of the sailor—bedecked in winterized gear—in charge of provisions storage.

Virtually everyone I interviewed on the Wyoming raved about the food, which is an atypical reaction when it comes to military chow. There is a reason for that: Among the ship’s secret weapons is Culinary Specialist Chief Petty Officer Earl White. Raised in Granville, Ohio, White followed in his grandfather’s steps, starting his career as a butcher before going to culinary school. In 2009, he joined the Navy and served for six years on Burke’s old boat, the Rhode Island, before taking a land-based assignment. “I did four years at Camp David,” he recounted while kneading dough in the galley. (The Navy also runs the White House dining room, famously referred to as The Mess.) “I did two years of Obama, two years of Trump. It was an incredible experience.” White not only served first families and VIPs, he also earned prestigious gourmet certifications. While we were underway, he whipped up bisques and beignets.

For one lunch, we had a Mexican spread; even at sea they called it Taco Tuesday. I shared meals in the wardroom with Burke, Garcia, his deputy Ben Reed, and several junior officers. We dined on oxtail, salmon, and winter vegetables—served on proper Navy china. (After supper, Burke and Garcia teamed up in a fierce, smack-talking game of cribbage against other Navy visitors.)

But the main event, as all of us knew, was how Garcia would be judged by his cribbage comrade, Burke. Top officials can issue all the orders they want, but someone has to push the buttons, quite literally. And so the climactic moment aboard the Wyoming came when Garcia and company engaged in a command-and-control exercise (CCX), replicating the exact, and exacting, procedures required to deploy the sub’s deadly payload.

For much of the voyage, I’d noticed that Burke, silent but affable, would appear and then drift away to assess crew members on their navigation skills, their weapons preparedness, and their engineering prowess. Now, with Burke watching from the wings, the CCX commenced.

As planned, a simulated emergency action message (EAM) came in from the National Command Authority. The message was received by the communications team, led by 27-year-old Lieutenant Michael Gomez, whom everyone calls Commo. He was quickly joined by another junior officer and, using their thumbs and forefingers, they jointly grasped the EAM—a plastic object about the size of a playing card—and the men, facing each other, walked sideways across the conn. The reason for this unusual choreography: The nuclear command-and-control process requires two-person integrity, theoretically ensuring that there be redundant affirmation should a worst-case EAM ever be received—until the unimaginable moment a missile might be released.

When the pair reached the spot where Garcia was standing, they could see that resting on his hip were scores of keys that were wrapped around his frame like a tangle of Christmas lights. “The CO has lanyards that contain keys needed to carry out very specific processes to support any missile launch,” a senior Navy officer explained. “These keys are part of a nuclear safeguard process and are used in various locations around the SSBN to enable a launch when, and only when, a launch order has been validated to be from the US president—as he or she is the only person that can authorize a launch from an SSBN.”

With his executive officer standing beside him, the captain authenticated the message, checking it against a codebook to ensure that neither an outside party nor an onboard subversive had intercepted and changed it in any way. Garcia then uttered a phrase that, were it not a drill, might irrevocably lead to the alteration of some portion of the planet: “I concur with missilization.”

Over in the sub’s Missile Control Center, the weapons officer, Lieutenant William Zupke and his deputy, Lieutenant Junior Grade Noelle Gill, were hunched behind sailors who peered at consoles displaying the status of every missile tube. Armed guards milled about. “Standing by for fire order,” someone said. Over the loudspeaker came the reply, “Concur with fire order.”

The ritual—the call-and-response, the presiding officiant, the two curates holding what amounted to a death wafer—had all the hallmarks and mystery of ceremonies performed in houses of worship or secret societies. In a way, the CCX had the trappings of a sacred rite turned on its head: a military liturgy that reinforced the profound implications of a potentially apocalyptic process.

Nothing was fired, of course. The keys inserted were effectively blanks. The entire exercise took only a matter of minutes. But the point was made: Not one of the submariners even flinched. All behaved as if, given the order, they would have had sufficient nerve to perform the task required.

A couple of weeks later, I asked Burke for his assessment of Garcia and his team. His response sounded like something Rickover might have said following the maiden 1960 voyage of the very first boomer, the USS George Washington. Burke felt the captain and his sailors performed well, “demonstrated tenacity,” and fulfilled “their mission of strategic deterrence and readiness to execute the president’s orders should deterrence fail.”

Before Dawn

At 5 a.m. on the day of our departure, I climbed up to the bridge—the highest position on the ship—to join Gomez, who stood watch in the hours before dawn. “Every time we’re on the surface, I come up here,” he said. His father is in US Special Forces; his wife serves on a surface ship. Two flights down, in the conn, Lieutenant Jeanny Sanger, a fellow Annapolis grad (and Ultimate Frisbee club teammate), was on duty.

Suddenly, a loud voice squawked from a speaker. The Wyoming’s suite of sophisticated sensors had spotted something. “He’s about 25 miles away,” Gomez said with binoculars at the ready. A surface ship? I inquired. “Yeah, hopefully, it’s not a submarine,” he responded.

After we sailed on for a few minutes, he broke the silence and spoke about his peers on the Navy’s other subs: “The fast-attacks get out and they get to do all the cool stuff every day. We don’t really get to do any of that. But it kind of does feel like you’re doing your mission when we’re out here and things are getting hot in the world.”