Comment Re:Opportunity (Score 5, Interesting) 609
Your estimate is almost certainly far too pessimistic.
The USN was doing skunkworks stuff during the cold war, with purpose-outfitted subs, finding interesting bits of Soviet hardware in some crazy deep waters. I seriously doubt that they've forgotten how to do it. My money would be that they've continue to develop the capability, but even if all it's done is stagnate they've already proven very competent at finding Soviet needles in oceanic haystacks. And NORAD will have some very accurate tracking to help them start the search. Hell, I'd bet even money they've already got something out in the Pacific somewhere waiting for just such an opportunity. Or there's a lot of crewmen who just went off leave all of a sudden.
Have a read of "Blind Man's Bluff" sometime, there's some rather fascinating escapades in there.