How modern commerce raiding might work

What would commerce raiding look like in a modern world war?

Probably SSNs and disguised armed merchant ships, not scarce SSGNs committed to routine merchant hunting.

Nuclear attack submarines could hunt shipping, but sending an entire SSGN would waste a scarce high-value asset against relatively few targets. SSNs are a more plausible undersea choice because they can search widely without committing a specialized cruise-missile boat. A lower-profile approach would adapt merchant ships as modern Q-ships using containerized or land-derived weapon systems. The panel imagines even a 76 mm gun concealed inside a container until the raider reveals itself. Its reference to armed merchant cruisers in the Second World War gives that proposal a historical lineage rather than treating disguised raiders as an entirely new idea. The proposed mix balances concealment and reach against the opportunity cost of assigning expensive naval platforms to routine merchant hunting.