USS Triton was the first and only SSRN, a submarine built to extend fleet warning with a powerful air-search radar. Diving offered a way to escape attack, but it also ended the radar contact the boat was meant to maintain. The antenna sat lower than a destroyer's radar, which shortened its view against aircraft approaching near the waves. Its powerful emissions could also be detected from farther away than the submarine could see. Triton exposes the physical limits inside the Cold War plan to screen carrier groups with radar-picket submarines.
Chapter · 2:08-5:59
Triton and the radar-picket submarine problem
The opening explains why USS Triton was built as the US Navy's only nuclear radar-picket submarine and why that role was inherently awkward.