[_xerces_]

The vastness of the Pacific and indeed the planet's oceans is something I noticed was missing from the article. I think of it in terms of detection, you can have the sophisticated technology and perhaps focus it on one area or choke point, but in general it will be very hard to search the entire ocean for a nuclear ballistic missile sub.

Drop a submarine-sized object at a random location on land (a much, much smaller search space) and I bet it would take a long time to find despite all the earth observation satellites at our disposal. The oceans are much bigger, and have a whole other dimension (depth) and the the subs move.