Book Review: Sub War by Bruce Jones
As Above, So Below. Five years ago Jones wrote a book called To Rule The Waves, basically about surface shipping and the history and modern issues revolving around various geopolitical issues on the surface of the oceans. Here, he takes a lot of the same approach - with a lot less bibliography at the end (but with the same extensive footnotes at the end of each chapter) - and now details a lot of what is happening with vessels *below* the surface of said oceans, nearly exclusively the titular submarine, with a few references to other human occupied vehicles and a decent section of the book dedicated to unmanned underwater vehicles.
There's quite a bit here, and this is written at a Naval Historian level - while it explains a fair amount, it also demands you be able to understand even more with only a hand wave as Jones presses on with whatever he *really* wants to talk about in that moment.
As someone with only a *very* cursory knowledge of the field - I've heard *of* most of the classes of vessels Jones names, but didn't know much beyond "giant tube in under water that shoots things that go boom both underwater and in the air" - there was quite a bit that I learned here, though others (such as a couple of friends that are former submariners themselves) probably won't learn *as* much, particularly where Jones is covering more of the relevant histories.
Still, there is quite a bit of bleeding edge stuff here, including some discussion of Russia's "doomsday device" nuclear underwater unmanned vehicle and the various efforts to both counter that threat and respond in kind - details that again seem current to late 2025 or so, just a few months before I first obtained this book.
Overall an interesting tale that fans of Tom Clancy's nonfiction works will likely down as fast as a redneck downs a Natty Light at a football tailgate and others will, again, very likely learn quite a bit from.
Very much recommended.
This review of Sub War by Bruce Jones was originally written on October 16, 2026.
