Submarines had a vital, if often unheralded, role in the superpower navies during the Cold War. Their crews carried out intelligence-collection operations, sought out and stood ready to destroy opposing submarines, and, from the early 1960s, threatened missile attacks on their adversary's homeland, providing in many respects the most survivable nuclear deterrent of the Cold War. For both East and West, the modern submarine originated in German U-boat designs obtained at the end of World War II. Although enjoying a similar technology base, by the 1990s the superpowers had created submarine fleets of radically different designs and capabilities. Written in collaboration with the former Soviet submarine design bureaus, Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore authoritatively demonstrate in this landmark study how differing submarine missions, antisubmarine priorities, levels of technical competence, and approaches to submarine design organizations and management caused the divergence.

Norman Polmar is an internationally known analyst, consultant, and award-winning author specializing in naval, aviation, and intelligence issues. He has served as a consultant or adviser to Congress, three Secretaries of the Navy, and two Chiefs of Naval Operations, as well as to various Navy and Department of Defense offices and several U.S. and foreign aerospace and shipbuilding firms. Polmar is the author of more than thirty books K. J. Moore is the founder of the Cortana Corporation, a high-technology applications firm concerned with submarine development. While on duty with the U.S. Navy, he served on board submarines in the positions of weapons officer, engineering officer, and operations officer. For the Navy and in private industry, he has held analytical assignments that involved the study of Soviet and Western submarines and submarine tactics