Post-Tailhook ’91, the Navy got religion on gender issues, as Congress repealed the combat exclusion laws. The submarine service successfully fought gender integration off, arguing that the cost of converting unterseeboots to co-ed outweighed any prospective benefit. Which, the men folk don’t shower down there for months on end, I don’t think.
Turns out that’s no longer true, it seems. About the cost, I mean. Not the showering:
The Pentagon is moving to lift a century-old policy that prohibits women from serving aboard U.S. Navy submarines, several news outlets are reporting.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates notified Congress in a letter Friday of his intent to repeal the ban, which has been in place as long as the Navy has had submarines. The plan will phase in women’s service, beginning with officers aboard larger submarines — presumably the Ohio class — that are easier to retrofit for coed quarters, the Associated Press is reporting.
Women began serving on Navy surface ships in 1993, but have remained barred from subs because of concerns that the close quarters would make it difficult for men and women to serve together.
Congress has 30 working days to object to the plan.
Both Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus have voiced support for allowing women to serve on submarines. Mabus told the Daily Press last year that Navy submarines would not require significant design changes to accommodate women sailors.
Yeah. Them other guys were just funnin’ around about the cost and all. You caught us.
Could have done it all along, but we were busy doing other things.
what price political correctness?
Isn’t it amazing that the USN, after 235 years in the Navy business could be so wrong about so many things, women aboard ship, women in combat, gays, and women on subs. How could they have stayed in business so long, with such ignorance? Thank goodness for the Progressives, to bring light into the dark places, and show us the way into the light.
I was the squadron Engineer for a squadron of seven SSNs a floating drydock and a tender. The dock and tender were integrated, of course. During the tender’s workup for deployment to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf as the duty repair yard in area, I had to go to sea as a senior squadron observer.
When I would be going from my inspections and audits to O country later, I took a couple of detours on the 01 level outside at night. Tripped over three or four couples observing the horizon in the pitch black night while just walking 70 feet on deck. Told the Old Man about it, thought it was a bit of a hazard, not to mention slightly unprofessional, and he put out the word… no one outside after sunset. So they all moved into the fans rooms and paint lockers. Of course it stopped nothing in the pregnancy rate before deployment (which always went up before deployments).
Bottom line: you can’t stop the “fraternizing” from occurring amongst the 19-25+ [maybe all the way up to 42 yrs old] yr old crowd. Too many hormones in most young ‘uns. Not saying one should try to fight that tidal wave. Just saying one should ask why it is important to our warfighting capability to integrate a warrior profession. But obviously, Lex and the rest of you folks have done it successfully, even if it added to your pain, so why should submariners be different (other than the fact that we are better at remaining undetected than all the rest of you guys out there…just leave us alone and let us go do our thing and be happy we don’t put a couple of Mk48s where the sun don’t shine….glad we’re on the same team and all…smile, gents, smile)?
So now that we are to fully integrate, be certain that you remember that you gals who come up pregnant immediately before and during deployment are going to get removed from the ship as soon as possible. If you turn up pregnant at week 2 of deployment, just remember that the ship will have to divert a week off station to HUMEVAC/MEDEVAC/PREGEVAC you and put your division down by one more body, and keep us from our mission for another week. While the destroyers and carriers can just helo the damsel off to some traffic control point and/or send her off on the COD, it is a little more difficult to execute when you are 600 miles from the nearest friendly port and to remain undetected while on mission. Can’t just send a helo to the middle of nowhere afew miles off a hostile coast, surface to rid the ship of the pregnant baggage, and expect to remain undetected, now can we? and imagine the uproar when said pregnant gal ends up in the drink and/or injured during the helo or small boat transfer.
When you want to know where the hostile SSNs are, remember you took one of the 7-10 deployed SSNs (of 40 total in inventory) off the mission of finding those hostile SSNs and keeping track of them for the US Navy while we sent her home. Not something typically done if she gets pregnant on a DD/CG/CVN, diverting from mission, is it?
So while I am certain it can be done, and must be done, we need to remember that we made things harder, again, on Men and Women who are already at sea for far too long, and with less than adequate resources to begin with (because so much is going to the Army and USMC), in the name of Equal Opportunity to ruin their career or provide the press with a bad story to write on the institution of the Navy. Yeah, I know you guys have all had stories of good gals who served with you. I’m OK with that. I have too, especially from my tender riding days. If it has to be done, it will happen on SSBNs first and we all have to make this work for the good of the Navy. And we’ll do it just as well as all you other folks have done it.
I just want to know when warfighting and preparing to kill our enemies while protecting the bird farm from same gets back to being our highest priority, and we can stop playing these stupid games over who is more Equal in Opportunity than Whom? Can we please concentrate from now on finding, localizing, and killing our enemies on Land, Air, and Sea than trying to prove we are all so politically correct as to be able to recognize a strong Woman can do as much as a strong Man as long as she wants to? Because I for one am really sick and tired of seeing my sailors spend all their already overworked selves spent in the name of political correctness instead of grappling with and killing our enemies.
War isn’t fair. Stop treating it like human beings can make it fair, and like they can stop Sex on the Boat, and think Pregnancy in the Nuclear Spaces isn’t a big press and legal deal.
OK?
Subsunk
“observing the horizon…” Heh. You mean they were horizontal with each other? The horror!
RE:
“Bottom line: you can’t stop the ‘fraternizing’ from occurring amongst the 19-25+ [maybe all the way up to 42 yrs old] yr old crowd.”
Better revise that bottom line, Subsunk.
My sweet 30-year-old wife took a tour on the Kitty Hawk to look good in front of the upcoming CPO Selection Board. It worked, and she reported aboard as brand-new JOC. PAO was a busy place, starting with the battlegroup Admiral being relieved for cause (affair with a junior officer, not in his chain). The Hawk was broke bad and with leadership in shambles (e.g., crew members car-jacking and breaking&entering on the beach). So they cleaned house, firing the CO and the CMC (don’t remember if the XO got the axe . . .).
The new CO brought in a new CMC, recently off an instructor tour at the Senior Enlisted Academy. He had been ready to retire, but they talked him into finishing his 30 years turning around the Hawk’s Goat Locker. I don’t know who started it (I suspect my wife, a bit of a power-groupie, tripped him and beat him to the ground), but four months later the CMC and his most junior female CPO messaged their respective spouses, wanting divorces. I got my e-mail the day after they left for sea.
They tried to keep it secret. Still, this kind of thing does not stay out of the rumor mill for long—and at least the CPOs and the Os knew it. The command must have been terrified that it would get out (yet ANOTHER scandal!), so the wagons were circled.
On the next eval cycle, guess which junior female CPO got the Must-Promote eval? Did she deserve it? Maybe. But try telling that to the poor MMC who had been working 24/7 to keep that tired old ship ready for sea trials. So much for good order and discipline.
To add another aspect to the fall-out, my wife then took shore duty at CNFJ PAO, where she was caught out by her new CMC. He counselled her on her inappropriate relationship and instigated an investigation (don’t think it was formal, just a tip-off). Of course,the investigation went nowhere since the consequences would have been so scandalous. He was frustrated; she was furious. She got him back. When he prevented her from getting the CAC aux duty (because she was a smoker), she retaliated with an EOC complaint against him, putting a nice final blemish on his exceptional 30-year career.
I later learned that the Navy prosecutes adultery in earnest only if the spouse or spouses make a stink. COs have more important things to spend their time on than the pecadillos of their CMCs.
CPOs become CMCs when they step forward and offer themselves to demonstrate by example the Navy’s core values. And this clown had been an S.E.A. instructor!
Honor? Courage? commitment?
Makes me want to puke.
So it isn’t only the young ones who fall prey, be it hormones, groupie-ism or just flattery (she likes ME? shucks!).
BTW, I am sure no one here would be surprised that the ex-wife has had great success playing her gender card in subsequent assignments.
And we do so shower!!! Since it is now gonna be coed, I’m sure we’ll be showering communally….you know, to save water? Haven’t you ever heard of submarine showers?????
LOL.
Subsunk
Sacrifices MUST be Made – I’ll volunteer to re-upp as the officer in charge of “water conservation” and “shower monitor” for my Female Shipmates
At camps across the AFGHN, the Marines/Army are living together as close as any sub and many are going without showers/hot chow for weeks….part of the cost of being in the service. Marines outside Marja went without sleeping bags for weeks…
No amount of “political correctness” will make a stronger military – only instilling a “warrior ethos” across the services – If the females make it work on Subs, so be it. if not, we will know in short order.
IT’s not working on the surface, just being endured.
Looks like SECNAV and CNO are “stuck on stupid”.
SECNAV even says “…Navy submarines would not require significant design changes to accommodate women sailors.”
Hold him to that, and advise all prospective dolphin damsels that they are going aboard a WARSHIP, intended to go in harm’s way, and that living conditions are primitive, privacy non-existent, and that fraternization WILL BE PUNISHED! Fainting violets, those upset by nudity, coarse language, hard work etc. need not apply. Due to the aforementioned conditions, there will be zero tolerance for any “sexual harassment” or other PC type complaints.
Women on subs is several orders of magnitude more stupid and harmful to readiness than women on combatant ships of any other type.
Maybe Congress will show a rare burst of rational thought and veto this dumb idea, but with their track record, I expect nothing useful coming from them.
Meanwhile the funds needed to implement “Navy submarines would not require significant design changes to accommodate women sailors” will come from already scarce resources. And there will be several echelons of Pink Kommisars to monitor and report on implementation, further draining personnel from productive work.
I weep for what our Navy has become under Obama, albeit fairness required that we note it started downhill under Clinton and Bush.
The only way that this works is if the Navy has an all-female creww submarine/
Otherwise, it’s screw the pooch time.
I have NO problem with women in the Navy. I have BIG problems with women aboard submarines. Heck. I have BIG problems with women aboard Combatants. That’s just me, but also a HUGE proportion of blackshoes AND brownshoes.
Yup. One-sex crews would solve a lot of problems. And might be more practical than people think.
It’s easy for the folks who have not been denied any rights to sneer that this is simply political correctness.
Its easy enough to require a negative pregnancy test before deployment and stock a sub with contraception…there are bc pills that eliminate menstruation, as well as iuds that do the same…so takes care of that complaint too. Only the very unlucky and the ignorant have unplanned pregnancies, so make sure everyone is educated with more than abstinence training.
Seems if the navy is worried about building a fighting force, they should be pulling from the widest population pool possible.
A friend of mine who served on a nuclear sub used to say it would be smarter to have women run subs–they’re smaller and would fit better in the cramped quarters and have more patient temperments for long underwater deployments.
Laurie- This is not about “who has been denied rights.”
This is about combat effectiveness of a warship.
Encouraging or facilitating sexual relations aboard ship (boat, if Subsunk prefers) is immoral as well as condoning many violations of the UCMJ. It also promotes jealousy and breakdown of teamwork as he/she compete for sexual favors.
A pregnancy test two weeks before deployment and your other suggestions may prevent the mid cruise MEDEVAC scenario. However, ANY pregnancy throws a major monkey wrench into combat readiness. They don’t just grab a bunch of sailors and throw them on a boat and head to sea. They spend months working on individual and team training schedules needed to be combat ready. Crewmembers are not interchangeable parts where you just detail another sailor(ette) to fill a sudden vacancy.
In addition to the long lead time for training, there is a HUGE cost, with nuke training pipeline several years long before they are qualified to fill a billet. Wasting that time and money on some female who then becomes pregnant before they fill out their enlistment is a total waste. And entirely preventable.
No, this is just a DUMB idea in terms of combat readiness of the most complex ships in the world. If measured in terms of political correctness and equal opportunity it may make perfect sense. However, people who think in those terms are doing irreparable harm to our Navy and to the security of our country.
However, China will probably own the entire U.S. and the Navy anyway in 10 years if we keep borrowing money from them, so it may be a moot point.
Odd, as I was just glancing through the Bill of Rights the other day. I didn’t see a one about serving aboard warships. Think we can add the rights of gimps and fat old guys to that list as well, so long as we’re talking about rights and not so much about what’s best for the crew and Navy and ship?
The Navy does pull from a very wide population pool already, and I very much doubt there is some secret, startling ability to submarine service that is inherent in the female of the species that has remained unknown until now, hence women aren’t really bringing anything new to the table in terms of abilities.
Your friend may be right about the smaller size being an advantage, however her generalization about temperament may be in error. In my experience men are slobs and cretins and that’s pretty much the depth of their social skills. They are less likely to hold grudges, less likely to give a rip if they’re treated poorly by somebody, failure to communicate is actually a plus in our lives because it simplifies things a great deal — no confrontation, everything is cool.
That’s not the case with women, at least in my experience. And that’s one of the few hard-wired things that are different between the sexes.
Now I’m not claiming this would render a ship unfit for service or anything. I am saying this indicates women bring nothing unique to the talent pool and something new to the inter-personal relationship department, so that’s a change over the status quo. The surface warfare fleet has been dealing with this for years and by and large it’s worked out but there have been difficulties. In a sub, difficulties can’t be removed so easily. Placing a “Female Only” label on a head or shower is pretty easy. Getting a crew to operate well together for six months? Not so much.
– Max
Laurie, I haven’t been absolutely 100% persuaded either way on this issue, and I have no experience to bring to bear on it. But more contraception is obviously NOT the answer to the pregnancy issue because no contraception is 100%, and there is the matter of whether it’s used regularly and correctly, something that certainly can’t be guaranteed. And as those with more experience above have said, removing a pregnant woman from a submarine on a deployment is hugely disruptive and damaging to the mission.
I like the idea of women having every opportunity men do, but that so many people whose judgment I respect are alarmed about this greatly concerns me (hence my not being 100% convinced either way).
Laurie has her agenda and qualified, experience people providing qualified, substantive comments on the issue, based on their experience, is not going to change her mind. Agenda driven.
War ships are just that -ships for war. Not a vehicle for social change in and of themselves.
And unless I misremember, Laurie has never served. Usually that is not a disqualifer, though on this topic I believe it is.
Not having served on a submarine, I place a STRONG deference to those that have.
Course, why should we have a strong, cohesive, effective military when we can play social politics with it?
Laurie,
“….have more patient temperments for long underwater deployments.”
You should have seen some of the temper tantrums and crying I’ve seen in the Navy. I’ve never seen a male sailor cry because he couldn’t get his phones to work during General Quarters, but I have seen a female sailor do that on a surface ship. I currently work in law enforcement, I’ve dealt with many, many more unstable women out on the road than men. When men lose it, it’s really bad but it’s also a lot less common. It has to do with the way each gender is wired.
Maybe she can even earn extra money…it would be like the sub would have its own brothel. How cosmopolitan!
Honestly, Laurie is this a stab at humor? You actually condone sexual hookups on the sub? I can’t imagine anything more divisive for the crew.
Laurie, you are so right! My rights were violated when I washed medically from pilot training at Fort Rucker. They never shoulda done that. I’ll sue, they can send me back. Or, to save time and money, just give me the wings, promte me to CW-5 and retired me. I could handle that.
It’s nothing about rights Laurie. I had no right to even be admitted to the program at Rucker, much less entitled to graduate. I had no right to even enlist!
The current generation, particularly the left and their hangers on, think it’s all about rights. The military is about defending the rest of the country’s liberties, but there is a lot you give up when you sign on the dotted line, if they even let you. To go it your way makes the military just another social program that wastes the taxpayer’s money. And losing a war would be the ultimate waste of money.
Was gonna say something.
Then I read Subsunk’s comments.
Now all I have to do is go “ditto.”
I missed the last line of the story:
“”All other ships have women sailors on board, and they’re all doing great,” Mabus said.”
SECNAV is clearly uninformed, misinformed, or has a vastly different criteria for “dong great” than most former naval persons. Either that or…
John, I hope the “dong great” quote was just a typo – or was it a Freudian slip?
Hey SecNav — how’s them MILSPEC rose-colored glasses working out for you???
- SJS
Actually, the pregnancy problem can be fairly easily solved simply through the use of drugs, time-release things like Norplant, and I’m told other once-a-month shots can render a person infertile fairly reliably. Of course, there’s risks involved with that but when you’re government property you take your innoculations as ordered and that’s the way it’s going to be or else. Disease spread would be a consideration, STD’s and such, but it’s not like those can’t be found on shore leave already.
Likewise, there’s a lot of husbands raising kids solo and going to work full-time in this world, just like the women are. With a 50% divorce rate it’s not like raising the kids is solely the province of women any longer.
The big problem with pregnancy is it’s a 9-month cycle, with another 3 to 6 months for recovery. This just doesn’t fit the Blue/Gold watch schedule, and it’s not like the Navy can hire temps from the local agency to fill in when you’re not at your job. Now if one were to fill out a Declaration of Procreation chit six months beforehand, one could be transferred to shore duty, have that little tricycle motor, and once healed up return to sea duty with other arrangements made for cuddling the kid.
So really this all boils down to scheduling and crew cohesion, and the scheduling can be handled when your life belongs to Uncle Sam. Crew cohesion? I’ve never worked on a boomer, I’ll leave it to others to point out where that might be an interesting problem.
– Max
Max, whenever I see these kinds of points being made, I have these horrible visions of the Navy being sued (if these things become policy) for violating peoples’ rights by telling them they can’t get pregnant…
Speaking of offspring, how is little Throckmorton Damage doing? Is he speaking much, has he decided what college to go to?
Scott, the kid is doing wonderful, and is absolutely the most perfect machine ever devised for turning mother’s milk into hazardous waste. On the plus side, he’s gained not quite two pounds over the past month and is finally sleeping for more than 2 hours at a shot between feedings, so there is some hope that soon I’ll be able to actually, you know, sleep.
Wife called the other day and asked me to pick up diapers on the way home. Which I did. But she didn’t specify if they were needed for the newborn or the 2 year-old. So I picked up a pack of each, plus some TP for the adults, and a can of coffee. As I stood at the checkout laying out $50 for these items I recalled, not long ago, when $50 would buy food for the week. Now it merely pays for wiping it off the other end.
I suppose in some way that ought to be considered progress.
– max
I know what you mean. I stooped by our local Super Valu Wednesday night, and bought $57.00 worth of food. That filled one corner of the box on the Ranger. I remember, being a 48 year old, when if I would have spnt $57.oo on food, I would have needed a second pickup.
About fifty percent of the women who try hormonal contraception have to stop due to the EMOTIONAL side effects…that number increases with hormonal injections. So now you have a subset of people who have been forcibly injected with mood altering hormones, locked up in a can with people for months and months. Result will not be good. Try another idea.
So, when the first woman gets pregnant on a boomer on patrol(and there WILL be pregnancies-don’t kid yourself), are we gonna pull that ship off deterence patrol just for the pregnant sailor, or risk it coming out with three eyes?
XBrad, I know that babies born aboard a man-o-war were called “son of a gun” – what’ll they call those born aboard SSBNs?
Baby boomers?
Chortle, chortle, snicker!
Ooooooh that was bad
Tubal pregancies?
Don’t worry, the navy thought of that years ago. The warheads in USN boomer missiles have higher-quality early-burn plutonium, almost all 239, so as not to irradiate the sailors too much.
Now, as for having gals in the reactor room, those Morlocks (my kindred souls) don’t get any respect anyway, despite providing all power and propulsion for the important pretty folks in the forward cone.
9 months guys. Show me your patrol that lasts longer than 7. Girls can deliver a baby in a taxi, a boomer aint a big deal.
They complicate the ever loving s*** out of life but let’s be honest among ourselves, they can do all the jobs that are required of a sailor and don’t we want our submariners to suffer a little bit?
Can the majority of them lift a baulk of wood, and use it to prop up a damaged bulkhead? Can they drag a wounded Sailor out of a burning compartment? If they can’t, they can’t do all the jobs that are required of a Sailor.
No. At the Naval Hospital where I work, there are many pregnant Corpsman. In the ER, we had to transfer one EMT-trained Corpsman to sailing a desk due to the risks involved with the job (moving unconscious patients comes to mind — much like pulling sailors out of compartments) and being pregnant. They also don’t stand additional duties at the command.
Subsunk, I agree fully.
Scott,
I have word….and this is hearsay, so take it as that….that when Cole was hit in Yemen, it was the men who did most of damage control work, including shoring bulkheads and pounding plugs to stop the flooding. My source is a retired surface E-8 with his ear to the ground.
One thing the Navy learned early on during World War II was the importance of having plenty of bodies on board to fight casualties. It takes a lot of back breaking work, sometimes for days on end, to save a badly damaged ship. DC parties have to be constantly rotated so they won’t drop from fatigue. There also has to be plenty of strong back available to fill in for dead or wounded crewman. That’s why the Navy deliberately overmanned ships. That strategy worked, we had some ships with incredible amounts of damage that made it home (carrier Franklin and escort ship England come to mind). Now, the Navy is not only ignoring those lessons that were written in blood, but also filling approximately 15% of each crew with personnel who are lacking in upper body strength and who have light bone structures.
Cole was the worst thing the Navy has dealt with since women were placed on combatants. Before that, we had Belknap,Stark and Samuel B. Roberts. Warships take damage and each ship had better be fully manned with a crew able to fight for days on end to save their ship. Otherwise, we will lose some. History does repeat itself.
LAFFEY survived and came home, too, alhough no one is sure quite HOW. No ship should be able to take that damage and survive. HUZZAH USN DC practices.
The Code of Federal Regulations (the LAW), as it is currently written, states that the exposure of an unborn fetus to ionizing radiation, from any source, is to be minimized. The Navy, in following this law, and rightly so, removes the pregnant female (that would be the one with an unborn fetus), EVERY pregnant female, from exposure to ionizing radiation as soon as practicable. This means no more entry into the engineering spaces allowed until the pregnancy is over, by whatever method, followed by a doctor’s checkup before return to full duty. Subamrines have NO MEDICAL OFFICERS onboard. No DOCTORS, folks. I have a First Class or Chief Petty Officer on his Independent Duty Corpsman tour. Period. While I am fully certain that most of the Corpsmen I served with would LOVE to get all the training on how to handle gynecological exams and maintenance (some of those I served with were actually experts on the subject, but enough about their liberty habits), I am also certain that they still aren’t DOCTORS, and don’t want to be DOCTORS!
And Laurie, contraception is readily available on every surface ship in the fleet. How has that helped prevent pregnancy onboard and the “hooking up” which is so prevalent and inimical to “good order and dsicipline” so far? It hasn’t stopped it, won’t stop it, and does nothing to address that fact that you personally feel it is OK to ORDER female sailors not to get pregnant, to insist they involuntarily be administered birth control, and to eliminate a woman’s “right to choose” what to do with her own reproductive organs. Lets all just contemplate that little tidbit, while we’re at it. Hey, they HAVE to be allowed to serve, screw, and get an easier job once they get pregnant, or we have to insist the Navy is smarter about a woman’s internal organs than she is, and has jurisdiction over what she does with her body, and by implication her male shipmates do with their organs as well. Yeah, like that’ll fly with feminist lawyers.
And since the Navy is so short of funds for shipbuilding and modernization in the current defense bills, let’s all just spend a few million per ships to change the berthing arrangements and fix the toilets and showers for our new shipmates at the expense of really fixing the gear that is constantly broke and maintaining the ships so we don’t lose them due to excessive wear, catastrophic casualties, or just plain accidents because the time and resources are being devoted to retraining sailors to be more politcially correct and less WARRIOR of the Deep.
So I am back to my original question. If we do this now, can we please then stop railing at the Navy over what is fair and what isn’t fair, and move on to warfighting and defense and quit pussyfooting around with stupid sensitivity training that adds not one damn thing to the ability to locating, closing with, and destroying the enemy, or do we have to keep putting up with stupid requests to do more with less and destroy the morale and welfare of the sailors just to satisfy the NY Times and stupid Dhimmi Congresscritters?
Feel free to expound at length. I got an answer for everything. I’m a know it all, you know? And a Rocket Scientist to boot. That and a couple of bucks will get me entry to the Starbucks of my choice where I can STILL pay for my own coffee./sarc
Subsunk
Thank John Paul Jones that we now have the LCS, that could outgun BB-64, The Big Badger Boat, yet still recieve no damage! The sailors, both male and female, will be safe within her fireproof, non penatrateable aluminum deckhouse.
Operation Petticoat. Life imitates art.
But blackeagel603, will they now paint all the boats pink?
Sure, once DADT is repealed
I wonder what Jackalgirl (her blognym) has to say about this. She hasn’t updated her very nerdy blog in a coon’s age, but used to have a link to Cap’n Lex’s site on it. She kept her main blog in Esperanto.
Last time she updated her blog, she was Sonar Technician Second Class Kathy Woods, USN, aboard USS McFaul. I believe she dropped out of grad school to enlist in the Navy after and because of 9/11. She said something about letting chicks aboard subs, but they better have Norplant or Depoprovera in them.
She’s also a bit of a gun nerd, being on a pistol competition team.
P.s. Sometimes, I wonder what is the nerdiest rate in the Navy. Nukes? Sonar? Crypto? Fire control?
Bah.
To Marines, they’re *all* nerdy rates…
(course, I better watch my tongue, ere I find myself as a Naval officer myself before too long…)
But then Chaplains aren’t considered nerdy, are they? Or is it purely on a case-by-case basis?
Nerdy like the Chaplin on FRANKLIN, or ARIZONA.
Yeah, you guys are all shore duty weenies.
Not Sonar Techs. Some of the biggest animals I have know were STSs. Same with nuke EMs.
As a former nuke ET, I would have to defer in geekiness to the topside ETs – they were the hardcore, D&D-playing geeks. Often they were nuke waste who were too geeky to make it through NPS.
I have said this elsewhere, but what’s next, men in the Air Force?
Cost is only one of many factors. There are others that are more important. Basically, we don’t want to deal with all the problems the presence of women on surface ships has caused. Everything bad that happens on a skimmer is magnified many times in the tight space of a submarine hull. I’ve taken women to sea and have see it first hand.
Good readin’.
http://cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/SAPA%20020195.pdf
http://cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/HPScott%20061200.pdf
http://cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/NAVY-DACOWITS_0295.pdf
The first one is an independent study commissioned by the Navy and completed way back in 1995. Note all the different people not connected to the Navy that were interviewed. The second is a letter from a retired RADM UMO and subject matter expert. Since he’s a retired flag, he doesn’t have to kowtow to the politicians. The third is a letter from 2007, just three years ago. Just three years.
What has changed since those documents were produced? Nothing, except the lengths to which the Navy will go to please the likes of Barbara Boxer, et al. The issues raised during the first go around in the 1990s exist today and will continue to exist. We cannot afford to deal with the problems that the surface fleet has dealt with. With near 100% manning mandatory, we can’t afford women getting pregnant to get out of going on deployment. We can’t afford the loss of good order and discipline brought about by sexual matters. We can’t afford the sex scandals that keeps getting COs in other communities fired….along with CMCs and a sizable chunk of the Goat Locker.
This is a bad idea. I’ve been underway with women (female Mids and civilian test engineers) and have seen the problems this will cause. Enough with the political correctness and gender politics already. Many in Congress are already pushing back against the repeal of DADT, they need to intervene in this too, like they did in the 1990s.
Lessee if it posts this time. :/
Cost is only one of many factors. There are others that are more important. Basically, we don’t want to deal with all the problems the presence of women on surface ships has caused. Everything bad that happens on a skimmer is magnified many times in the tight space of a submarine hull. I’ve taken women to sea and have see it first hand.
Good readin’.
cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/SAPA%20020195.pdf
cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/HPScott%20061200.pdf
cmrlink.org/CMRNotes/NAVY-DACOWITS_0295.pdf
The first one is an independent study commissioned by the Navy and completed way back in 1995. Note all the different people not connected to the Navy that were interviewed. The second is a letter from a retired RADM UMO and subject matter expert. Since he’s a retired flag, he doesn’t have to kowtow to the politicians. The third is a letter from 2007, just three years ago. Just three years.
What has changed since those documents were produced? Nothing, except the lengths to which the Navy will go to please the likes of Barbara Boxer, et al. The issues raised during the first go around in the 1990s exist today and will continue to exist. We cannot afford to deal with the problems that the surface fleet has dealt with. With near 100% manning mandatory, we can’t afford women getting pregnant to get out of going on deployment. We can’t afford the loss of good order and discipline brought about by sexual matters. We can’t afford the sex scandals that keeps getting COs in other communities fired….along with CMCs and a sizable chunk of the Goat Locker (think James E. Williams).
This is a bad idea. I’ve been underway with women (female Mids and civilian test engineers) and have seen the problems this will cause. Enough with the political correctness and gender politics already. Many in Congress are already pushing back against the repeal of DADT, they need to intervene in this too, like they did in the 1990s.
Lessee if it posts this time. :/
It did. Look at the third post.
It did. Look two posts up.
It did. Look one post up.
Thanks for the links.
They posted after Cap’n Lex rescued the first two from the spam filter….after I had already put up #3. At least the data is out there now.
Submarines underway are not like surface ships underway. Surface ships have a normal work day and watchstanders who normally stand 4 hour watches. On submarines, everyone except the CO and XO and “doc” are watchstanders who stand 6 hour watches in a hopefully three section watch rotation. The major issue is that if you lose just one qualified watchstander and you are immediately into a port and starboard watch rotation, 6 on 6 off until you return to port, burns a person out real quick, especially when during your 6 hours off you have to do all your maintenance, training preps, wash clothes, self, eat and sleep. Current Navy manpower policy is that they will not replace a pregnant sailor with another sailor, so even if the sailor tests positive prior to deployment you have now sent a boat to sea with less personnel onboard than are required to man all of the watchstations and have thereby reduced the overall effectiveness of the submarine and its ability to meet its mission requirements. Lots of things will have to change, big Navy wise, if they really want this to work.
Speaking as a retired submariner and former Chief of the Boat I have no doubt that the submarine community will make this happen – somehow. Having said that I will add that I’m glad I won’t be there for it.
Loss of a single crew member (for whatever reason) has a significant impact because you are already starting with a small crew. Having to Medivac a crew member from an underway submarine due to pregnancy complications has significant potential for bad outcomes.
The hygiene and berthing issues are compounded by hot bunking (we never have enough bunks for the entire crew) and minimal shower and head facilities (roughly 90 E-6 and below sharing 2 showers and 4 $hitter stalls – 3 stalls if one is used to store food). Staring the female manning with junior officers does not remedy this.
For Laurie and others of her ilk this is not a “rights” issue. Combat readiness trumps all of those rights when you sign on the dotted line. I suspect this is Big Navy trying to deflect the spotlight from the ongoing foolishness at the Academy and the professional malfeasance in the Navy’s shipbuilding programs.
Y’all have a healthy fascination with pregnant girls. Good for you. Oddly enough, many girls go whole decades without the troubling of pregnancy. What kind of guy doesn’t want females around? CO’s should definitely steer clear of girls. Nothing but trouble there but how many of us are COs?
Shortage of racks sounds like a typical NAVSEA screw up. What does the CONOPS say? How many crew? Why not build for that many crew? Yes, interesting questions all.
Y’all got baulks of timber on subs? Who knew? When was the last time one baulked a leak at depth? If I’m not mistaken, a great deal of dying was involved. We used to postulate a stern strike with a torpedo and the image we had was one of a diesel cylinder firing. Pop the stern tube and zillion mile/hour water and pressure would fire the hull somewhere around midships. Nobody walks away from that.
Yeah, there’s the 10% who represent 90% of the problem but that holds true with the guys too. In the meantime, it looks like the silent service doesn’t have to be all gay.
I have to wonder what woman would want this job anyway? Takes all kinds I guess…
Introducing an additional level of stress on enlisted personnel is yet another wonderful progressive policy.I understand that some think there is a difference between a nuclear submarine and a college dorm but those are bitter people clinging to the past.
Who are these people who are running the Navy at the top these days? You would think they are political patronage jobs based on the policy recommendations.
These are not idiots – they are smart professionals with successful command-at-sea experience and I’m sure they are getting plenty of fleet input.
I just don’t get it. Is it all just selfish political expediency? Is it a calculated ploy to give on social issue to gain political capital to get something else?
What happened to the leaders who started and ended with mission and values?
Flat, it’s all about mortal fear of loss of funding in times of a shrinking budgetary pie from a PC besotted Congress populated with lefty feministas and their lefty male allies who in NO WAY are above spiteful revenge if their “progressive” agenda is not carried out.
it is high time that the silent service had to put up with the crap that the rest of the communities have dealt with over the previous 20. No one should be exempt. Now we can sit back and laugh at their growing pains (literally). Plenty of blog fodder ahead.
laurie lost me when she used the word “rights”. It is not a “right” to serve in the military. Privilege, obligation, duty – any of those, but most definitely NOT a “right”.
There seems to be no end of troubles when a perpetually aggrieved group invents a “right” and imagines themselves denied it.
I’ve got really mixed feelings on this issue, considering I’ve got a daughter who is a Seaman. From a man’s point of view, mixin’ the sexes in certain situations can be down right bad juju. From a Dad’s point of view, I’ll stack my girl up against any enlisted man in the Navy. Course, she didn’t go in trying to be a SEAL or submariner.
I’ve got a good internet friend whose daughter is a Firstie at the Naval Academy. She wanted to be a Marine since day one. I’ve been told when it came time for service selection she was getting a lot of pressure (voluntold) to select submarines. I guess she got her way, partly because of her experience and the degree she will receive, but she had to fight some.
Another friends daughter took one of her Summer Cruises aboard a submarine with at least one other female midshipman. I think they only went out for a couple days and they kicked some JOs out of there berthing and made one head private. Luckily for this young lady she selected Naval Air. And her Dad was a submariner in WWII, before getting his wings and flying F8s off carriers (yeah, he’s old enough to be her grandfather, but a really great guy.)
Anyone else know how far along they are in training female officers and crew for subs?
Sometimes it’s nice to not have a dog in the fight and just stand on the sidelines. But I’ve been to sea on a 688 and I think you ought to listen to the Old COB. There is a reason subs are called Pigboats. If you want to get the feeling of being at sea in a sub invite five or six of your closest friends to join you in your bathroom, paint the window black, and spend the next several months there.
There is NO privacy, NO escape from everyone else, NO going on deck for a little fresh air, and NO exceptions to the constant rotation of the watch. Hot bunking is always an issue, and, on the boats I’ve been on, some of the crew had to share mattresses laid on a plywood sheet that was placed on the torpedo rails in the forward torpedo room.
Does anyone in this administration remember that the purpose of the Department of Defense is to defend the nation, and NOT to be the Department of Social Experimentation?
Problem is, no one is on the sidelines. If this goes through, the next target for the ‘progressives’ *gag* will be opening up ground combat to women. It’s better to engage the enemy on someone else’s territory than on your own.
Too true. No one is on the sidelines because they a) have an agenda or b) live in fear of being labeled sexist (not as bad a being a racist but still a potential career killer). We have people in and out of uniform making policy that they will not have to implement at the deckplate level. Yes, I know that’s how it works, but how about a little honest thought going into the decision making process. See the comment below by SJS and consider the hazards of Medivac from a rolling submarine in heavy seas. When something goes wrong it’ll be the CO and the COB on the chopping block.
I once did a PERSTRANS at night from topside on a 688 to the deck of a YTB without the benefit of a brow like the C-Tractors have….that was not fun. It was a fatal accident waiting to happen, and that was in the mouth of the Thames River, not outside of sheltered waters.
Ectopic pregnancy, hazard #2 in RADM(ret) Scott’s letter was the reason AIRLANT directed that if a sailor on the carrier got pregnant that they would be removed from the ship. If it is that much of a concern on a ship with an embarked transportation to shore capability, it is only magnified on a sub…
- SJS
Having almost lost the love of my life to an ectopic pregnancy (Navy doctor’s mis-diagnosis), I can verify that there ain’t much time to get things put right. The very idea of putting females on a sub is complete idiocy.
Mayhap we could get the UN to make our prospective enemies put gals aboard their subs? That would even out the playing field, and make it fair, and all.
Hm.
“The mission of the Navy is to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas.”
I would have thought that this statement would have been:
The mission of the Navy is to win wars, deter aggression and maintain freedom of the seas.”
With the maintenance, training and equipping and the ensuring that the forces are combat-ready being a necessary function to accomplish the mission of winning wars, etc.
Generals like to change mission statements. Once the Airforce’s was ‘Fly, fight, win’. Catchy. Everyone could recite it. Now it has gone through a few Generals trying to get another star or two and no one even knows what it is anymore. I’m sure it’s PC at least.
Liz, when I was in the motto was:”The Mission of the USAF is to Fly and Fight And Don’t You Forget It!” So that’s by the boards, now, eh?
The location of flying was always understood. Given the dinged up APs I saw, the location of the fighting was not predictable.
Some of these comments leave me, well, thoughtful… Spending the majority of my life on the boats, during the peak of the cold war, both on diesel’s, boomers and my loves, the attack boats I think I have a small glimmer of what’s involved. And as an ACINT puke, paralleling the CO’s time (note: the CO and XO stand 12 on/12 off as CDO, not to mention the CO being called around the clock for standard stuff) when do these guys get a break, especially when seaman jones and seaman whatshername get caught in the SK shack? Come on people, don’t we really have more important things to consider. Sure, pulling the boat off line for two weeks to get the preg female off is bad. Giving contraceptives to someone who wants to get pregnant is useless. Taking away even more of my living space because its only fair, and they so deserve this. I am so damn glad I’m out of this business, all you equal opportunity tree huggers can have it, I quit.
Passed and opening.
Both girls and boys like sex. Since we’re still at DADT, us guys would prefer sex with girls. OK, even after it’s repealed.
I saw one ectopic event when a mid was removed from a ship at sea. Mostly, these things happen in the usual fashion. Seriously, worrying about a one in a million….that’s like thinking laying a hand on a pump will electrocute you to death. It happens. Just not all that often.
Pigboats COB? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. 688 and Ohios are like river cruise boats with swans. Pampered nuke guys don’t really understand what it means to go to sea at Condition III for months on end at 55% manning. There’s some sort of nuclear rule that prevents that from happening. Surface guys would definitely be interested in raising help. Hell, they’d try training mold to get off port and starboard.