Posted on 02/26/2010 4:44:12 PM PST by SandRat
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26, 2010 – Female sailors will begin serving on submarines by the end of next year, with Naval Academy graduates leading the way, Navy leaders told a Senate committee yesterday.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Navy is in a good position to move forward with integrating women onto submarines.
“We think we learned a lot about integrating women in the services years ago, and those lessons are relevant today,” Mabus said. Those lessons, he said, include having a “critical mass” of female candidates, having senior women to serve as mentors, and having submarines that don’t require modifications: the SSBN ballistic missile and SSGN guided-missile subs.
Finally, Mabus said, “We have the lesson learned to make sure any questions are answered, … and we’re very open and transparent on how we’ll do this. We think this is a great idea that will enhance our warfighting capabilities.”
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates notified Congress on Feb. 19 of the intended change to Navy policy. Mabus had pushed for the change since taking office in May. Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, endorsed the change, saying in a statement released in September that his experience commanding a mixed-gender surface-combatant ship makes him “very comfortable” integrating women into the submarine force. The Navy changed its policy to allow women to serve on combatant ships in 1993.
“We have a great plan, and we’re ready to go for the first women to come aboard in late 2011,” Roughead told the Senate committee yesterday. In a prepared statement to the committee, he said the change would enable the submarine force “to leverage the tremendous talent and potential of our female officers and enlisted personnel.”
Besides the incoming officers from the academy, the first women submariners will include female supply corps officers at the department head level, Roughead said. The change will be phased in over time to include enlisted female sailors on the SSBN and SSGNs, he said. Women will be added to the Navy’s SSN fast-attack submarines after necessary modifications can be determined, he said.
“This initiative has my personal attention, and I will continue to keep you informed as we integrate these highly motivated and capable officers into our submarine force,” Roughead told the committee.
Go stuff it!!!
Or, perhaps, mine....;-)>
So what did they do. Say catty things and bump up on her all the time? Why didn’t she reply “that’s OK honey, Jesus loves you anyhow” till they got sick and tired of it?
I cannot post such thing, it is offensive, and the mods would pull the posts if I went into details.
This thread is surreal.....Just like the idea of women in the armed forces.
This has been posted elsewhere from different sources. The KEY to any discussion of this is the central question that has not and will not be answered: How does this major change in operational structure of our nuclear deterrent (in the case of boomers) and our littoral defense capabilities— how does this ADD to our readiness and warfighting capacity? Answer- it doesn’t. In the new military, everything is being made to be equal to civilian society. A military run by the JAG officers and court testing of societal pressures being forced on an organizations whose main task is to defend us against all enemies—by the use of force. That is they are supposed to kill people and break up things that threaten us. Patsy Schroeder started this and it will not end until there is much loss of life in the bending of the rules to accomodate the change. By simple example— there is NO way to allow private showering/bunkage for female sailors on a fast attack boat— not without lessening capabilities or substantially changing the structure of the vessel, at great cost. Our navy eager boys of obambi also overlook that major navies of the world do not do this, or have and it has failed. This is not a carrier or “city on the sea”- one little thing goes wrong and it’s curtains at 400 plus feet. Our military is NOT meals on wheels with guns. This is a terrible change. Some idiot thinks that Star Trek is the model for our sub service. Ridiculous.
SSN rider here.
On long missions we laid down cans of supplys on the decking and laid mats over that. The headspace had 1.5 to 3 foot removed from it.
There is NO ROOM except your rack and 16 hours a day you cant be there, then take away time to eat and watch turnovers, you got like 6 hours in that rack if you are lucky.
There is some one 3 in from your face and messing with ya the entire rest of the time.
Try that some time. have some one you arent having romantic relations with in you face a foot to 3 in from your face all day every day LoL. Hell it would be worse if there was a relationship LoL
Heck try that with the wife. Its not an easy situation.
Homeported in Charleston until she refueled in 1990-1992. She actually refueled in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
George Mitchell was the Head Monkey in the Senate back then; the yard was actullay in Kittery Maine, so Mitchell's constituents got the work and the money.
It was a cruel blow to South Carolina and to Charleston in particular.
No one took care of their constituents like Lucius Mendel Rivers, who was head of the House Armed Services committe from before the Mayflower landed on Plynouth Rock until his death in 1970.....
Now, the Amazons were a famed group, I hear.
I could see a ladies-only mission.
I do not agree with this decision. I think it is a damaging one, and I think it is not being thought through.
This has nothing to do with my respect for women. I am a civilian, and work with women above me and below me in the chain of command. I have enormous respect for many I work with, and view them as I would any other boss or co-worker.
But I am not now in the military, and I sure am not on a sub.
To be honest, I saw the PBS special a few years back “Carrier”, and I was appalled. To be fair, I know it was slanted, and I know they were trying to film it like a reality show, and I know I am basically an old fart in many respects.
But the issues they portrayed were real, not fabricated, and I have to say, as someone who spent the better part of four years on various carriers back in the Seventies, I cannot imagine in a million years experiencing those types of deployments.
Mixed sex ships and combat units is a major mistake, period. I am not even going to discuss the concept of physical tasks like carrying someone up a ladder. I just think having people of that age, together in that environment is bad for the mission.
Some seem to think it is disrespect for women, or worse, misogyny, but it is nothing of the sort.
What another poster said is true: It is challenging enough in a single sex environment.
How ‘bout forward, in the torpedo room, with attractive grey woolen Navy issue blankets for “privacy”?
If a sub gets into enough trouble that they have to worry about carrying people up ladders inside them, I’d think it would have much more to worry about than that.
Best breakfast on the planet was in Charleston.
You can keep them goober peas though ;)
Following the advent of submarine warfare the majority of submarine operators in the world do not allow female personnel to serve in submarines as a matter of course.The justification for this includes the fact that doses of radiation from nuclear submarine reactors can result in infertility, since women do not continually produce eggs as men do with sperm. Secondly, the finite amount of space available on submarines limits the ability to offer separate berths and lavatories for females. Female sailors are permitted on most other naval ships because they are typically larger than submarines, offering more space to accommodate females and cheaper structural change to do so.
The Royal Norwegian Navy became the first navy in the world to permit female personnel to serve in submarines, appointing a female submarine captain in 1995, followed by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in 1998 and thereafter Canada and Spain, all operators of conventional NON-Nuclear submarines. And all, uh, MINOR sea powers.
Social reasons not to do this change includes the need to segregate accommodation and facilities, with figures from the US Navy highlighting the increased cost, $300,000 per bunk to permit women to serve on submarines versus $4,000 per bunk to allow women to serve on aircraft carriers. This alone should cause some real secretary of the Navy and not some kind of “progressive” moron, to take pause.
The US Navy allows three exceptions for women being on board military submarines: (1) Female civilian technicians for a few days at most from civilian contractors on shakedown cruise (2) Women midshipmen on an overnight during summer training for both Navy ROTC and Naval Academy; (3) Family members for one-day dependent cruises- and these have been curtailed since the USS Greenville episode.
Folks, this is just plain stupid and wrong and very costly- it will cost lives, and a lot of them to force this issue.
it is a terrible idea and to think if it was made MANDATORY-whoo hooooooooo that would be something else entirely wouldn’t it??
Well, any vessel could, right? But as I said, that isn’t my main concern.
Grey woolen blankets? LoL
I was lucky. I never had to sleep on the green golf course.
Those who did slept on a board with a single mattress atop MK 48 torpedoes. That wouldn’t be so bad except its a work space and they dont give a crap about your schedule. They will rotate weapons as they see fit and you can watch bleary eyed as they take your rack away, or you can lend too to get the job done faster.
I carried someone up a ladder, from Engine Room Lower Level to Engine Room Upper level. Well, pushed him up to waiting arms, anyway. His hand was horribly mangled, wrapped around the commutator of a motor-generator, and if we didn't get him to treatment quickly, he would have lost his arm. The FN outweighed me by fifty pounds.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting but....do you really think this sh*t is funny?
Ooh, yes, accidents.
Give them adequate training and experience first.
Then, yes, have all female crews.
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