Adds some spice to the concept of "hot racking"
I’m guessing the men will be a majority.
I would say within two months of going out, the sub will experience it’s first fight between two sailors over a woman.
I’m confused about how this is going to work.
Right now in the Army and on surface ships, when chicky decides she’s tired of playing soldier she gets knocked up so she can get sent home.
In the first gulf war, it was amazing to watching chicks down at the shower racks trying to get knocked up and make a few bucks in the process so they could leave the theater.
How’s that going to work when you have to stay under the surface 90 days at a time?
I was unaware that they had pre natal care on subs!
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.
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.
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.
Have any of these numbnuts making policy ever BEEN ON a submarine?
Do they think it’s like the Starship Enterprise, where the interior spaces are all fantasies created in studios, where each crew gets a little stateroom?
On subs, the crew dress and undress in front of each other, in a few square feet of space. They have no privacy.
So sure, add twenty year old girls! What morons.
Just how will having women aboard submarines enhance our Navy’s warfighting abilities?
From personal experience, having women on subs isn’t really a major issue (the antics of drunken submariners ashore in foreign ports is a far bigger issue and that isn’t even all that big either).
Hell, we have USN personnel serving on our subs and even they admit that women on subs isn’t a major issue.
I spent 30 years in the Navy and could never understand how men could stand living under those cramped conditions. I can’t imagine how women will.
And who is Ray Mabus? Harvard Law, from Mississippi, who served as a LT JG on a WWII era cruiser, USS Little Rock, which was decommissioned in 1949. He’s never been aboard a nuclear service vessel, much less ANY kind of submarine. Largely been a CEO for industrial companies... one in particular makes...... batteries (like for electric boats, too?) He has little to no command experience of any recent type and little to no understanding of what this would mean to a submarine as opposed to a massive WWII era cruiser or a carrier, or more precisely a surface vessel. What he WAS was Ambassador to Saudi Arabia under Bill Clinton... and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hey, it all works for these types... just a management issue. No focus on our readiness or warfighting capabilities. He was at Saudi when 1993 WTC attack occurred.
One more comment before I bust a seam. EVERY single one of the people listed as being for this are SURFACE fleet people. Roughead was cruiser group commander, Surface fleet. Mullin was surface fleet. Gates was an intel officer in the USAF and the closest he came to a nuclear missile was to deliver intel reports to Whiteman AFB out west, ON LAND. He’s CIA, and nothing wrong with this but, a Boy Scout goody two shoes (with whatever that implies) willing to work under Obama— good God. This whole discussion reminds me of the old school tie Brits who used to say espionage was wrong because “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail”. Well all of these people have NO clue what submarine warfare is about, with the exception of their having in two instances served aboard what are known as TARGETS! In modern naval warfare, a carrier is something that can easily be taken out by a skilled sub commander with nuke torpedoes... who also may sign their death warrant doing so unless they are really crafty and escape. It takes a skilled tactical mind capable of deception to do this. Big blustery surface fleet types and air force flyboys have no clue and never really did. Ask a P-3 Orion subhunter vet how “easy” it was to find one of our own. They are putting this crucial element in our new defense structure in jeopardy by insisting they put submarines through the stupid social experiment to which they’ve alreay subjected the poor surface fleet. Did you know there was a commander relieved of command because he was on the surface too long, transferring a sailor with a rupture appendix 300 miles South of Iceland to a helo... and it was the helo who was LATE! I’m done, unless I read a PC type comment here. Our readiness is in jeopardy.
SandRat, this is one of the DUMBEST, things I’ve read in a long time. Whoever came up with this brilliant idea needs to be throttled.