No More Nuke CO's?

There is a really intriguing book making the rounds in DC right now called America’s Defense Meltdown. The biggest point they make about the Navy is that the it is run by engineers not warfighters. Conservative author William Lind wrote the Navy portion of the book and slams Lord Rickover's basic philosophies of Nuke power first, everything else second.

Get a load of this part: Lind contrasts the dominance of engineers in the Navy to what he describes as the preference for tacticians elsewhere. All U.S. submarine skippers are nuclear engineers, “in strong contrast to Britain’s Royal Navy, whose submarine commanders have nuclear engineers where they belong, in the engine room,” and

"...the Navy’s culture is inward-focused, risk-averse and centralized, preferring obedience to initiative and relying on top-down control rather than self-discipline."

While all of this Nuke bashing is music to Coners ears, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Despite stating that it supports a strong defense but opposes excessive expenditures or forces, the Center for Defense Information has opposed nearly every new major U.S. weapons system developed over the past two decades - including the B-1 bomber, the Trident submarine, cruise missiles, neutron warheads, and even the stealth bomber.

Additionally, CDI is a spin-off project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a think tank that often has Marxist-leaning policies and you can make your own judgements by their board memebrs with deep military experience like the late actor Paul Newman and his wife Joann Woodward and Ben & Jerry's founder Ben Cohen.

Despite their leftist tendencies, America’s Defense Meltdown is at least a good read and can be downloaded here.

Submariner to Become Next MCPON

QMCM(SS/SW) Ricky West has been tapped to be the next Master Chief of the Navy. Master Chief West has served aboard the submarines USS Ethan Allen, USS Thomas Edison, USS Sea Devil, USS Tecumseh and USS Portsmouth, a good mix of boomers and real submarines. Here's wishing him well on his new job and let's hope his bullshit meter is set to alarm early.

One note of question I have from the Navy Times article is the mentioning of something called the chief’s standards and conduct boards — a chief’s mess alternative to captain’s mast. While I am all in favor of any alternatives to the green tablecloth, I have to wonder how this would work.

Navy Keeps Camos Onbase

Rumors are starting to circulate about how the Navy brass intends to treat the new Navy Working Uniform (NWU). While us blueshirts were dressed as convicts "'scaped off tha farm," it seemed to make some sense that the needs of the Navy were not met when some A-Gang 3rd class strolled into the quickie mart covered in grease or "gray"water.

The brass made sure to keep us denizens from below the anchor away from the prying eyes of the public. I guess they were afraid the local cops would mistake us for fence jumpers from the penintentary. But with a new uniform and a new "look", I had hoped we could get past one of the last remenants of bleushirt discrimination.

Apparently not, according to Navy Times. The brass will restrict the camo NWU to base and vehicle only.

The shame of it is, now the O-Gang and the chiefs are confined to base or car too! Lets see how long this lasts.

The maritime forces leadership needs to wake up to reality. Prohibiting Marines and Sailors from wearing their work uniform off the base does not increase you combat readiness one iota. We are a military at war and we don't have time for this petty bullshit.

Vegan Women Down Under Submariners

The Sub Report has a link up to a great story in the Sydney Morning Herald about cooks onboard Her Majesty's Australian Submarines. My favorite line was "Smith says crews are rarely fussy, although the officers can be on occasion. He has also had a woman who was a lactose- and gluten-intolerant vegan. "All I could do was chuck a lettuce leaf at her," he says."

Who in the hell recruited and assigned a nutty woman that won't eat dairy, wheat or meat to a submarine? I know the Aussies have had a hard time keeping their sub fleet manned but, come on! Life is full of choices but why let her inflict her choices on the sub's culinary dept.?

Good luck Australia.

Contemplating Poopie Suits

Recent talk about the new cammo uniforms has got me thinking about what used to be a sub exclusive: the underway coverall, aka the poopie suit.

Way back before I was even a nub, I was subjected to a propagandized version of the undersea world thanks to Hollywood and Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October. I ate it up with a spoon. I was confined to Admiral Rickover's preschool for wayward boys in Orlando and, somehow won tickets to the premier of the flick at the Colonial Mall theater right off of the base.

I remember my bunkie from boot camp went with me to see the daring exploits of America's Undersea Heroes. Every dig it from the base was there. Anybody that had ever heard of a submarine had gotten tickets.

It was in the movie that us pre-nubs were given our first lessons in life aboard a sub. And the thing I remember the most was how cold it must be on the boat since everybody had on white turtlenecks. (Somehow, the blue shirts aboard the movie version of the Dallas weren't permitted the glories of the poopie suit and had to wear their prison issue dungarees.)

So I report to the Ustafish around the same time as my birthday and my well meaning aunt, a YN1, gives me the aforementioned white turtleneck before my first (after cranking) underway. Its Novemember, Norfolk and as usual, its cold.

We leave the pier, I race to my rack in the Torpedo Room and quickly try to look like the natives. And, I put on the movie inspired, white turtleneck and quickly realized...I was freakin HOT with that thing on. I took it off on a coffee run and never wore it again.

I realize nuke boat sailors only have a passing idea of what hot really is. The DBF crowd can testify as to why submarine sandals were still in the NAVSUP catalog at least into the mid 90's.

Just goes to show you how much Hollyweird can screw up reality. I'll save the movie Crimson Tide for another rant.

Navy Camo Coming

Navy Times has the latest announcement of the next generation of Navy Camouflage Uniforms. The powers that be have been seduced into the whole "digitized" pattern craze that the Army and Marines rolled out two years ago.

My questions as a bubblehead are these:

Will these fatigues replace the poopy suits of underway fame?

Will sailors be able to wear this "working" uniform off base? I understand why nobody wanted us to be seen in the cool-hand Luke hand me down dungarees. They looked like I had just escaped off the chain gang.

Will sailors assigned to Marine bases be hazed and shunned until they hide their blue cammies and go green?

And, again, I must ask, camouflage? What are you hiding from at sea? Does it have a blaze orange interior for those man overboard evolutions?

Just remember, in the subfleet, we really do expect to recover the man overboard, unlike those poor guys in the carrier fleet midnight diving squad.

Submarines & Suriname

While reviewing the site statistics yesterday, I noticed I have visitor from Suriname. For those of you lacking geography knowledge, its on the northern coast of South America.

So, I got to thinking, why would somebody in a former dutch colony want to read about submarines? (Then again, who wouldn't, right?)

There is a small link in addition to the U-boat attacks on bauxite freighters.

Back in the 80's, Suriname had the same problems that Grenada had: a local thug kissing up to the reds. Moscow was so excited about the idea of bringing Suriname into the red fold, they even planned a huge embassy and....wait for it....military bases.

Its seems that Cuba wasn't able to provide enough air coverage of the Caribbean and the Soviet Anti-submarine planes wanted another base to better track our brothers in the FHI's (Floating Holiday Inns = SSBN's)

Enter, Ronald Reagan and the Intelligence dream team: Bill Casey, Director of Central Intelligence and National Security Adviser William Clarke who worked behind the scenes to keep the Soviets out of Suriname. Mission accomplished and you never read about it until now. Check out the details at National Review.

I don't know if this is the reason I have a reader in Suriname or not but I salute his blog selection none the less.