[HN Gopher] Nukes, nubs and coners: The unique social hierarchy ...
___________________________________________________________________
Nukes, nubs and coners: The unique social hierarchy aboard a
nuclear submarine
Author : ColinWright
Score : 170 points
Date : 2022-04-25 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| sgarland wrote:
| I'm a former propulsion plant operator (AKA reactor operator, but
| we got renamed) on a Virginia-class (the newest fast-attack
| class) sub. A correction to some stereotypes:
|
| Machinist's Mate AKA Mechanic: Often the burliest, but also on my
| boat the MMs had the highest percentage of WoW players. For
| reference, this was during BC and WotLK.
|
| Engineering Laboratory Technician: A subset of the Mechanic,
| they're the ones who handle the water chemistry of the reactor,
| and monitor radiation levels. They're generally hated by
| mechanics since although they technically are capable of doing
| their job - and thus could/should be supporting their watches -
| they usually claim the need for independence. They're also
| generally liars.
|
| Electrical Operator AKA Electrician: While in theory their job is
| to run and maintain the electric plant, in reality their job is
| anything that other people don't want to do/can't manage. They're
| masters at adaptation. I have personally assisted the Electrical
| Leading Petty Officer (as Reactor Leading Petty Officer) in
| troubleshooting and repairing the diesel generator control panel,
| various sonar equipment, heaters, etc. What also infuriates the
| electricians is that due to weird rules, while they're allowed to
| babysit the reactor while it's shutdown (called, appropriately,
| Shutdown Reactor Operator), they can't operate it at power. This,
| despite the Reactor Operators frequently being of lower
| intelligence and ability.
|
| Electronics Technician AKA Reactor Operator / Propulsion Plant
| Operator: Basically God's gift to mankind, except for the dumb
| ones. Definitely the twitchiest of the bunch, and a solid amount
| of us are almost certainly on the spectrum. The job alternates
| between utter boredom (as it turns out, nuclear reactors are
| extremely stable at steady-state conditions), excitement (drills
| involving recovering the reactor following an emergency
| shutdown), and hatred (any maintenance activity involving the
| steam generators).
| jedc wrote:
| oh, man, this is so spot on! "They're also generally liars." /
| "God's gift to mankind, except for the dumb ones"
| ncmncm wrote:
| What do they have cause to lie about?
|
| (Also: how do you pronounce "coners"? Does it have an
| etymology?)
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Cone - er
|
| But its spelled differently. The correct spelling is `conr`
| for Can't Operate Nuclear Reactor.
| jedc wrote:
| I'm jaded because I was in charge of the ELTs division for
| a while, and during that time, I had one guy pop positive
| on a drug test (but he said he didn't take anything) and
| another guy submit a letter saying he was a drug user (even
| though he never popped positive for anything.)
|
| And this was out of a division of ~5-6 people. So...
| 51stpage wrote:
| I have spent many happy hours listening to Aaron talk about his
| experiences serving on submarines on YouTube and Twitch. He used
| to go by JiveTurkey then rebranded to SubBrief.
|
| Watching him play Cold Waters is a delight.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Side note, if anyone has watched The Hunt For Red October and
| thought "why can't I do this in a video game?" definitely pick
| up Cold Waters. The core gameplay loop isn't for everyone
| (depending on difficulty and era it can involve a lot of slow-
| paced stealthing around) but for me it's a ton of fun.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Interesting article, although as with most military write-ups of
| this nature perhaps a bit thin on the introspection. Ever wonder
| just how much damage one nuclear submarine could do?
|
| > "Rising between levels in the missile compartment, 24 large
| orange trunks fill the nuclear ballistic submarine like an
| apocalyptic orchard."
|
| Probably (wiki) these are:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
|
| Each probably (wiki) carries four of these independently targeted
| warheads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88
|
| Now, if you want to basically wreck human civilization with one
| nuclear submarine, drop one of each warhead over each of the 100
| largest nuclear reactor sites on the planet. Fukushima for
| example had six reactors and >1500 tons of fuel rods on hand at
| the time of that disaster.
|
| This will cause a complete meltdown and aerosolization of much of
| the fuel, it'll go into the atmosphere and rain down for
| thousands of miles downwind from the site, creating no-go
| conditions for human beings (unless you want massive radiation
| poisoning and birth defects etc.) Multiply that by 100x around
| the planet and you can see what a mind-boggling disaster it would
| be.
|
| Now, that's just one nuclear submarine; there are many in
| operation. Plus the land-based and bomber-based nukes. And this
| is all done because otherwise, every single international
| conflict since Hiroshima would likely have escalated into the
| kind of crazy WWII tank battles and aerial bombardments of cities
| that took millions of lives. Probably has prevented full-on
| land/air/sea battles between India and Pakistan, for example. And
| yet... all it takes is some accident, some breakdown, some
| misunderstanding and the nukes start flying.
|
| Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Some people will argue that this is
| why there are no alien civilizations, they all torched themselves
| once they reached our level of technological development.
| titanomachy wrote:
| "This is the American Submarine crew. On their own, they may be
| goofy and socially awkward, but as a crew, this band of misfits
| becomes the best warfighters I have ever had the honor of
| serving with. [And the couple dozen people in this picture
| could at any time unilaterally choose to end all human
| civilization.]"
| solveit wrote:
| > perhaps a bit thin on the introspection
|
| Surely the one thing you don't want these people to do is to
| think for themselves about whether they should kill tens of
| millions of people! (the joke is that I'm completely serious
| and that's morbidly hilarious)
| robocat wrote:
| > [A nuclear blast] will cause a complete meltdown and
| aerosolization of much of the fuel [of the reactor and storage]
|
| Cann the blast from a nuclear warhead realistically be
| positioned such that it would aerosolise significant amounts of
| nuclear fuel? And given the location of nuclear reactors, would
| it matter in a full nuclear war? Your comment sounds like a
| good fictional story, but does it actually make any sense?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's the secondary effects that would likely cause this.
| Having read a good deal about the Chernobyl (Rhodes, Arsenals
| of Folly) and Fukushima disasters, basically it's the loss of
| coolant in the reactor cores and the evaporation of water
| from the cooling ponds for the 'spent' (i.e. too hot to
| handle) reactor fuel that lead to a runaway meltdown event
| and associated fire.
|
| So, a 500kt blast over a reactor site will destroy all the
| surrounding infrastructure, evaporate the water from the
| cooling ponds, and while perhaps the steel reactor
| containment shell itself might not be completely
| obliterated/vaporized at once (or it might), the whole zone
| is going to be unapproachable, and the kind of heroic efforts
| employed at Chernobyl (notably a graphite core reactor that
| burned, Fukushima having no flammable graphite) and Fukushima
| are not going to happen. So, total meltdown of reactor core,
| hydrogen explosion, venting to atmosphere, some fraction of
| the core liquifies the rest vaporizes. The spent fuel in the
| ponds, all the water flashes to steam, they burn / melt.
| Nobody comes rushing in to manage the situation, it's full-on
| runaway.
|
| So Chernobyl IIRC lost about 1% of one of its reactor mass to
| the atmosphere, and that was one of four reactors at the
| site. This resulted in significant fallout across Europe and
| a 30-km radius long-term exclusion zone. Now let's say
| instead oh, at least 50% of each reactor mass + spent fuel
| goes into the atmosphere, the rest melts into the ground... I
| don't know how this would scale. A 300-km radius exclusion
| zone perhaps at minimum? To get accurate estimates you then
| have to do a bunch of modeling, atmospheric fluid dynamics,
| etc.
|
| I can't imagine there aren't top-secret studies in some
| military branch or other on how this would all pan out, but
| they've never been publicly released to my knowledge.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| There's a fellow on Reddit who has been doing some
| interesting work modeling a notional RISOP -- basically,
| what the Russians would do to us in various counterforce &
| countervalue scenarios. He cannot comment on SIOP planning
| as he used to work on it (civil engineer by training), but
| he can conjecture a RISOP based on open sources.
|
| This person makes a point of targeting American dry cask
| nuclear waste storage sites. It takes out the power plant
| they're next to and ruptures the casks, resulting in
| Prolonged Suck downwind of the site. He also targets dams
| in a cascading manner, so even if we did "win the war",
| certain major cities would have been underwater for a
| sustained period of time.
|
| FWIW, when asked where he'd go to hide out he said he
| wouldn't, that the loss of food supplies, medicine, etc.
| would be catastrophic no matter where you ended up in
| CONUS. Re: food, even if the grain fields of the midwest
| were intact, you've got no transportation, no power to
| process the grain into food products, no antibiotics to
| take care of that scratch you got from the combine, no fuel
| for the combine, etc. Many would survive but it wouldn't be
| fun. He lives in San Francisco, FWIW.
| 323 wrote:
| Yes. The so called "fireball" of a nuclear explosion is the
| spherical region of space where everything is completely
| vaporized in miliseconds. It's between 500 m - 5 km diameter
| depending on yield.
|
| At the same time, the long term danger of nuclear winter was
| supposedly overstated to scare the politicians into not using
| nukes.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| >The Radioman is the most elusive of the Coners. He spends his
| time locked in his >'Radio Shack' both off watch and on. This
| limited access space offers a small >amount of privacy not seen
| anywhere else outside
|
| I dont understand this. Is there one and only one radio person,
| and that person sleeps, and works in the same "office".
|
| Since messages might need to go out at any time, would it not
| require a shift change? A different nicely rested radio person?
|
| I suppose in most cases when you can send messages is limited and
| thus scheduled ahead of time. (When the sub is close enough to
| the surface?) Yet the persons constant presence would indicate
| that a message might have to go out at any time.
|
| I just feel bad for the person who has to be on guard 24/7.
|
| Also is there then only one radio person per crew? Seems like a
| role that would require a backup. But then so does docs, and
| there is only one of that person?
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I wasn't on a submarine, I was on a ship stationed outside the
| US but I have some insight into that life. They combined
| Radioman and IT into one role so you end up managing quite a
| lot of systems. I slept in the radio shack more often than I
| slept in my bed while at sea.
|
| My crew was 12 people IT/Radio for a 300 person ship. There are
| so many different responsibilities within this role, satellite
| communication systems especially, that usually 6/12 people
| would be glued to one area of the radio shack for hours and
| hours working or waiting on one system but the radio shack was
| at least half full at all times.
|
| We had varying schedules for coverage throughout my 4 years
| including: 12 on | 12 off, or my least favorite, 6 on | 6 off.
| In addition to your normal job you must also perform hardware
| maintenance on your own time and you have a tertiary job
| related to warfare (mine was firefighter) so you end up doing
| constant drills/training on top of that. Everyone on my ship
| lived on Monsters and Pre-workouts.
|
| While on shore every 6 days you have what is called "Duty".
| Duty is a 24 hour work window where I did my job for 10 hours
| and then did one or two 4-hour roving shifts. Roving is
| essentially just surveying the ship with armor and an m-16. Me
| and a colleague hated these roving shifts so we would
| purposefully set systems to alarm at opportune times to get us
| off those roving shifts so we could do our 4-hour duty shifts
| in the radioshack, where we work on personal projects or just
| watch anime off an external hdd.
|
| A Submarine's crew is about half the size so I'd guess they
| have around 5-6 radioman/IT but I could be wrong.
| gumby wrote:
| I just want to call out the blog host (thedrive?) for not
| resorting to clickbait and substituting "secret" for "unique" in
| the title.
|
| Title abuse is so bad this is worth acknowledging.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Wow. The word captain is only in there twice.
|
| Compare and contrast with the rest of the Navy.
| rcurry wrote:
| The only thing I really miss about the Navy was the night sky
| when you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You don't see
| stars, you see galaxies, it's truly breathtaking when there is no
| light pollution from anywhere.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Interesting but seems absolutely dismal way to spend a decade
| robonerd wrote:
| Except for the standard 'being in the military' aspect of it,
| modern submarines seem very comfy to me. I hear they're climate
| controlled these days, and have pretty good food.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > modern submarines seem very comfy to me.
|
| RAF fast jet pilots have it pretty good, a.k.a. the Chair
| Force. Why dig in when you can check in?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Ahahahahahahahahahha, that was good.
|
| No, not comfy at all. Too cold, too hot, never just right.
| robonerd wrote:
| Huh, I thought they kept the temperature in modern subs
| tightly controlled for the sake of the missiles. Maybe just
| the missile tubes receive this care?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Not today FBI!
|
| If you're not joking, that's a No no topic.
| robonerd wrote:
| Fair!
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It was both the best and worst time of my life. Wouldn't trade
| it for the world.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Easy response ... if that's how you feel, don't do it.
|
| I know/knew several ex-submariners. For them it was an
| absolutely fascinating job. Of _course_ it won 't suit
| everyone, and most people absolutely should not do it, but for
| them it was a _great_ way to spend a decade or two.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I know a current submariner, she's 5 years into a 6-year
| minimum commitment and hates it. Unfortunately, once you're
| at the point where you can experience whether it will suit
| you or not, it's too late to change your mind: the Navy owns
| you.
| kevinskii wrote:
| I'm a former U.S. submariner. Probably 90% of my shipmates
| who had served at least 3 years would have said the same
| thing. They hated the Navy, hated sea duty, hated all of
| it.
|
| And then towards the end of their commitment, with a
| several thousand dollar re-enlistment bonus on the table,
| most of them would sign up for another 6 years. The bonus
| would usually be blown in a week on a new vehicle.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Huh, looking at [1] and [2] she's looking at a $100k
| bonus...I can see how that would be tempting in spite of
| feelings that have dissipated with some shore leave.
|
| Fortunately, I think she's connected enough to find
| employment worth that much in private industry,
| disciplined enough to be wise in how she spends the money
| if she does take it, and rational enough to make a good
| decision (kinda hard to drive the new Tesla when you're
| underwater as much as she is), but I can understand how a
| lot of sailors might look at a number with a lot of zeros
| and make an impulse decision.
|
| [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.militarytimes.com/ass
| ets/pdf...
|
| [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/NavyNukes/comments/d1z8s1/nu
| ke_reen...
| jedc wrote:
| My boat used to deploy to the Persian Gulf, and for many
| years as long as the boat spent at least a little time in
| certain areas, pay for that month was tax-free. A LOT of
| re-enlistments (with those 6-figure bonuses) were done to
| take maximum advantage of those rules.
| ummwhat wrote:
| I guess she's hit a new low.
| hansthehorse wrote:
| I found that once underway after the first week passes
| staying out for 6 more months or 6 more days doesn't matter,
| it feels the same. Normal time stops and is now measured in
| watch rotations, preventive maintenance schedules and off
| time. The hardest thing for me was the complete lack of
| privacy. You are never alone.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's one of the reasons that sub duty is a double volunteer
| system. You volunteer to be in the Navy, then you volunteer
| to be a submariner. You really need to want to do it.
| samstave wrote:
| Disclaimer: I love everything about submarines, aside from
| actually living in one, as I haven't experienced that.
|
| What I HAVE experienced is working under an engineering
| manager/CTO/CIO that WAS a submariner and experienced first hand
| how a submariner manages a clouod-scale engineering team...
|
| + & -
|
| -=-=-=-=-
|
| He was reall sound, technically, and a good person. But an
| overbearing asshole when he was convinced he was correct, even
| when he wasn't.
|
| Which was OK, because he would admit when he was wrong, but when
| he was in the moment of being wrong, was an asshole.
|
| The funny thing was, this was my manager at two different
| companies, spaced abut ~10 years apart between when we had worked
| together.
|
| He is a great guy and a great manager - (he's an EVP at Cisco now
| (again)) -- but you can REALLY see the submariner attitude come
| across in tense stand-ups in the morning if we have an issue...
|
| Imagine a submariner engineering manager yell at a (not me) -
| blue/green-dyed-mohawk, gay steampunk engineer who wears vibram
| five fingers and a top hat and vest and sits on an inflatable
| ball during standup in sanfrancisco's mission district about
| scaling AWS spot instances...
|
| Yeah... that was a time.
|
| I love submarines, but submariners are weird.
| geoffeg wrote:
| About twenty years ago I had a boss that was a submariner, one
| of the guys that operated the reactor (I think they call
| themselves "nukes"?). He was quite odd but wickedly smart and
| it always seemed like he could engineer his way out of any
| situation, which I greatly admired. But yes, this guy was very
| down to earth, some odd combination of prepper and nature-
| loving hippie. Great guy to work for, I knew he always had my
| back.
|
| A few years ago I worked with another reactor operator and saw
| some similar personality traits. Exceedingly calm, independent
| and quirky with an engineering/problem solving-oriented mind.
|
| I've always been fascinated by submarines and knowing both of
| those people only deepened the fascination.
| tristor wrote:
| I've worked with submariners who were colleagues when I was in
| engineering and I found them great colleagues. They documented
| their work carefully, were precise in their language (although
| colorful), and didn't accept anything less than excellence on
| their team. Never had one as a boss, but I feel like I'd get
| along fine.
|
| That said, I would never make it on a submarine myself.
| EricE wrote:
| Indeed - I have a very good friend who was a reactor operator
| on a sub - and I still can't visualize him doing that. He's
| pretty much the opposite of descriptions like these which I
| guess proves the point that generalizations are just that -
| generalizations and not hard or fast rules.
|
| And nope, I would never make it on a sub either. Two years of
| ROTC pretty much ruled out any military service for me - let
| alone on a sub. But I'm grateful for those who are willing
| and choose to serve in those roles.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _the Navy's universal cure, Motrin_
|
| 600mg Motrin is nicknamed _Ranger candy_ in the US Army because
| Rangers eat them like candy.
|
| I was told by a submariner that there is only one bunk for every
| three crew members on board, so you learn to sleep _anywhere_.
| When he was unable to make his flight home and his parents drove
| to the airport he was stuck at about 90 minutes from home, they
| couldn 't readily find him because he was curled up around his
| bag sleeping under some chairs.
| jedc wrote:
| Former submariner here.
|
| Re: bunking - that's largely untrue. The majority of crew
| members on board do get their own bunk. But there aren't enough
| bunks for everyone, so people have to "hot rack" (aka, share).
| On my boat, this typically meant 3 people sharing 2 beds - if
| three people that share the same watchstation are hot-racking,
| at least one of them _has_ to be on watch at any given time, so
| the other two have a bed if they need it.
|
| Also, a decent number (maybe 10-ish) of the beds/racks tend to
| be in the torpedo room. Those guys just need to be comfortable
| sleeping next to big underwater bombs. :)
|
| It's changed a bit, but the thing that made everyone fatigued
| is that your body is used to a 24-hour day, but your work day
| was an 18-hour day: 3 sections of 6 hour watches.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Any idea what motivated the decision to run on an 18 hour
| day? You mentioned the drawbacks (widespread fatigue), but
| there must be some (many?) benefits. I'm curious what those
| might be.
| jedc wrote:
| There's only enough space to have 3 sections of
| watchstanders on board. So then it becomes a matter of
| length of watches. 6 hour watches aren't too long, and
| match up to meals every 6 hours. It's easy/straightforward,
| and no one gets screwed with always having watch on the
| midwatch and then also running drills during the day
| (meaning _very_ little sleep).
|
| 8 hour watches could be a bit long, and more problematic is
| that crew members would always be on the same watch:
| 0000-0800, 0800-1600, etc. That's potentially even more
| disruptive.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Got it - thank you!
| nradov wrote:
| Back during the age of sail it was common to divide the
| ship's day up into seven watches with five four-hour
| watches plus two two-hour afternoon "dog" watches. That
| way no one had to stand the same watch every day. But
| fatigue was still a problem, especially on vessels that
| were short handed and only had two watch sections;
| crewmen were frequently punished for falling asleep on
| watch.
| krisoft wrote:
| > crew members would always be on the same watch:
| 0000-0800, 0800-1600, etc. That's potentially even more
| disruptive.
|
| Does that really matter underwater? After a few days it
| is just as if you moved to a different time zone. It's
| not like one watch would get more sunshine than the
| other.
| jedc wrote:
| You're not just standing watch, though. There's training
| (SO MUCH TRAINING), drills (SO MANY DRILLS), meals, and
| at least a little time for movies/relaxation. Trying to
| fit all this in is more complicated with 8 hour watches.
| (With 6 hour watches, you do all training/drills in the
| 0600-1200/1200-1800 time periods, and it works out
| easily.)
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| 8 hours is a ridiculous length for something like sonar.
| Sonar, even if you are just steaming from one location to
| another, you are constantly working, thinking, checking,
| updating. I'm not sure how it has changed since my time,
| but it was exhausting, and we had to do 8's a number of
| times when we were short operators.
|
| For me though 6's were worse. You lose your sense of
| which direction 'up' is in time.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you for serving.
|
| And thank you for updating my apparently inaccurate or out of
| date knowledge.
| hammock wrote:
| I recently watched Last Resort (streaming on Plex), which gives
| an entertaining account of life on a nuclear submarine. I
| recommend it.
|
| It also scratches my itch for tv shows and movies where nukes are
| actually fired/detonated. If there is a comprehensive list
| somewhere, I'd love to see it.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Have you seen the movie "Failsafe"? It's an old black-and-white
| "non-action" movie about nukes during the cold war. Fascinating
| movie.
| hammock wrote:
| I haven't, it's going on the list. The plot sounds remarkably
| similar to By Dawn's Early Light (also good, from a
| psychological point of view).
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Failsafe is based on the same novel that Dr. Strangelove
| was based on - but while the (imho vastly superior) Kubrick
| movie was a comedy, Failsafe is more a warning.
| ramses0 wrote:
| https://www.crackle.com/watch/8196/2483291 (via google, but
| have fun with it... popcorn and turn down the lights ;-)
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Proud owner of a pair of silver dolphins.
| jedc wrote:
| Former submariner here (on the officer side). This article is fun
| and largely true, but also only scratches the surface of the
| weird culture of US submariners. Some other things to consider:
|
| * submarines deploy for 3-6 months at a time, often-times rarely
| pulling into ports. Imagine being stuck with 130-150 of your
| closest friends for that period of time in close quarters. It
| gets weird.
|
| * Law of Conservation of Happiness: Once you're submerged,
| happiness can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only be
| taken from others. Easy for the CO/XO to be happy: they run
| drills & have cleaning days for the crew. But everyone learns
| other crew members' weaknesses and ruthlessly exploits them if
| necessary.
|
| * Fatigue. I understand it's changed but when I was a submariner
| the boat operated on an 18-hour cycle: 3 sections of 6-hour
| watches. Humans aren't meant to operate on an 18-hour day, and so
| within a day or two of getting underway you just get into this
| permanent semi-fatigued state.
|
| As for me, looking back on my time I enjoyed it and learned a
| lot. (Maybe more importantly, I learned a lot about myself.) That
| said, while I was on board it was a lot more difficult experience
| - it's a challenging life.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> But everyone learns other crew members' weaknesses and
| ruthlessly exploits them if necessary._
|
| This is literally my worst nightmare. Highschool bullying 2.0
| except with no escape. I know for sure I'm not military
| material.
| jedc wrote:
| It's really not that bad the majority of the time. However,
| you train yourself not to have a reaction to stuff... because
| if you are particularly offended by {extreme porn, seeing
| penises, people criticizing your favorite team, taking "your
| mom" jokes to heart} that's an easy button for someone to
| press if they get bored.
|
| Submarines are pretty unique places in that every person is
| pretty critical in an emergency. So while it can be brutal at
| times, it's also pretty collegial.
| daenz wrote:
| How do fights and conflicts work out? Surely under the
| stressful conditions of a sub, people have conflict. And
| keeping that conflict hot can't be good for everyone. Are
| the personality types less prone to conflict, or is there
| some general way it gets resolved?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It seems perma-fatigue could be a serious problem on a warship.
| Any idea why the Navy doesn't restructure the working/waking
| hours to better optimize crew alertness and focus?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| It has been a serious problem, you read in the news about
| some warship crash every few years! It's likely that the Navy
| hasn't restructured things because they simply do not need to
| and have no incentive to do so. We're not exactly in a peer
| conflict.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think it's similar to doctors: a combination of traditional
| and demands of the job/flow of work based on existing
| process.
| OzCrimson wrote:
| One story that still haunts me about the culture onboard the
| submarine.
|
| We were dropping the trash and one requirement is that an
| officer be present. I was told to go get an officer. I found
| the Chief Engineer sitting in his room reading his Bible. I
| asked if he could come and be the required officer. He said,
| "sure."
|
| When people saw the Chief Engineer behind me they mocked, "Hey!
| Couldn't you have gotten someone more senior?"
|
| I didn't know that "officer" in this role meant to go find an
| Ensign or Lieutenant JG, not the officer who's 3rd in command
| of the whole boat. Folks got a lot of laughs out of that one.
|
| Overall, though, life on a submarine is infinitely better than
| a surface ship. I served on a fast attack sub and a frigate.
| The people on a submarine help make life better because most of
| the jobs on a submarine are advanced and require clearances
| that people can't get if they're on drug waivers or dropped out
| of school.
| jedc wrote:
| That Chief Engineer sounds like a good dude. (And he said
| "sure", so...)
|
| 100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface ship.
| I personally would have had a much harder time with the
| officer/enlisted relationship on a surface ship, in
| particular.
| daenz wrote:
| Sounds like he knew he was about to be part of this
| person's all-in-good-fun humiliation. Entertainment like
| that cannot be passed up!
| philihp wrote:
| Haha, exactly! Ultimately harmless and it'll make for a
| good story that would one day be immortalized on HN. Good
| judgement call on their part!
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _100% agree that submarine life is better than a surface
| ship._
|
| Maybe it's different now, but I spent a week riding an SSN
| as an NROTC midshipman, when I had orders to nuke school a
| few weeks later (I was commissioned right after first-class
| cruise and had already gone through The Interview with the
| KOG; long story). In nuke school I switched to surface,
| asked for and got sent to the Enterprise, and was pretty
| happy to be there at the center of the action with great
| port calls. Standing OOD underway on a carrier -- the
| officer on watch who's in charge of the entire ship, and de
| facto of the task force -- was the most rewarding thing
| I've ever done professionally, especially during evolutions
| such as night flight ops. And you deal with (and learn to
| lead) sailors of all educational levels and from all walks
| of life, not just the cream of the crop as on subs.
| jedc wrote:
| Oh, interesting! I thought that the sub community got all
| the nukes fresh from school, and the surface nukes all
| had a sea tour under their belt before getting sent to
| Power School / Prototype.
|
| You make a compelling case - OOD on a carrier has got to
| be a hell of an interesting job! Personally I liked the
| smaller team on a sub, getting to do TS missions, etc.
| But I can definitely see where you're coming from. (And
| frankly, I still think submarine life is better than
| traditional non-nuke SWO life, still.)
| alliao wrote:
| I was looking into the ventilation rate of things and not sure
| if it was a misprint but submarines apparently have 8000ppm of
| CO2 when submerged, which to me sounds insane as we know for
| sure 1000ppm is when it starts affecting your mood, judgements,
| and decision making capability..
| jedc wrote:
| There are CO2 scrubbers on board, the crew turns them on/off
| to control concentrations. It's one of the things I checked
| before I went on every watch as OOD (officer of the deck):
| the CO2/O2 concentrations. (One of our weapons officers was
| really sensitive to CO2 concentrations and would s*t all over
| any OOD who let them get too high.)
| solveit wrote:
| I'm led to believe that the CO2 concentrations still
| routinely go above 2000 ppm though. Is that right?
| [deleted]
| solveit wrote:
| I'm also interested in the cognitive effects of CO2, and I
| have a great deal of skepticism in the studies that say small
| amounts cause noticeable deficits precisely because we know
| people can carry out complex tasks for months on end inside a
| submarine. I know other people have also remarked on this
| (absurd!) inconsistency but haven't seen it satisfactorily
| resolved.
|
| I will say that it's much easier to believe that the studies
| are somehow flawed and people don't get seriously impaired by
| 8000 ppm than it is to believe that we've gone nearly seventy
| years without noticing that the people who are supposed to
| launch nuclear strikes in the event of WW3 have been retarded
| all this time.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I'm what's called a Stationary Operating Engineer, which is a
| fancy name for a boiler operator. We're the ones who keep all
| large buildings from hospitals to factories to nuke plants online
| usually by operating boilers and chillers. Over the years (I'm
| close to retirement) I've worked with many former Navy men, some
| of whom were on subs, both diesel and nuke. Listening to their
| stories has always been interesting, but what always got me was
| the amount of training school they went through. When they hire
| in I'm the one who "trains" them for our plants and I always find
| them very competent.
| roomey wrote:
| I gotta ask, I'm a bit of a submarine novel buff...
|
| Could I get submarine book recommendations please!!
|
| Bewarned however, I've read (listened) to a good few already. ;)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| The most accurate, currently used ICBMs can have a CEP ranging
| from 10 to 130 meters so they can probably be used that way.
| Most ICBMs also have a configurable "detonation" height,
| meaning they can probably be set low enough to severely damage
| a nuclear plant reactor containment building. Not sure if they
| are powerful enough to vaporize the fuel rods though.
|
| But as you said, at that point, it wouldn't really matter
| anymore.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Funny and accurate article: https://www.cracked.com/personal-
| experiences-1276-6-things-m...
| gwbennett wrote:
| Spent 3.5 years on a LA Class Fast Attack sub and 3 years on a
| Ohio Class Ballistic Missile sub (aka boomer) as Nuke MM & ELT.
| 10 years total in the Navy. Article put a smile on my face. Not a
| bad job for being written by a "Sonar Girl". :-)
| jedc wrote:
| ELT? I was the RCA on my boat. Had some of my notorious stories
| of my time on board happen when I was the RCA...
| TehShrike wrote:
| If you found this post at all interesting you will enjoy Destin's
| series on Smarter Every Day spending time on a US fast attack
| submarine talking to everyone and poking at lots of weird
| corners:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d6SEQQbwtU&list=PLjHf9jaFs8...
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Second this, an excellent series.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Aboard a US nuclear submarine. What is missing from this article
| is the context of how much the boat impacts the culture. A
| Russian or British submarine will have a different training
| system not just because they have a different military culture
| but also because the boat is physically different. Communications
| pathways, be them electronic or physical, dictate how decisions
| are made. A Russian submariner probably won't make a move without
| orders not because he doesn't know what to do but because there
| might not be a direct electronic report back at the command as to
| what is happening. Doing things without orders on a Russian boat
| can result in command loosing awareness of a situation. A US
| submariner can have better confidence that his actions will be
| automatically reported back to command via various sensors and
| monitoring systems.
|
| This article focuses on the fact that the US submarine experience
| special because everyone is expected to have a working knowledge
| of every system. That is different than the rest of the US
| military where people remain very specialized. But mandating
| generalist knowledge is actually a norm in other countries. The
| Brits/Canadians tell a joke about US soldiers: Whereas each
| member of a british or canadian gun crew is expected to
| understand and perform all the jobs associated with firing a gun,
| an American is likely to respond "I pull the rope." Such hyper-
| specialization just doesn't work in a submarine because people
| are not able to physically move around. The environment, the
| submarine, dictates the culture.
| kodah wrote:
| The US military actually has various perspectives on this
| statement by branch:
|
| > But mandating generalist knowledge is actually a norm in
| other countries. The Brits/Canadians tell a joke about US
| soldiers: Whereas each member of a british or canadian gun crew
| is expected to understand and perform all the jobs associated
| with firing a gun, an American is likely to respond "I pull the
| rope."
|
| For instance, the Marines encourage a lot of cross-training.
| First and foremost, it shoots operational cost to the bottom if
| you have, say, a Corporal that's formally trained in
| electronics, but also knows their way around MEPDIS gear, HVAC,
| guns, and troop movement. The reason you'll hear the most
| touted though: "What if someone dies; who can take their
| place?" It's like a right of passage in a way. Green Berets,
| Navy SWIC, and SEAL/S work in under similar lines of thought
| from what I know. This all aligns to their mission though:
| seizing forward positions.
|
| The line company Army, however, focuses on specialization. The
| reasoning is pretty simple: their mandate is to occupy. imo,
| the way people organize around knowledge is based on the
| challenges they perceive in the mission ahead. I've yet to
| figure out how to replicate this in software.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| > I've yet to figure out how to replicate this in software.
|
| while substantially different in nature (defined by mission),
| both marines and army have the same principle: it's your job
| to learn the job of your superior (because if they die, you
| need to be able to take over) - a principle that applies at
| every rank.
|
| I think that applies quite well to SWE.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Too bad then when someone who doesn't have any underlings
| but whose job is crucial dies.
| munk-a wrote:
| If a single person is the sole bearer of incredibly
| critical information it's a failure of the organization
| to insure itself against risk and possibly a failure of
| the individual to properly express the amount of
| specialized knowledge.
|
| I think tech companies are pretty good about this though,
| since the whole meme around "bus factor" is well
| understood and broadly discussed.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| The Army may prefer specialization simply because they're
| large enough to be able to, eg have enough redundancy that if
| one specialist dies there are more to replace him.
|
| The Marines, subs, and the other examples you give are
| smaller units, and simply may not have that size-based
| redundancy.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> First and foremost, it shoots operational cost to the
| bottom
|
| Operational costs yes, but not training costs. Make that
| general knowledge a minimum standard and you have to train
| the people in all manner of things before they are useful.
| The marines, from my outside perspective, are still very
| specialized in terms of basic riflemen training but are open
| to cross-training once someone is at an operational unit.
| Each marine doesn't need a sniper qual from day one, but the
| corps will certainly help them get it later. The navy
| submariner is different because of the number of mandatory
| quals before you are considered usable on a boat.
| kodah wrote:
| The Marines do have a baseline of knowledge you have to
| obtain. There's actually two phases to it:
|
| 1. Bootcamp. You're learning all the basics, from history
| to troop movement, and basic weapons qualification.
|
| 2. Infantry Training Battalion. A primer on top of bootcamp
| for navigation, shooting, troop movement, and weapons
| qualification. (These are required of every Marine in order
| to join "The Fleet")
|
| 3. Primary/Secondary school. This is your a-billet training
| (your primary job).
|
| Where most of the other training occurs is once you're _in_
| the fleet, which occurs in your first unit _after_ Step 3.
| There 's a moderately high attrition baseline to get to the
| fleet, which signifies a minimally deployable Marine.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Found the Marine. ;-)
|
| > ...two phases...
|
| > proceeds to list 1... 2... 3...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Startups are the marines and FAANGs are the army. There are
| so many parallels.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| That there are!
|
| As a quasi-related aside, at a startup I worked on a DARPA
| contract where the Marines were the theoretical end
| customer (FANG / Adaptive Vehicle Make). There are few
| cooler people in the world to chew the fat with than Marine
| warrant officers. YATYAS!
| golergka wrote:
| > A Russian submariner probably won't make a move without
| orders not because he doesn't know what to do but because there
| might not be a direct electronic report back at the command as
| to what is happening.
|
| I don't know that much about submarines, but culture of
| following orders and not showing any initiative is so hardly
| entrenched in Russian military that it might be the other way
| around: culture influencing boat design.
| dekervin wrote:
| I am taking advantage of this comment to ask a general
| question hoping to read some insights into it.
|
| On different occasions after doing some casual war history
| reading, I ended up with the diffuse belief that the ability
| to delegate initiative to low ranking soldiers was one of the
| key attributes of the winning side ( for example during
| different israelo-arab wars ).
|
| Then I stumbled upon a military evaluation of how the german
| army performed during WWII. It spent time stressing the point
| that german officers were constantly encouraged to show
| initiative and independant thinking, more so than other
| western european armies. Supposedly, it was a cultural trait
| dating back from the prussian army. It shattered my cliche
| view of the german army as first and foremost an organization
| built on discipline.
|
| So here is my question: Is is possible there is a
| tendency/bias to simply view ourselves as more independant
| and any adversary we face as more "drone" like ? ( The same
| way ancient kingdoms would simply label their opponents as
| savages ? )
| LanceH wrote:
| >It shattered my cliche view of the german army as first
| and foremost an organization built on discipline.
|
| Discipline is not orthogonal to creative thinking. Wartime
| activities are not like they read after the fact. As the
| saying goes, "no plan survives first contact with the
| enemy". This means that junior officers and NCO's and even
| soldiers are expected to assess their changing situations
| and needs in order to satisfy (or retire from) the mission.
|
| What kind of discipline is needed to start following the
| platoon sergeant when the platoon commander is down? It's
| even more critical at this point.
|
| Fielding troops in a fight where they have incomplete
| knowledge requires empowering them with the authority to
| act in order to fulfill their potential.
|
| Then there are militaries militaries where officers are
| chosen by some system of prestige (like a watery tart
| lobbing scimitars). These require absolute adherence to
| structure so as not to undermine the authority of those
| with the divine right/political connections.
|
| Now, while this is all idealized, there comes a rank, above
| which promotion tends to be political as well as about
| success. The German military certainly had their issues
| with this, where there was a very real fear that went
| beyond merely not getting promoted.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Initiative always sounds great but it only works in a
| proper information environment. This is where the
| officer/ncm divide comes into play. Showing real initiative
| means apparently disobeying "orders". To do that you have
| to understand both your commander's intent when giving
| those orders and your commander's commander's (your 2-up)
| intent. That means knowing about other units and their
| roles in the operation. That's the stuff of officers.
| Supporting initiative means pushing information down,
| keeping lower-level officers aware of what is happening in
| other units. A senior NCM will spend time with his
| subordinates getting and keeping them ready. The officer
| will spend time way from his subordinates at
| meetings/briefs learning about what other units are doing.
| Long-winded chats with senior officers is how junior
| officers come to understand their intent. WWII Germany was
| very good at pushing that information down to junior
| officers. Russia, recently, has not.
|
| Example: A platoon sergeant may know that the platoon has
| been ordered to be at X location at Y time. They can do
| lots of interesting stuff to make that deadline. But they
| don't have eyes on the entire reason for being at that
| location because they weren't in the planning meetings at
| the HQ. The LT was. The LT may "show initiative" by
| deliberately being late/early to the location because he
| perhaps sees that the operation is progressing more
| slowly/quickly than anticipated. The sergeant's job it to
| know everything about his subordinates in order to get them
| to do what is needed. The officer's job is to understand
| everything about how his platoon fits into the larger
| picture and, occasionally, adapt orders to support that
| vision.
| izacus wrote:
| Acoup (acoup.blog) has a few really nice posts about this
| topic (in relation with current Ukraine conflict no less.)
|
| Basic takeaway is this - yes, everyone wants to run their
| army using (googlable keyword) Auftragstaktik. But that's
| very similar to saying that everyone in software business
| wants to run their software company like Netflix, Apple or
| Google at it's best - with responsible senior engineers
| that own their mistakes, show initiative, are skilled and
| don't let performance or power spats influence their
| ability to achieve goals.
|
| But the reality is, that shaping such an organization (or
| company!) is exceedingly hard and requires massive culture
| shifts within people of the organization (which bring their
| own baggage from outside) and incentives. It's easy to say
| you want to be Apple, but hammering a 3rd tier company
| filled with backstabbing juniors into a highly performing
| machine is going to be an impossible task.
|
| That's what many nations are facing when shaping their
| armies into better performing units - command-oriented
| hiearchies can be more effective when your people are
| poorly skilled and not culturally prepared to work
| together. Even US had some famous massive fails in WW2
| where generals let many Americans die due to their dumb
| branch power struggles and egos.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think the Germans did have more independent thinking. It
| helped them. They frequently out-fought larger enemy
| groups, and the independence helped.
|
| They eventually got buried in numbers (Russia) and buried
| in materiel (US). The US also eventually got around to
| allowing the same independent thinking, and the German
| independent thinking got eroded as Hitler meddled more and
| more in the war.
| dekervin wrote:
| Interesting ! If I read your answer correctly, there was
| a time when German Army had more independent thinking
| than US Army. Is it common knowledge in military circles
| ? Did you always knew it or was there a time or a reason
| your worldview changed on that topic ? I am asking to
| compare with my "epiphany" experience.
| InTheArena wrote:
| As a german history student, I think this is the pretty
| commonly held view. I think the best German example was
| Ludendorff. Early in the war, as a fairly junior officer,
| he bluffed the citadel at Liege into surrendering all by
| his lonesome. It set him up for the eastern command with
| Hindenberg and then later as the proto-Hitlerian dictator
| of Germany at the end of World War I.
|
| That said - the word on initiative and discipline is
| right. Prussian military tradition gave German officers
| very wide latitude to make their own decisions, until it
| interfered with the political state or their superiors
| commands.
|
| That said, even great officers can't win against
| overwhelming odds and opponents with dramatic material
| superiority.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, if you look at Kasserine Pass, for instance, you
| see a US army that is poorly commanded and can't respond
| fast enough to the German attack. That may purely be bad
| leadership, but I see it as at least partly lack of
| independent thinking.
|
| Don't read too much into my answer. I'm not an expert,
| and I hadn't even thought about the question until my
| first reply on this thread. It's an off-the-cuff
| impression, not a well-thought-out position.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That is largely a myth. The nazis routinely got beaten up
| even when they were outnumbering their enemies. The
| Battle of Normandy is a good example of that. The allies
| dominated Germany after the landing despite the fact that
| the germans allocated more Panzer divisions to France
| than to the eastern front (!!!).
|
| Also, While the soviets were overall outnumbering the
| germans , Operation Bagaration is another example of
| superb strategic and tactical out maneuvering. The
| domination was total and the entire army group center was
| anhilated, in such a way that the mere numerical
| superiority couldn't really account for.
|
| And even when local numerical superiority favored the
| germans, the soviets were able to win.
|
| Plus, the "hitler overruled his generals" is another very
| persistent exaggeration that mostly came from post war
| nazi generals memoirs. As you might expect, those memoirs
| were very self serving and were a convenient way to wash
| away responsibility and incompetence. In reality, most of
| the bad decisions were taken by the army command, and
| hitler only became more dominant after the German army
| had already suffered huge defeat. And even at that point,
| he wasn't exactly overruling the brightest plans. Most of
| those generals in the army command didn't even support
| the plans that ended up being massive victories for the
| nazis, like the invasion of france for example.
| dralley wrote:
| The structure of the German high command also encouraged
| infighting and squabbling for resources between the
| Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe and SS
| ncmncm wrote:
| Famously, "Germany" had cracked literally all the ciphers
| the Allied armies were using, but each was cracked by one
| outfit that would not talk to any other. The Postal
| Service had cracked one of them, e.g., but nobody in the
| army wanted to hear anything from the post office.
| bsedlm wrote:
| I can sense this is written to make it sound cool and appealing.
|
| i.e. this is clearly a form of advertising.
| ufmace wrote:
| Seems like a bit of a hostile interpretation. I'd say it's
| written to sound interesting to readers. Nobody would click to
| read and share an article where half the word count was
| technical details or moralizing about how they're all potential
| mass murderers.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Recruitment in the military is becoming more difficult. Here in
| the UK, you get BBC's TopGear doing "cool things" with
| different parts of the military.
|
| Both USUK have various motor sport racing teams to make things
| seem cool, but its also an attempt to boost recruitment and the
| bleeding obvious is criminals can now sign up and join the
| forces, so the bar has been lowered, but I'm sure it can be
| spun another way!
|
| I know there are a lot of less fortunate who took advantage of
| educational programs and sponsorship, like prisoners get, to
| further their educational qualifications, and its a cheap way
| to see parts of the world if you want to travel.
|
| Saving that, you do meet some odd people in the military and
| PTSD is a big problem.
|
| Thing is Govt's make sure the Military PR is always the best so
| you never hear about those who have been mentally destroyed by
| the military, either directly or by being related to military
| personnel.
|
| Everything you hear Putin or China being accused of, goes on in
| your country as well, the so called free press are not that
| free!
| goodpoint wrote:
| ...and pretty gross.
| paganel wrote:
| > i.e. this is clearly a form of advertising.
|
| Which in this particular instance (i.e. the military and the
| business of killing other people) can be called propaganda
| without a second thought about it. Someone linked to a Smarter
| Every Day YT video above which was filmed on a board of a US
| nuclear submarine, that was also blatant propaganda.
| LanceH wrote:
| Just because someone doesn't share your negative view of the
| military doesn't make it propaganda.
|
| There is a certain arrogance in assuming the only way other
| people could possibly choose to do this is by being
| brainwashed.
|
| Military people write about their fond memories of weird
| situations they have lived in/through that civilians can't
| relate to. This doesn't make it all propaganda.
|
| This whole article writes like someone trying to explain the
| weird lives of submariners, and he's just scratching the
| surface.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Propaganda doesn't mean that it's fake, or that it's
| brainwashing. It's just "primarily used to influence or
| persuade an audience to further an agenda." [0] In this
| case, the agenda is to recruit for the armed forces. In
| other words "government marketing."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
| [deleted]
| beeboop wrote:
| If you click to zoom an image and then zoom in more using a mac
| touchpad, the website throws an error and ceases to display any
| content. I miss the internet of the 90s
| gennarro wrote:
| This started interesting but then devolved into lines like:
|
| " Despite his excitement, he is the smoothest Reactor Operator in
| the nuclear program and can catch a power spike like he's dimming
| the bedroom lights next to his waifu body pillow."
|
| Is this a serious article or not?
| OldManAndTheCpp wrote:
| This is something like a "culture" article, answering not "what
| does a Reactor Operator do?" (operate the reactor, duh), but
| "what is a Reactor Operator like?".
|
| Describing them in this joking, colorful way give readers more
| of a feel of the Reactor Operator archetype than a bland "they
| were the people who scored highest on the standardized test for
| the navy". It's trying to convey the feeling that "these are
| the nerdiest people on boat full of nerdy people".
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