I'm currently 24 years Navy and still active duty, 16 enlisted, 8 Officer, 15 years and 10 days of it at sea; all on subs except for 3 years on a CVN. If my math is right I've spent 12 years underwater. I agree with what the CNO is trying to do as long as the deal includes two things.
1) No seperate berthing or shower facilities. A submarine does not have warehouse style berthing like a surface ship does. Berthing on a boat is partitioned into small areas. If females get their own (female only) berthing area they must have the exact amount of woman on that crew's roster during underways to occupy every rack. Ensuring that exactly the amount of women = the "9 man" accomodations is extremely difficult if not impossible.This includes hot racking; a necessary measure on fast attack submarines. On a 688 class the smallest enlisted berthing is called "9 man". Imagine the frustration in the crew and angst for the COB (Chief of the Boat) if only one female was occupying "9 - man", and 8 racks went empty on a 6 month deployment because females were mandated a segregated area. Heads are not like surface ships either. The showers are 2 ft X 2 ft and the door is a telephone booth style folding hinged partition. The shower door exits into a common and public area. Take one head away because of gender segregation and you've just removed 50% of the showers and toilets from the crew. The Aussies have women on their boats right now. No special accomodations whatsoever.
2) All hands efforts are exactly that .......all hands. No reason why a woman shouldn't participate in stores loads. Just like the guys...the newbie gets the escape trunk. All food is loaded by hand through the narrow circular hatches. The two story escape trunk is the worst spot. Try passing concrete bags down a ladder for a couple hours and you get the idea. If you eat it you have to load it, Lieutenants and below.
Some of you might snicker or make a clever comments; but I'm actually sincere. I have witnessed the females at sea on one CVN. There are smart ones as well as idiots(no different than men). There are strong ones and physically weak ones (again no difference from male counterparts). Some, ....actually most, are highly dedicated. As a fraction I would say dedicated more so than the men.
One sore subject is the fact that all US boats are nuclear powered. If a woman was to get pregnant she would have to be flown off the boat immediately. That's right Captain Shark of Steel, you must come off mission and surface in a safe area to transfer her off. The gestation period of the fetus is at risk if exposed to ionizing radiation. Oh, by the way Captain I just missed my missile launch envelope, she was in three section watch rotation, so two of your guys are now port and stbd watches for the duration of the deployment. Her replacement is in the training pipeline and should report for duty in 3-4 months. This is an aspect that surface ships can and do easily handle. I think (easy now politically correct citizens) that female submariner contraception should be mandatory for the sake of the mission and crew.
I served up to E-7 wearing silver dolphins, and am an O-3 wearing gold dolphins now, I say give 'em a chance.
Of course, I'm not the CNO, so I don't get a vote.
<S>, jink
