Female sailors could join sub crews by 2011

[CommunityEditor]

A handful of female seniors at the Naval Academy or in the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps could very well be the first women to be assigned to a U.S. submarine.

And if initial plans fall into place, those women — joined by some seasoned supply and surface nuke lieutenants already in the fleet — will be included in four crews assigned to two Ohio-class submarines by late 2011.

In exclusive interviews with Navy Times, the heads of Fleet Forces Command and the Submarine Force laid out near-term plans for integrating women into the undersea fleet. The plans, which must be approved by senior Navy and Pentagon leadership, underscore how quickly the service is pushing the initiative.

The interviews also produced a surprising amount of detail, since the statements came less than one week after the chief of naval operations and Navy secretary told Navy Times that they wanted to end the ban on assigning women to submarines. Plans are so far along, admirals said, because they have been working this issue for years.

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And after leaping one legislative hurdle, the first steps toward integration could happen fast.

The Pentagon must notify Congress of the intent to change policy to allow women on subs, then wait 30 days before moving ahead, and before spending any money. The Navy’s working on that notification right now, said Vice Adm. Jay Donnelly, head of the Submarine Force.

“I would think that would start making its way from the Navy, through the secretary of the Navy and the secretary of defense in the month or so ahead,” he said.

The first women assigned to submarines will be junior officers, said Adm. John Harvey, head of Fleet Forces Command.

“We’ll start with the officers because you can get to it soonest,” Harvey said. “I am very certain that you will start with junior officers that will come in right to the submarine force.”

Both Harvey and Donnelly said bringing female sailors aboard will be more complex due to manning requirements — and more expensive because of berthing modifications. Adding junior female officers to subs will require no money for modifications, they said.

The admirals also said that, in the near term, integration will occur only in the Navy’s Ohio-class submarines, which consist of 14 ballistic-missile subs and four guided-missile subs.

The Navy’s three classes of smaller, fast-attack subs — Los Angeles, Seawolf and Virginia — are another story.

“When you look at the one we’re building now, the Virginia class, that’s what I’d call a mature design,” Harvey said. “Now that we’re in serial production, to go back and undo things to make it viable for females in the crew, that’s a pretty tall order.

“Can it be done? I just don’t know where we are on that and at what cost, etc.,” he said. “But I know we can get at it much more rapidly with the SSGNs and SSBNs, so that’s where the focus will be.”

Choosing the first to go
Donnelly was careful to point out that he was speaking about how the sub force “might” integrate quickly and not how it “will.”

The plan to be submitted to leadership for approval will likely involve integrating four crews at first: the blue and gold crews of a ballistic sub on one coast and the blue and gold crews of a Tomahawk shooter on the other, officials said.

The first group would come from the Class of 2010. Seniors interested in surface and undersea nuclear careers are already undergoing personal interviews with Adm. Kirkland Donald, head of Naval Reactors. Right now, women being interviewed are eligible only for nuclear propulsion billets aboard aircraft carriers. The men are eligible for carriers and subs.

Donnelly said the first female officer cadre would depend on volunteers this school year.

It’s already a healthy pool. In the academy class that graduated last spring, half of the 32 ensigns headed to nuclear propulsion school were women. That bodes well for finding volunteers among this year’s crop of seniors.

“I think it would be possible to go back to that pool [of senior midshipmen] that has been accepted into the nuclear propulsion program with the intent of going into the surface community, to go back and say, ‘Are there any of you that would care to volunteer for submarine duty?’” Donnelly said.

After graduation in May 2010, they would enter the submarine officer pipeline with their male classmates.

“They’d go to six months of nuclear power school in Charleston, S.C., followed by six months of prototype training, followed by three months at the basic submarine officers’ course we teach,” he said. “That’s 15 to 16 months of training before women officers from that class get to their ships. So we’re talking some time in late 2011 at the earliest, or into early 2012.”

Big subs only
The Navy’s three classes of fast-attack subs are tightly packed, making Ohio-class subs roomy by comparison. The modifications to berthing areas to accommodate women on attack boats would be exceedingly expensive and maybe not even possible, according to experts.

On the other hand, aboard the larger Ohios, officer berthing for department heads and below makes integration simple, as it is limited to two staterooms with three bunks and three with two bunks.

The officers would share their existing head, and just use a flippable sign on the door denoting whether women or men are in the head.

“There is no modification,” Donnelly said. “There is no cost.”

As far as crew composition, Donnelly said, the surface fleet’s 16-year experience in gender integration found about 10 percent to 15 percent of officers and enlisted need to be women. The initial female cadres — in this case, as few as two to four officers per crew — need to have one member who is senior in order to mentor the junior.

“I might be able to find some women supply officers who have been to sea in a mixed-gender crew who kind of know the ropes,” he said, “and put them in that initial cadre along with some nuclear-trained ensigns coming out of sub school.”

Female surface warfare officers coming off an initial sea tour and headed into the nuclear pipeline to be nuke-SWOs might be another source of senior cadre.

Officers will be phased in.

“I think it would be probably multiple ships, not the entire force initially; we need to ramp this up. I’d look to do this on BNs and GNs, multiple crews, in both home ports, Kings Bay [Ga.] and Bangor [Wash.].”

The enlisted issue
Bringing in enlisted women is a tougher issue. It’s going to take money, modifications and careful training, both admirals said.

“We’re not going to see a young female sailor swinging her seabag on her shoulder and walking aboard the USS Maryland next month,” Harvey said. “But we will — it will be a couple of years. We have to recruit, bring them in the program.”

Having that lead time, he said, will give manpower planners a chance to move forward “in a thoughtful, very controlled, very deliberate manner.”

Probably the most critical lesson learned in the surface force, Harvey said, is the need to have strong officer and senior enlisted leadership in place before bringing in junior enlisted women.

That’s because incidents of pregnancy and fraternization are less frequent in crews with strong female leaders onboard.

“It can’t be ‘I’m the woman on the submarine’ — that’s just a terrible burden to put on everybody, particularly that young woman,” Harvey said.

He said it will take some time to build a “critical mass” of female leadership needed to seed the integrated crews.

“You’d have to get at least a small cadre of female chiefs or first-class petty officers, and those, of course, would have to come from other parts of the Navy initially,” Donnelly said. “Then they would have to have sufficient time to qualify in submarines in order to have, I think, the credibility as leaders on the ship, and that takes some time.”

Converting into the submarine community at the E-7 or above level would be difficult, according to a retired senior submariner familiar with the Navy’s plans. He asked not to be named because of his continued ties with the Navy.

“Really, to be in the chiefs’ mess on a submarine you already need to be qualified in submarines — if you’re not, you would be a burden more than an asset,” he said.

He said it would make sense to convert experienced petty officers and grow them into submarine chiefs.

But even as they’re building the enlisted leadership picture, officials also must work on the other piece — recruiting junior female submariners from the street.

For many of the nontechnical ratings such as yeoman and culinary specialist, that could be fairly easy and quick, as it would require only about six months at “A” school and the six-week submarine school in Groton, Conn., as happens today with male sailors.

Donnelly said it was too early to say which ratings will be open to women. But over time, all submarine ratings could be open, the retired sub source said.

But to truly build a proper representation of women in the submarine force, the source said, women must be recruited and trained in technical ratings, too.

Training female sailors in highly technical ratings has been a challenge on the surface side. Of the 12,845 nuclear-power-qualified sailors, just 752 are women and 241 of those are in training. Only 22 are chiefs, and two are senior chiefs; there are no female master chief nukes.

Growing female enlisted nukes will take time. It takes about 18 months once a sailor reports to nuclear power school in Charleston for that person to join a sub crew.

Enlisted modifications
The other issue, besides personnel, will be to modify enlisted berthing on the Ohios. Donnelly said the volume of that hull allows for relatively uncomplicated modifications. But fairness is key to any change.

“I would not entertain a solution that forced the men to hot-bunk on one of those ships. So we’ll do this right, and the right answer is give the women their own head,” he said, “and make sure the men aren’t inconvenienced or treated unfairly in any way.”

As they exist now, the modification plans are little more than drawings, as money can’t be committed prior to congressional notification.

“We haven’t actually gone to the ship design engineers,” Donnelly said.

The timeline is somewhat flexible for enlisted berthing modifications, which could be completed on the boomers during their refueling overhauls. The four SSGNs already completed their midlife overhaul and conversion. There are also shorter yard periods when the work might be done, depending on the complexity.

Donnelly estimates the cost of those modifications at $8 million to $10 million. But he offered a warning.

“Those prices never go down,” he said. “They always go up.”


Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/1..._subs_101209w/

[CYA]

Great! Maybe after that they can integrate prisons and the NFL.

I have been in the Navy for 7 years now and 4 of that were on the submarine. While I served on the submarine I opposed women being on submarines and after coming to shore and working with women for the first time I further oppose women being on submarines. The aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, and every other surface ship that has integrated women have some how become “love boats”. The submarine will be no different. I am a Missile Technician! We have lain on top of each other to crawl inside the missile tube. Put a woman in that position and imagine a man and a woman laying on each other after 80 days out to sea. That is what I see when I think about this integration project.



If there has not been an all women surface ship there will definitely not be an all woman submarine. Women on surface ships are the Navy’s science experiments gone badly. The submarine is not even big enough to accommodate an extra bathroom. There will be sex, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and even consented sex. Then there is damage control aspect to think about. How many women do you know that can carry a submersible pump from the forward compartment to the engine room? I have not met one yet. I have a hard carrying one myself and I know that I am stronger than the average woman. The movie G.I. Jane painted a nice fairy tale picture of what integrating women into a closed community would be like. Sadly to say it will not be that way. The surface fleet is still having problems.



A woman getting pregnant on the submarine is the same thing as a guy breaking his leg. Except that we lose the woman for much longer. Especially if there are cases in which women are purposely getting pregnant to get out of patrol. We cannot afford that on submarines. We need everyone we can get.



If anything, just think about the money this will cost the navy and the man hours that will be lost after it happens. This will no doubt cripple the submarine fleet. What ever reason that kept women off of submarines for this long has not gone away. We just have different people making the decision.

[TECH409]

As usual the so called leadership has their head stuck in the TDU, that's a Trash Disposal Unit for all the Skimmers out there. Women serving on ANY water borne NAVY vessel is and will always be a stupid policy. Any Sailor who has served with women on Skimmmer ships will tell you the same thing. All of the ships with women aboard have severe morale and disipline problems. Many of the women are raped, pimped, or selling sex as a second job. The politacally connected leaders of the Navy, both men and women, officer and civilians, know this for a fact. Women on the BOATS is an even dummer idea. If this is approved, Electric Boat will have to design barge to be towed and carry a large supply of Tampex and Kotex!

As is often the case when an idea that is controversial comes up, the people in the Navy that are responsible for making that idea become a reality either fail to adequately prepare or make assumptions that are just plain wrong. The ideas and rationales for women onboard submarines presented in this article
shows that once again, the case holds true.

Saying that women could be serving onboard subs by late 2010 or early 2011 dues to allowing for the
current class at Annapolis to graduate and complete advanced training is completely wrong. There are already hundreds of female sailors who could fill billets onboard subs without any additional training.
Nuclear power trained sailors could be assigned to subs right away, as long as they volunteered for it and passed the same screening that all other submarine volunteers have to pass. No need to use training time as an excuse for not assigning women to subs since enlisted "Nukes" dont go to sub school.

While it is true that the SSBNs and SSGNs provide the most likely platforms for women to serve on initially,
that doesnt exclude SSNs at all. Saying that it would take millions of dollars and much time to modify a Virginia class to allow females onboard is just wrong. The Virginia class berthing arrangement allows for immediate assignment of female personnel. Officer berthing has multiple 3 person staterooms, just like Tridents. Enlisted berthing comes in a variety of styles- 5 or 6 person rooms(which could have doors easily installed), 21 person with a head already in the compartment(if there are 21 females onboard), 12 person berthing compartments(1 with a head inside, both with doors)

Finding qualified female personnel of sufficient seniority to be leaders and mentors for junior personnel is an issue since you would have to draw them from a pool that is already small, but, it isnt necessary to insist that a female officer or chief be assigned before you assign other females. Officers and chiefs are supposed to mentor all sailors, regardless of any differences they may have. If you feel that a female cnat recieve the same leadership or mentoring from the officers and chiefs onboard a submarine just because of a difference in their sex, the issue isnt with lack of female supervision, the issue is with the supervision that is there.

Yes, submarines are a close, tight knit environment. Yes, by their very nature , submarines force the crews to be closer to each other than most other vessels. Yes, there are certain images, stereotypes, and mindsets that exist or are percieved to exist onboard submarines. That is what needs to be addressed to allow for women to serve onboard submarines, not flipping signs around on heads.

[GAS]

I agree with Gracien. I have seen too many times when they have to go on dets, etc, when the women will end up pregnant or with female trouble, which means the men will have to stay longer to fill the billet. It is not fair to them nor their families. If women cannot fully fill the billet, then they need to be taken out of that rate, or even taken out of the Navy - if they signed up for it, then cant fill it, that is like a breach of contract. Somehow, if the women want to be in what has been male situations - rates, ships, subs- then not fulfilling that HAS to have some kind of circumstances tied to it. Take them out of the rate, dock them monitarilly (enough to feel it), take away shore duty - whatever will stop such abuse. The Navy has a perfectly good medical program, at sea and well as based. Their should be no need for the females to leave their duties until absolutely medically necessary.

What are they going to do with these women if the sub is in a situation where they are running silent, near enemy areas, etc. Is everything to be stopped to the detriment of military planning or even the posibility of endangering the ship and the lives of those on board, because a women goes into early labor or has some other female problem. On a ship they can be flown off - not always on a sub.

[STSC(SS)]

This is very unsettling to me. Reading around and about the web, people are saying it will ruin marriages and sailors will become raped and such. I seriously don’t think that is going to be the problem. What is the problem is that no one is really thinking about it. They keep referring to boomer lifestyle, when the real problem will be on the much smaller, more compacted Fast Attacks. What I see as a problem, is 1) Pregnancy. Whether it happens on board or not, I don't care (at this point). What I worry about is the ability to accomplish the mission that we are deployed to do now that we much abort the mission and drive for several days just to reach a safe place to surface so she can be removed from the ship, so she is not as close to the reactor and whatever silly rules are out there. This can also seriously affect manning, as to who will take her place when she is no longer on board. Some divisions only have just enough to man a 3 section watchbill. People will become port and stbd, and then we have even more issues. If she is removed from the ship permanently for whatever reason, we don’t get that billet back until her PRD. I am pretty sure that is how it goes. That’s what happens to the guys we lose who go to medical because they can't cut it. 2) Periods. They happen. I heard one person state that there is medicine to stop periods. Is the woman going to volunteer to not get her period during her entire tour on board? I know some of you are thinking what the hell does that have to do with it? Well, that used Bio-Hazard needs to be disposed of. There are many times when trash cannot be disposed of for weeks at a time. I'll be damned if I see that go in the freezer. Or in the nice hot engine room until we can pull in and hand carry our trash off. Those are the two trash options. 3) And will people please please PLEASE stop saying to give them their own ship? First they need to go through 6 months of Basic Enlisted Submarine School and A-school. Then there is the 1 year of qualifying. When I was in a school, I threw everything I learned out the window because I learned a different system then what my first boat had. So who is going to teach them? There is one major thing we dearly treasure on a submarine, and that is the vast amount of submarine experience around you. So, no, giving them their own sub will not work. I can see that idea sinking very fast. Yes, pun intended. Also, one last thing. All the people making this push, this decision, aside from MCPON West, how many of them have their Dolphins and are speaking from experience? It’s not much, but that is my 12 years worth. Please, let’s think more about this.

[wrmdispatcher]

A few things come to mind....

What about the Aussies or Norwegians both with females on board very small less luxurious diesel powered boats?

[DarkHeart]

I blame the leadership. There is no reason why men and woman can't co-habitate. All the problems cited, with the exception of seperate bathrooms and such (that is something at should be addressed), stem from piss poor professionalism, both from the males and the females. If sailors can't control themselves on any vessel then they should be booted out, simple as that.

[elt2]

I am a female nuclear machinist mate, and I have a few issues with some of the posts I read. 1) I am very capable of carrying and lowering a submersible pump. In fact, I've done it without much difficulty (I also raised it back up and restowed it). There have been instances where I have had to operate valves for other men (much to their dismay), but I've done it. Not to mention I am 5'9" 135 pounds, so I'm not large by any means. 2) The rape issue: I find it troubling that you would call a man that would rape a woman your shipmate. Clearly he should not be in the navy at all. 3) periods: I've never met a woman who actually enjoyed bleeding once a month, so taking birth control that stops that altogether?...done 4) sex: Not all women are whores that are going to sleep with everything that walks. Some of us have self control, which is more than I can say about the men who run to the whore houses and strip clubs when they pull into port. (Not that all men do this, but I've heard the stories) 5) berthing is a cop out: I've toured subs my friends have been stationed on...it's feasible. I don't know if I would even want to be stationed on a submarine. Personally, I enjoy sunlight, but I would appreciate it if you didn't all stereotype women as weak, knocked up, whores. I'm smarter, harder working, and do my job better than 99% of the men in my rate...and I'm not pregnant. I made a committment to serve my country, and intend to fully follow through.

Thanks and have a wonderful day!