Navy intends to let women serve on subs.........

[greenberetTFS]

Having never served on an ODA team(A Team only) I think it wouldn't work because as mention on this thread several times, the people we work with wouldn't accept/respect a female trainer/soldier............. It's simply a matter of fact,their cultures don't believe in equality...........So,once again where could they serve?

Big Teddy

[Pete]

Razor stated - As the S-1 of a deployed battalion, I recall having to keep and report daily stats on # of personnel in country(divided by gender, race, MOS, etc.), # personnel entering and leaving the country and why (NCOES, PCS, mid-tour leave, etc.), and the medical status of anyone ill or injured. I guess they don't do that anymore, huh?

Razor, this is the best I could find on a study - very dated from 1999.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/acsc/99-016.pdf

Since this war has been going on a number of years a person would think more numbers would have been collected and studies done.

[Danimal18C]

afchic, I agree with you that the sexual conduct of an individual rests completely on the individual. I think in today's professional military, people would see the importance of remaining.... um... professional. Unfortunately the situation is what it is.. Hey, if I were in a predominantly female unit, surrounded by girls that were in great shape, and were constantly giving me attention, could see the difficulty of "behaving myself."

Lithium and water are great materials. They do their prespective jobs great, but when you mix water and litium powder together, you get flame and sometimes you can have an explosion. So you just don't mix them....

[The Reaper]

I think that is the relevant point.

Given that the troops/sailors are going to do what they are going to do, is it wise to add a few female submariners to the force, at the loss of crew morale, pregnant females, impregnating males, and illegal fornicators that are going to be UCMJed as a result? Does the reward for this experiment outweigh the risk?

14% of Navy females are single mothers. Females becoming pregnant are released to shore assignments at the 20 week mark, and get a year of shore duty following delivery. A large number of these never go to sea again during their remaining Naval service. Is this fair to their shipmates?

What happens when females fail to meet the standards, but are selected anyway, for PC reasons? Katie Wilder, anyone? Kara Hultgreen? Kelly Flinn?

Is it worth the cost?

TR

[Joe_Snuffy]

Originally Posted by Pete

Razor stated - As the S-1 of a deployed battalion, I recall having to keep and report daily stats on # of personnel in country(divided by gender, race, MOS, etc.), # personnel entering and leaving the country and why (NCOES, PCS, mid-tour leave, etc.), and the medical status of anyone ill or injured. I guess they don't do that anymore, huh?

Oh we still do that, actually they specifically ask for the number of females in the TF based on location. They have whole spreadsheets and systems just to make it easier[?] to track people, so you would think such data would be easy to collect, but it's been my experience that it gets sent up to Big Army and filed away in some secret goverment warehouse which promptly burns down when it gets too full.

And for the record, having a fire results in a lot of clean-up work. A couple years ago my shop burned down and even to this day after recovering some of the documents, and having people give us replacements and we STILL come up missing things from time to time.

[afchic]

Originally Posted by Pete

Lets take a trip in the way back machine - all the way back to 1991 and the Love Boat.

"36 Women Pregnant Aboard a Navy Ship That Served in Gulf"

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/30/us...l?pagewanted=1

"......More than half became pregnant after the ship was under way, but a Navy spokesman, Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Smallwood, said there were no indications of improper fraternization between men and women on the ship......"

The problem I have with the issue is that women can use a pregnacy as a tool of assignment. Don't like the long assignment in the war zone? Get prego and go home.

36? 36? The female portion of the crew was 360. That's 10% that turned up prego and had to be sent home.

And what about this war? Well, it appears the leadership does not want to know.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/arc...leave_the_war/

And on the similar subject, different view.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-8125r/?page=2

".......Mrs. Donnelly has written to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warning that the military is becoming a haven for single moms. She said fiscal 2002 statistics show that the Navy reassigned to shore duty 2,159 pregnant women, or 12.3 percent of 17,543 enlisted women on ships.

"Overly generous incentives for single parents and large families attract even more unstable, low-income families that depend on the [Defense Department's] extensive social welfare system," Mrs. Donnelly wrote. "Some feminists have described the military, approvingly, as a 'Mecca' for single moms." .........."


Funny how a Military can be sooooo interested in which MREs the troops like the best but are not interested on pregnacy rates and how it impacts deployments and recalls.

Sounds PC to me. And is PC the way a military should be run?

For every single PARENT that abuses the system, I bet I could show you 2-3 that don't, yet it is the ones that abuse the system that get the notoriery, instead of the professional ones that don't.

I wonder why there are so many single mom's out there?

[PSM]

The fact that it’s the anti-military left that has been pushing these changes tells me all that I need to know. (I realize that some of the recent converts don’t fit that description, but are, perhaps, just accepting what they see as inevitable.)

If there was a draft now, like during Viet Nam, they would be advising men to claim that they are gay to avoid conscription and screaming that it’s outrages to even think of drafting women into military service.

This is an attack on the social infrastructure of the country. It used to be: “We don’t need a piece of paper to show that we love each other.” Now it’s: “Same sex lovers should be allowed to get married just like opposite sex lovers.”

Pat

[LJ19]

edit

[Pete]

Studies? Where are they?

Other than people "talking" where are the official studies to prove one way or the other the impact pregnacy has on unit readiness?

I would think by now there would be a number of studies on regular unit pregnacy rates, rates after notification for deployment and the number who got pregnant during the deployment.

Other than the info I noted in the Love Boat post - only one study in 2008 that had a small sub section about pregnacy and a couple of individual unit reports mention the issue in passing.

Once again I find it odd that the military has not taken a strong look at this (PC anyone) and womens rights organizations have not done it to wave their flag on the issue.

I would say the lack of data says more about the issue than any of us could.

[Richard]

Countries that allow females on submarines

• Norway (1995)
• Australia (1998)
• Canada (2000)
• Spain

It might be worthwhile to take a look at the experiences these navies have had with this issue.

Richard's $.02

[brown77]

Originally Posted by Richard

Countries that allow females on submarines

• Norway (1995)
• Australia (1998)
• Canada (2000)
• Spain

It might be worthwhile to take a look at the experiences these navies have had with this issue.

Richard's $.02

Now we're getting to the nitty gritty

Whilst searching info on the above, I found an interesting Nato study on the subject - "Experiences with Mixed Gender Submarine Crews" [LCdr Debbie Pestell, MD, Canadian Forces Health Services], which I've attached. It is quite long so I didn't paste it here. Hope that was the right thing to do. Anyway, it addresses many of the points raised in this thread. It also gives a mention to NASA's space missions which include mixed crews in confined spaces for lengthy periods of time, and successfully so.

This article is also worth a look-in:

http://www.4militarywomen.org/Submarines.htm

[Pete]

Brown77,

From reading the linked article it sounds like another cheerleader opinion piece not a NATO study.

And the two major concerns in the "study" wer beds and crappers? OK.

I notice at the end it is mention that there are 4 female's qualified - Hey, that works out to 2 for 2 boats and none on the other two.

So if one gets prego all the remaining three have to be assigned to the same boat. What about their ratings?

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Richard

Countries that allow females on submarines

• Norway (1995)
• Australia (1998)
• Canada (2000)
• Spain

It might be worthwhile to take a look at the experiences these navies have had with this issue.

Richard's $.02

Indeed.

My sources indicate that the Norwegian Navy no longer has any operational subs, the Australians have six, the Spanish Navy has four vintage boats, and the Canadians have four formerly British boats which are probably best undiscussed and are rarely at sea (the Victoria has a total of 155 days at sea in the past nine years). Most of these subs are used for short duration coastal defense when they are operational.

None of these vessels spend the time at sea or go on the long patrols that the roughly 70 US fleet submarines do.

The information might be interesting, but may or may not correlate well to what we would experience with our submariners.

TR

[brown77]

Originally Posted by Pete

Brown77,

From reading the linked article it sounds like another cheerleader opinion piece not a NATO study.

And the two major concerns in the "study" wer beds and crappers? OK.

I notice at the end it is mention that there are 4 female's qualified - Hey, that works out to 2 for 2 boats and none on the other two.

So if one gets prego all the remaining three have to be assigned to the same boat. What about their ratings?

Pete, are you referring to the link or the attached PDF? I think the PDF goes into a little more detail than that, but I will be happy to give it a re-read as soon as I can. That said, you make it sound like it's all fun and fraternity games... I would imagine (and hope) that the individuals who make it on board such missions are HIGHLY skilled and trained professionals. Perhaps they deserve a little more credit. Besides, from what I can tell, there isn't much room and privacy on board a sub for all this rumpy pumpy... Fun as it sounds, is it even a practical consideration??

Originally Posted by The Reaper

None of these vessels spend the time at sea or go on the long patrols that the roughly 70 US fleet submarines do.

The information might be interesting, but may or may not correlate well to what we would experience with our submariners.

TR - good point. I noticed that too. Swedish and Norwegian vessels are not at sea for such lengthy periods of time as those of the US Navy. Worth considering!

[Pete]

All of you read the "study" and see the "touchy feely" parts.

The boat crews will be cleaner with females around? WTF, I know my experience on US Nuke Boats is very, very limited but they were just about the cleanest things and crews I've ever seen outside some palace guard for some tinpot dictator.

Man, there was a real sense of "this is our home and we keep it clean" and the "I try not to offend my neighbor" attitude from the crews. We all noticed the big, big, big difference between the subs and the suface Navy.

And we all noticed the looks we got when we trashed the insides of their boats. They didn't say anything and cleaned up after us - but that didn't stop them from giving us the "Mom look" when you track mud over the kitchen floor after she just mopped it.