Simple solution: all female sailors must be lesbians.

(12-13-2014 08:33 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  Is anyone surprised that a voyeur ring would pop up once they integrated submarines? Of course not. These bubbleheads just gave social engineers the hammer they needed to reform the Silent Service. Standby for months of Sexual Harassment powerpoint presentations.

Well.........these things happen everywhere men and women live in close quarters. That's no justification, but some of these things have simple solutions that simply aren't "acceptable" in our politically correct world. Men are hardwired to like looking at naked women and the weaker men will always give in to temptation.

(05-27-2014 02:42 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(05-27-2014 02:08 PM)subflea Wrote:  

(05-27-2014 01:03 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(05-27-2014 12:57 PM)49RFootballNow Wrote:  You put 18 to 24 year old boys and girls together in tight quarters with no way to exit and tell them to spend 18 hours a day together, well it doesn't take a "social-scientist" to figure out what happens next.

The only way around this problem is for the military to require mandatory birth control administration, which won't happen for a myraid of reasons. And that will only prevent pregnancy, STD's are a whole other topic.

Or we could have gender separated units. Imagine if you will, an all female submarine.

Better than the billions it is going to cost to change current submarine berthing spaces to allow enlisted female sailors to serve on boats.

Apparently the Virginia SSN's are designed with enlisted women in mind. By the time the Navy gets around to that though, all of the LA's should be retired.

Even though I think gender-separated units are a better option than mixed-crews currently present, its both not politically or currently factually possible. I doubt we have a qualified female sub skipper or first officer yet; much less enough sub qualified women to crew an attack boat. Maybe in 10 or 15 years but till then they have to learn from qualified males and that will result in gender-related incidences.

(10-01-2014 02:49 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(10-01-2014 12:14 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  The link below is to a pdf file of a report on the subject of retaining Navy officers. It was written/compiled by active-duty USN and presented to high-level officers in March of this year. Now it is available to the public:

http://static.squarespace.com/static/535...20NWCR.pdf

It's a complex subject, not given to snarky comments or pithy descriptions. But all-in-all, it does paint a picture of an organization that is slowly (or even not-so-slowly) alienating the types of people who have always been relied upon to fill its ranks. And with no sign that other types of people are rushing forward to replace them.

A good read, but didn't really cover any new ground. Thus the article probably flew over the heads of the flag staff they were briefing. For example, the paper mentions OPTEMPO, which everyone stationed at an at sea command knows is brutal. What is also known is that there is no solution for this problem because the Navy refuses to scale back and/or redefine its mission profile. If I were CNO, I would do the following:

* Stop Building Burke Destroyers and purchase the USCG Nat'l Security Cutter. Current DDG's are too manpower and tech intensive for the current mission of the US Navy, which is patrol.

*Turn Shore Duty into Garrison Duty. After completing the at sea tour, sailors should be billeted much like the Air Force is and not be charged with maintaining the shore portion of the sailing branch. Give all those duties and responsibilities over to civilians.

*Liaison with other nations to create the 1000 ship Navy of real merit. The US Navy doesn't really need to patrol the Mediterranean with allies like Germany, France, Spain, Italy and England already sailing those waters. A similar alliance could be created in the Pacific with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and maybe India. Use these nations to reduce to stress on US assets.

*On your 1st point, and I know there's lots of fudging on development and estimated construction cost budgets; but according to what I found online the NSC has the same basic unit construction cost as either version of the Littoral Combat Ship and less mission flexibility than either, with the current two Navy/NSC modification proposals obviously requiring hundreds of millions in additional development costs. Its unfortunate that the Navy and Coast Guard seem to not have been willing to try to have a combined design earlier in their development process when clearly the mission profiles of the units would overlap so much. As for stopping construction of the Burke Destroyers, I have no idea what the Navy estimates its Destroyer requirements to be, but 65 on active duty with 3 building and contracts out for 3 more and contracts awarded for 8 more; seems we have more than enough to escort the Carriers and Amphib Groups. Its clear the Zumwalt Class isn't happening which at this point I think is a good thing, and either the LCS or NSC is more appropriate for most of the things Burkes are being asked to do. Would like to see the cost of Burkes mitigated by sales to other navy's. I know the Japanese and South Koreans basically have paid to build their own versions, but some of the older units could be sold to Taiwan and Australia. Japan and S. Korea might buy some as well if the price were significantly better than the benefits of building their own. Japan has lots of older destroyers reaching the end of their useful lives.

*On you second point, I think there's lots of merits to it. The people you want to retain are the same folks that are eventually going to want to start families and maintain some reasonable resemblance to a home life. You have to make that goal as reasonably possible for these people or you certainly will lose them to better paying civilian jobs. I've long though that attack subs and carriers should adopt the dual-crew format of the boomers. With less carriers doing more and more work, patrols of 6+ months will take a toll on crew retention. The ships' ability to stay on station far exceeds the ability of the crews to tolerate it. In a world where the Navy is doing more missions for longer periods of time with fewer ships; something has to give.

*On you third point, we pretty much do this already with Japan. The Japanese won't build carriers (even though they now have very similar looking ships) due to the "offensive" nature of that weapons platform; so the George Washington carrier group has to stay in Yokasuka to keep the Chinese, Russians and North Koreans honest, but otherwise that relationship seems pretty tight from a cooperation and liaison perspective. Would love to see the NATO allies step up but outside of Britain and when they feel like it France; none of the others seem to want to step up to the plate. How much of that is because we already do it for them and how much is because even if we stop doing it the Europeans might still not want to pay to do it is anyone's guess. Actively working with the Taiwanese would cause incredible tension with the PRC so that's a non-starter. India is a long shot since we've tied ourselves so closely with Pakistan and because we'd have to basically replace their entire Russian made defense arsenal with our stuff and probably at significant financial loss to us to even make it tempting of the Indians to consider.