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Alverson: Gates to be commended for move to get women aboard submarines |
2010-03-11 |
By Trey Alverson |
Amidst the media storm generated by President Obama's January call for the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," another important "right to serve" story has slipped beneath the national radar.
On Feb. 26, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus notified Congress that they intend to drop the ban on women serving aboard submarines.
Congress has until April to either accept the Defense Department's proposal or pass legislation to keep the ban intact.
While the decades old red herrings of "uncontrollable hormones" and "disruptive unit cohesiveness" are already bubbling up in veteran communities and on Capitol Hill, Sec. Gates knows what he is doing.
The submarine community is one of the military's most exclusive. Only the brightest sailors get hand-picked for submarine billets. The enlisted men currently serving on submarines scored extremely high on aptitude tests and completed some of the military's most intensive, costly and thorough training before ever walking across a submarine brow.
The junior officers who aspire to serve on submarines must perform exceptionally well in their college math, science and engineering classes, complete a series of interviews with high ranking submarine officers and then survive the exhaustive and challenging post-graduate curriculum of the Navy's Nuclear Power School.
The Navy routinely struggles to find enough qualified newly-commissioned male officers to embark upon this challenging career path.
The Naval Academy's current freshman class contains 253 women -- exactly 20-percent. With a submarine force that already strives to select only the best qualified midshipmen to become submarine officers, it simply does not make sense to eliminate 20-percent of potentially qualified candidates right off the bat.
Sec. Gates' current proposal would immediately open submarine duty to female officers on Trident Class submarines. Trident boats are the extremely large 'boomers' often spotted in the waters near Camden County that serve as part of our nation's nuclear deterrent. They are much larger than their cramped 'fast-attack' cousins of the Los Angeles and Virginia Classes.
Accommodating female officers on Tridents would require little to no modifications of current berthing configurations. While female officers and crews have long been allowed on the navy's surface ships, some older vessels -- like the frigate I served on from 2005 through 2007 -- do not have the space for separate female enlisted berthing.
Thus, the only females I served alongside onboard the U.S.S. Reuben James (FFG-57) were officers. They had their own state room and they shared three single-occupancy officer wash rooms with the wardroom's men.
This living arrangement works on frigates -- it has for years. And I worked with some outstanding female officers on my ship. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a similar living arrangement would cause problems within the submarine community.
If Congress is serious about keeping pace with the rapidly expanding and vastly improving Chinese submarine fleet, it would be wise to embrace the defense secretary's plan.
Any policy that limits the navy's ability to funnel the brightest and most capable junior officers into the submarine community needs to end. Sec. Gates understands this and should be commended for his effort to lift the ban.
Alverson, a Fayetteville native, is the editor of this newspaper and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. |
Comments:
Juan Caruso writes: "There is absolutely no reason to believe that a similar living arrangement would cause problems within the submarine community."
Although living arrangement is certainly a significant obstacle, another obstacle is much more critical, and nothing on a surface ship compares. Extrapolating surface ship experiences to submarines reaches a pinnacle of submarine naïveté.
Navigation of a submerged submarine involves the perpetual management of risks totally absent or significantly less critical to surface navigation. A viable atmosphere must be maintained during fire (always in a confined space) or flooding (at greater and often deadly sea pressures), for instance.
Every qualified submariner has been judged by a jury of his peers for ability to perform during emergencies and war. No exceptions are made for the weak. Not only is every life potentially dependent upon the strength of others, but mission criticality, stealth and duration are far too demanding to permit routine evacuations of those prone to gynecological needs.
Where are any female crew members in US Army and USMC M1A2 tank crews? The range of these tanks is under 300 miles, and they are also confined spaces. Neither submarine nor tanks engage in close (face-to-face) combat. Yet both involve tasks some women can perform and armed crews trained for the latter.
Respectfully, Juan
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