Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine(vanityfair.com) |
Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine(vanityfair.com) |
Not a paragraph I normally see in military reporting.
Sentinel ICBMs, B-21 bombers, and Columbia Class SSBNs.
"The Air Force told Congress January 18 that the newly estimated cost of each LGM-35A Sentinel has jumped from $118 million in 2020 to $162 million today. That’s a 37% spike."
... The service’s original 2016 estimate for the program was $62.3 billion. Then it ballooned to $95.3 billion. The latest projection suggests its new cost could be nearly $132 billion."[1]
[0]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-1-5-tr...
[1] https://www.pogo.org/newsletters/the-bunker/the-bunker-the-s...
The Russians themselves are aware of that gap and have started to try and close it, they've just launched two new nuclear submarines recently [1] and others are on their way.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/12/12/putin-views-rus...
Alas, America doesn't have one of those any more - so it has to rattle sabres to get its way, instead.
The cost of half a submarine such as this would go a long way to restoring peace in the world, were it spent on diplomacy and good will instead of jobs programs for domestic war profiteers...
Firstly, they're always aboard US boomers, which are immensely spacious by submarine standards (lol'd at "The ship seemed cramped, with narrow passageways."). You can walk two-abreast in some US boomer passageways, a completely unheard of feat on any other class of sub. They also have relatively relaxed, predictable schedules, with deployments rarely lasting more than 3 months. It's easy to say you've got good food when you're not rationing beans because the 4 month deployment became a 5 1/2 month deployment.
Secondly, one of the core social divides in the US submarine force is between members of the engineering department ("nukes", also A-gangers, though they exist in a sort of limbo) and everyone else on the boat ("coners"). These pieces only ever interview and report on coners (not in small part due to the intense security concerns surrounding nuclear propulsion technology). The lives of the submariners on either side of the watertight door are different in many significant respects, there's no nuke in the fleet that appreciates being represented in the public eye by sonar techs and torpedomen, but nukes only get talked about when they're killing themselves [1].
This is the nature of the secrecy surrounding US subs of course, and I'm not complaining, but it's weird. These articles show the best possible life aboard a US submarine, likely the best possible life aboard any submarine. It's the US Navy putting its best foot forward for the benefit of reporters. Note they talk about the integration of US boomers, but don't mention that US fast attacks remain male-only with no plans to change in the near future. It is, without attaching any sentiment to the word positive or negative, propaganda.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nuclear-trained-sailors...
In any case, WW2 submarines were torpedo boats only diving when necessary. The battery capacity of a German Type VII or an American Balao class was measured in hours, not days. Before snorkels reached operational status, boats had to completely surface for recharging; that is not the case anymore.
I think life on a Type VII was much nastier than on a modern Type 214. The engine was extremely loud, exhaust fumes were regularly in the air, and it was cold and incredibly cramped. Living conditions are much better on modern subs, even if space is still at a premium, especially on smaller boats.
What surely remains is the sense of camaraderie because of a shared fate; each sailor's life depends on the boat functioning as a unit. In that sense, nothing has changed.
Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39400834 (February 16, 2024 — 4 points, 12 comments)
The last crew member of a submarine, possibly gone insane, hiding out from the world above:
Now there's nobody from the crew left
Five hundred years supply of food just for me
Is it just me, or are they all key blanks? I.e there's no pin bitting?
>>> Nothing was fired, of course. The keys inserted were effectively blanks.
Seems like they used special exercise keys, and that's probably the ones in the photo.
1. They don't want to post the launch codes to the internet, or
2. The code is just 000000 (hey it's not the worst I've ever seen)
https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link
> According to nuclear safety expert Bruce G. Blair, the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command worried that in times of need the codes for the Minuteman ICBM force would not be available, so it decided to set the codes to 00000000 in all missile launch control centers. Blair said the missile launch checklists included an item confirming this combination until 1977.[7] A 2014 article in Foreign Policy said that the US Air Force told the United States House Committee on Armed Services that "A code consisting of eight zeroes has never been used to enable a MM ICBM, as claimed by Dr. Bruce Blair."[8] The Air Force's statement (that 00000000 was never used to enable an ICBM, i.e. the weapons were not actually launched) does not contradict Blair's statement (that 00000000 was the code for doing so).
Dang, they're still having retention problems in the sub force?
Also Boomer life is like the Waldorf Astoria in comparison to a fast attack's Motel 6.
- Yes, Minister was a prescient show
- Trident is the UK's only nuclear deterrent.
- While the UK fired them, they are taken from a common US-UK pool of interchangeable missiles.
- NATO governments are on the open side. Failures are likely to be made public.
- It is, of course, embarrassing
"Maj. Hering decided to ask his question anyway, regardless of consequences: How could he know that an order to launch his missiles was “lawful”? That it came from a sane president, one who wasn’t “imbalance[d]” or “berserk,” as Maj. Hering’s lawyer eventually, colorfully put it?
Hering needed a lawyer because as soon as he asked the question he was yanked out of missile training class, and after two years of appeals, eventually had to leave the Air Force, trade in a launch key for the ignition keys to an 18-wheeler.
[0] https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/02/nuclear-weapons-how...
The author reflecting why they got this much-valued access is the actually interesting part of this.
If that was supposed to be the interesting part the title wouldn't be:
> Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine
Just report what you saw, not what you feel.
Reporters used to know to not be the subject.
They were invited on and that wasn't good enough.
They had to make up some plot in their head why they were invited on to confirm their bias and influence others.
I feel like Ukrainians would disagree with you.
And Taiwanese.
And people using chips made in Taiwan.
Much as Americans might fantasize about adding it as another star to their flag, Ukrainians aren't American citizens whose taxes get wasted on these ridiculous submarines, and the Ukrainian people don't pay for the US' military junta's favorite toys of the month. It buys the old ones for its war.
If America drops a bomb, it is only because it failed at diplomacy. That'll be as true of any war in Taiwan as it is in Ukraine.
Bothsidism is a strong in this one. Why am I not surprised it comes from an Austrian?
> If America drops a bomb, it is only because it failed at diplomacy.
First, diplomacy must be backed by strength, leverage, without it there's nothing to negotiate, because the other side can simply take what it wants. As such, sabre rattling is part of diplomacy. Nuclear deterrence is part of diplomacy.
Second, diplomacy may fail. Western diplomacy failed in 1938 and 1939, and there was war. Sometimes such failures happen and you need to be prepared for that. Layered defense.
I'm quite curious what would be your diplomatic solution to the Taiwan problem, hopefully it would respect the wishes of the Taiwanese residents.
This suggests a belief that diplomacy is always sufficient to prevent war. Which runs counter to all of observed human history.
A quick conversation with my brother about what it was like was more informative than this trash.
False. I'm Australian. You shouldn't be surprised that someone who has been watching OUR war crimes, crimes against humanity and massive violations of human rights at scale, is critical of the narrative being proffered by folks such as yourself which only leads to more war, bloodshed and calamity. "Bothsidism"?
No, I'm not concerned about any side but my own, which is the only state I can do anything effective about.
>Nuclear deterrence is part of diplomacy.
A classic America-first point of view which is entirely incompatible with the mores of the rest of the world, as we are finding out with BRICS - which is real, true diplomacy.
>Western diplomacy failed in 1938 and 1939
Another very USA'ian-centric perspective which only leads to a blindness. Your argument would be better centered around the failures of the American political ruling classes in preventing the American military junta from massacring 5% of Iraqs population .. in 2003.
Or, lets just address the bear in the room: America's utter failure to commit to the diplomacy of the Minsk accords. Or of the Istanbul agreement. Or any one of countless other acts of real diplomacy that America has shat on, in order to sell its weapons stocks to the cultures its oligarchic classes deem inferior...
Taiwan? Yes indeed, respect the wishes of the Taiwanese residents, and not just the ones the CIA send to have interviews on CNN. ALL of them.
So you're an Australian living in Austria (Vienna, from your github)? Nice!
You're bothsidist, because you're projecting Russian imperialism of trying to conquer Ukraine (for centuries) on USA. Absurd.
> A classic America-first point of view which is entirely incompatible with the mores of the rest of the world, as we are finding out with BRICS - which is real, true diplomacy.
Now it's you making the mistake of assuming an identity.
I hope you're aware of the R in BRICS, currently waging a brutal war and regularly nuclear sabre rattling. So what diplomacy you're talking about?
> America's utter failure to commit to the diplomacy of the Minsk accords.
What did USA had to do with Minsk accords? Also, what a stellar example of diplomacy after Russia invaded Ukraine.
> Taiwan? Yes indeed, respect the wishes of the Taiwanese residents, and not just the ones the CIA send to have interviews on CNN. ALL of them.
You can take a look at the election results in the recent years (there were presidential ones just a month ago). Or are those manipulated by CIA as well?
>What did USA had to do with Minsk accords?
They instructed their puppet to ignore them and knowingly set Ukraine on a path to utter destruction as a result.
>Also, what a stellar example of diplomacy after Russia invaded Ukraine.
There was none - that is the point.
Even outside estimates of total "excess deaths" in the entire Iraq war -- regardless of cause or party directly responsible -- don't amount to 5 percent of the population. Or even half that.
In other words -- just another random factoid you vaguely thought you remembered from somewhere. As with your synopsis of Minsk + Istanbul.