Nuclear Officer vs. Surface Warfare Officer

[Spekkio]

I was more talking about the fact that if it weren't for 16-18% oxygen levels and general lack of sleep, you wouldn't be able to have a conversation with someone in your 'office' on a sub without waking up 1-2 other people because your 'office' as a DH is half of the 4'x6' area in front of the racks.

At sea it's not so bad. It's more of a cluster in-port when 10 people pack into a 2' x 5' p-way to wait to speak to the eng, and there's 1 laptop for every 2 JOs and 1 laptop for about every 10 crewmembers. Creates quite the bottleneck when M-div has a few work packages due, some tagouts to write, and there's only 1 laptop for 12 people to share.

 

[vxc961]

4? More like 6.

At least our ER is air conditioned .

In a vacuum it's not. But if you pile it into all the other training you have to do, it amounts to 8 hours a week. Now, if you were to count drills as training, which they kind of are, it bumps to 12.

So you spend 60 hours a week standing watch (including tours/turnover) and another 12 doing training before you've even done anything else.

It was very rare I was there 'til 6 on a non duty day Yeah, on a carrier it's much easier to dip under the radar than on a sub. We nuke JOs often snuck out even before 4 if we could--it was sort of a "take it if you can get it" attitude. We could also slip into our staterooms for a nap after having duty all night. So anyway, despite having what seemed to me to be a higher quality of life than the sub guys, they seemed to have more espirit de corps than surface nukes.

As far as deployments go, they rock! I probably had 200 miserable at-sea days, but it was worth it for the 21 liberty days. I had a good group of buddies who wanted adventure, to learn some history, and to have fun. I will say sometimes the married guys could be wet blankets (afraid to spend $), and now that I have kids that's where I'd be. We had guys fly their wives out all the time, and except for our Sept 12th (planned) port call in Capetown, South Africa! It worked out fine (obviously, it's a bit of a gamble that the ships sched won't change).

It seems to me that you're young enough, and a good fit for METOC, so it's worth it to wait for a conventional SWO spot. PM me if you have any specific questions.

 

[vxc961]

in general fleet nuke = subs, very few male surface nuke spots open compared to sub spots.

OK, I'll bite...they're actually turning down surface nukes?? That seems crazy to me. What happens if somebody "un-volunteers" after finishing his nuke training? I guess it's tougher now that all the SWOs do their conventional tours first. For the record, I'm not suggesting or condoning somebody game the system, I'm just thinking out loud. We had a guy un volunteer right before SOBC. He had a break while they figured out the admin, got on a payment plan to pay back his sub-pay, and went SWO(N). Like I said, it seemed like they were so desperate for *any* nukes before. Crazy.

 

[Spekkio]

You can't 'un-volunteer' after power school. You sign up for a contract to be an 1170 -> 1120, so to 'un-volunteer' would require a lateral transfer. I don't know what unusual circumstances surrounded the guy who 'un-volunteered' right before SOBC, but I suspect more was at play than a simple request to the CO/call to the detailer asking out of submarines and into SWO(N). Also, if done today they'd have to sort out the fact that SWO(N) are sent to a conventional tour before NNPS. It's not an insurmountable situation, but probably more hassle than it's worth for high-ranking people to figure out and the person would be sent to vanilla SWO.

I'm not a recruiter, but it didn't seem like any officer career path has been hurting for applicants as of late. A bad economy and wide scale wage suppression helps.

 

[vxc961]

I didn't mean to make it sound like it was "push-button" easy...but to the casual observer it didn't seem like that big of a deal. He was a decent enough guy, and I'm sure the 1120 community manager was pissed, but it seemed the 1110s took him with open arms. NR didn't seem to care, since they still had a nuke out of the deal. You're right there was probably more screaming behind the scenes, but the JO didn't seem to sweat it much. Anyway, I'm glad they're getting enough SWO(N)s now that they dont have twist peoples arms to go that way.

 

[exNavyOffRec]

OK, I'll bite...they're actually turning down surface nukes?? That seems crazy to me. What happens if somebody "un-volunteers" after finishing his nuke training? I guess it's tougher now that all the SWOs do their conventional tours first. For the record, I'm not suggesting or condoning somebody game the system, I'm just thinking out loud. We had a guy un volunteer right before SOBC. He had a break while they figured out the admin, got on a payment plan to pay back his sub-pay, and went SWO(N). Like I said, it seemed like they were so desperate for *any* nukes before. Crazy.

There are very limited spots for female nukes on subs, so they get most of the surface spots, there are always spots for male nukes on subs, usually the male nukes that get SWO are the ones that joined NUPOC and still had a year or so left of college.

but yes, if a person is dead set on being a surface nuke and there are no spots they will say either he needs to decide to go subs or we have another that will take the interview spot. I have only seen this happen with graduates.

Surface N isn't hurting that much now, I worked with a SWO N who was finishing up his first fleet nuke tour and the SWO N detailer told him "stay in, get out, doesn't matter to me we have our numbers" another was told if you want to stay in you take what we give you, yet another had her orders changed weeks before she was supposed to transfer, the new transfer sent her across the country.

As a former surface N you will get this, but at one point we had so many JO's RM division had a primary side DIVO and a secondary side DIVO, there was an M division storeroom DIVO, it was something else.

 

[Brett327]

... except for our Sept 12th (planned) port call in Capetown, South Africa! It worked out fine (obviously, it's a bit of a gamble that the ships sched won't change).

Was that on TR? What a goat rope.

 

[Renegade One]

...and the SWO N detailer told him "stay in, get out, doesn't matter to me we have our numbers" another was told if you want to stay in you take what we give you, yet another had her orders changed weeks before she was supposed to transfer, the new transfer sent her across the country.

Perfect behavior by detailers, who "care as much about your career as you care about theirs."

 

[vxc961]

Perfect behavior by detailers, who "care as much about your career as you care about theirs."

Wow. This really blows my mind. I swear to God, I used to think "it can't possibly get any worse..." I guess that means they have fatter watch sections now (that's good!), but somehow it's like finding that the ugly girl who always wanted a piece of you has moved on...

BTW, it was Enterprise Brett327, but I know it was a crazy time for everyone.