Geez, ignore a thread for a few days...
Mr Midshipman Fester heard all these arguments in the early '90's when the combat-exclusion law was first repealed. Women will get knocked up, Fan Room Love will be rampant, their tampons will clog the black-water system, ID Docs will have to take GYN courses, we can't walk around naked anymore, etc. Some of these came true, some did not, some problems were solved and some remain to be solved, and some will never be solved.
Here's the thing - it's not going to be politically feasible to keep this ban in place forever. The Sub community is just too big a chunk of the Navy to keep closed off to women (after all, it's just them and SPECWAR now). Sooner or later, the Sub force is going to get this change forced on them, and they'll have to adapt, overcome and deal with the same issues that the rest of the seagoing Navy has been dealing with for over 15 years now.
Here's the real challenge I see: If we learned anything from the aches and pains of bringing women aboard in the '90's, it's that you can't start out with no females in the leadership (just a bunch of ensigns and E-3's) and expect things to go smoothly. When women came aboard the ships, there'd already been women on ships (tenders, auxiliaries, etc) since the '70's. Likewise with aviation - there were women aviators and maintainers, so all that changed was what they could fly and what squadrons they could belong to.
In other words, there was a cadre of female officers and chiefs that could transition into combatant commands. A lot of those integration pains cropped up when junior females didn't have any more senior females for mentoring, counseling, sympathy and/or a kick in the ass as needed.
Obviously, there are no female submariners. So where would we get this female leadership? If I know anything about sub dudes, it's that until you've got your dolphins, you ain't shit, so just cross-decking a bunch of Nuke SWO LT's and assorted female chiefs and PO1's is only going to exacerbate the problem ("Damn girls think they're leadership on the Boat and they don't even have their fucking dolphins!?").
I assume CNO has thought about all this, but I'm curious what the proposed solution will be.
Mr Midshipman Fester heard all these arguments in the early '90's when the combat-exclusion law was first repealed. Women will get knocked up, Fan Room Love will be rampant, their tampons will clog the black-water system, ID Docs will have to take GYN courses, we can't walk around naked anymore, etc. Some of these came true, some did not, some problems were solved and some remain to be solved, and some will never be solved.
Here's the thing - it's not going to be politically feasible to keep this ban in place forever. The Sub community is just too big a chunk of the Navy to keep closed off to women (after all, it's just them and SPECWAR now). Sooner or later, the Sub force is going to get this change forced on them, and they'll have to adapt, overcome and deal with the same issues that the rest of the seagoing Navy has been dealing with for over 15 years now.
Here's the real challenge I see: If we learned anything from the aches and pains of bringing women aboard in the '90's, it's that you can't start out with no females in the leadership (just a bunch of ensigns and E-3's) and expect things to go smoothly. When women came aboard the ships, there'd already been women on ships (tenders, auxiliaries, etc) since the '70's. Likewise with aviation - there were women aviators and maintainers, so all that changed was what they could fly and what squadrons they could belong to.
In other words, there was a cadre of female officers and chiefs that could transition into combatant commands. A lot of those integration pains cropped up when junior females didn't have any more senior females for mentoring, counseling, sympathy and/or a kick in the ass as needed.
Obviously, there are no female submariners. So where would we get this female leadership? If I know anything about sub dudes, it's that until you've got your dolphins, you ain't shit, so just cross-decking a bunch of Nuke SWO LT's and assorted female chiefs and PO1's is only going to exacerbate the problem ("Damn girls think they're leadership on the Boat and they don't even have their fucking dolphins!?").
I assume CNO has thought about all this, but I'm curious what the proposed solution will be.
