> The military’s rationale for offering us access seemed clear. The brass, apparently, wanted to help get Americans accustomed to the increasingly real prospect of conflict with a genuinely powerful opponent. They wanted to humanize the otherwise inhuman—some would say inhumane—reality of nuclear deterrence. And, finally, they wanted to convey a message to China and Russia about US forces and their strategic capabilities, resolve, and, for the moment at least, superiority.<p>Not a paragraph I normally see in military reporting.
Smarter Every Day filmed a series on the same topic, strongly recommended: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQR...</a>
These articles come up every so often and they're always a little strange as a former submariner.<p>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.<p>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].<p>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 <i>any</i> 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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nuclear-trained-sailors-considered-navys-best-brightest-face-mental-he-rcna65393" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nuclear-trained-sailors...</a>
There's a very old post which was on USENET and then on Reddit, which was a wry look at life on a sub, and an even funnier post of how to re-create the experience at home. Mostly it consisted of getting your SO to lock you in a cupboard under the stairs, run a vacuum cleaner outside the cupboard 24/7 and periodically throw a bucket of shit over you, while you were wrapped in a black plastic bag (CBW)
Discussions on similar submissions:<p><i>Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39400834">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39400834</a> (February 16, 2024 — 4 points, 12 comments)
Interesting that in times of major geo-political worldwide distress the US "glamour" media is quite quick to turn back to being propaganda vehicles, reminds me of how <i>Life</i> magazine was used back in the '40s and '50s.
We could debate endlessly about why you are seeing this article right now amongst a huge recruitment crisis in the US military, but instead, why don't you check out the best submarine song ever made, a glorious piece of Boomer Yacht Rock by Al Steward. [0]<p>The last crew member of a submarine, possibly gone insane, hiding out from the world above:<p><pre><code> Now there's nobody from the crew left
Five hundred years supply of food just for me
</code></pre>
[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ocl_yXUa_s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ocl_yXUa_s</a>
There's a picture in there titled something like "Missile keys on lanyards".<p>Is it just me, or are they all key blanks? I.e there's no pin bitting?
"We’d been told that the number of civilians who had been given this level of access (carrying cameras, no less) was roughly the same as that who have walked on the moon."<p>Dang, they're still having retention problems in the sub force?<p>Also Boomer life is like the Waldorf Astoria in comparison to a fast attack's Motel 6.