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>