Final Submarine Quote for Year 2015

Background:

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Phones ICBM Crews on New Year’s Eve 

[underlined emphasis added] WASHINGTON, January 1, 2016 — In the hours before the clock struck midnight last night, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was on the phone with two-person crews who were on alert in missile silos at the nation’s three intercontinental ballistic missile bases.

Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva made it a point to call and thank missile crew commanders and deputies at their posts some 70 feet underground in the missile fields surrounding F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne, Wyoming; at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota; and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana.

“I just want[ed] to say ‘Thank you’ to the crews,” the general told DoD News, because they'll be away from their families on New Year’s Eve.

The ICBM force is one of the legs of the triad that's on alert 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Selva said, noting that the only other part of the nuclear triad that has that distinction is the submarine ballistic missile force.

The FINAL Submarine Quote of 2015: 

“It's hard to make a phone call to a submarine [but],” he said, “I'd do it if I could.” - Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dec. 29, 2015.

M.E. Note: All Submariners are away from their families and out of contact with them for much, much longer than "on New Year's Eve" right, General Selva?

Submarines are always silent and strange.

 

Update #2: Who Has a High Power, Submarine-Borne Laser Weapon?

Now ?

Nov 09, 2014 - China Nuclear Submarine Released After 'Star Wars' Laser Cannons
"China is obviously preparing for war. Early in November, China released their laser cannons that can shoot down drones in a 1.2 mile radius. The cannons reportedly resemble the laser cannons featured on "Star Wars," which can easily spot and shoot drones in a matter of five seconds. Now, after the laser cannons, China's nuclear submarines are the latest invention."

 "This is a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified," says China's navy chief, Adm. Wu Shengli, in a report by the Wall Street Journal, adding, "It is a strategic force symbolizing great-power status and supporting national security."

Background

June 25, 2006 -  Update [#1] Submarine Offensive Laser Test
With much less weight consideration and a huge increase in power availability, the guts of the high-power laser fits nicely into an SSN.

 

Feb 22, 2006 -  Who Has a High Power, Submarine-Borne Laser Weapon?


Submarines are always silent and strange.

Submarine Irony and Lawyerly Stupidity

Background

The number of rotten apples creating public relations nightmares for the Navy's submarine service these past 5 years is a very small percentage of our 13,000-man submarine force. - Vigilis, April 15, 2010

January 15, 2002 - Sailor Faces Sex Charges - Police Say He Used Chat Room To Lure Two Underage Girls --- A 22-year-old Naval sonar technician from Groton was arrested on Monday for allegedly having sex with two underage girls he met in an Internet chat room, police said.

April 14, 2010 - Three submariners face charges in sexual assault of 12-year-old girl - The three men are assigned to the USS Philadelphia, a submarine that returned to port in February.  Groton Police and NCIS officials questioned Dominguez, who said he did have sex with the victim, but said he thought she [a 12-year-old girl] was between the ages of 17 and 20, according to the warrant. He later received a suspended prison sentence and two years' probation in New London Superior Court Thursday for fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor.  Prosecutor Theresa Anne Ferryman said the cases of two other defendants are expected to be disposed of similarly.

Update

September 24, 2013 -  Sailor arrested for child molestation - A 25-year-old petty officer 3rd class, a machinist mate aboard the USS Rhode Island, at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay was arrested by Kingsland police after he allegedly took a 13-year-old girl on base and sexually molested her in his room in a barracks. ... Investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Kings Bay and a forensic interview specialist with the St. Marys Police Department assisted in the investigation, police said.

(Above may not be all-inclusive of the crime category, as it represents only highly publicized incidents.)

M.E. Observations
1. Bad publicity from rare submariners' crimes remains far less than the negative PR the Navy has dumps upon itself (e.g. the USS Miami arson, and firings of numerous submarine COs, but not the skimmer, shipyard CO where the USS Miami arson occurred). 

2.  Our Phase Two forecast (ref.: Nov 12, 2011) never came to pass. How ironic USS Rhode Island is the sub to which the latest perpetrator (alleged) had been assigned. Whatever the plans to put women crew on her may have once been, the recent publicity has made such an order less likely.

3.  SECNAV Mabus, a non-submariner lawyer, insulted (in this televised video) almost all former Navy vets (with his allusion to the superior patriotism and abilities of today's sailors, including the gratuitous: "we never left port without leaving a couple of guys behind in jail").

4.  In 2013, Navy SECNAV Mabus said that the first women to join Virginia-class attack subs had been chosen: They were newly commissioned female officers scheduled to report to their subs in fiscal year 2015. 

Only a lawyerly genius would authorize women for SSN duty and not expect disruptions of good order and discipline or interferences with secret missions.  

Submarines are always silent and strange.

Best Cold War Submarine Movie with no sub

The movie The Bedford Incident (1965) was produced in stark black & white (trailer) when technicolor had long been a film standard.  Although the movie's American destroyer (DLG-113) captain knows an unseen Soviet sub is armed with a nuclear torpedo, involvement of a nuclear-armed Soviet sub in 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis, would not have been guessed by most moviegoers until revelaed after Cold War's end:

"The film [now] bears an uncanny resemblance to the real-life, forced surfacing of Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962. Unknown to the American destroyers hunting B-59, it carried a nuclear torpedo, and the [submarine B-59's] captain, thinking he was under attack and that "World War III" might be going on up on the surface, considered using his weapon."  source

The film has an IMDB rating of 7.4,  which compares very favorably to The Hunt for Red October (1990)'s 7.6 IMBD rating as I write.  M.E. recommends the film to sub enthusiasts who have never seen it. Vigilis plans to view it again soon.

USS Bedford (DLG-113) detects a Soviet submarine off Greenland's coast (territorial waters at entrance of the J.C. Jacobsen Fjord.)

QUESTIONS of the WEEK

1 - What U.S. nuclear submarine made film history off Greenland?

2 - What is the capital city of Greenland?

3 - For what is the GIUK gap named?

Answers: Friday, 16 AUG 2013

Submarines are always silent and strange.