Australian Submarine Crew Retention Trouble

The Australian Navy has been having some submarine crew retention problems lately and the government has a solution.

(Source: AU Navy Photo -Collins Class)

From the theage.com.au: Defence to get big spending boost

The Federal Government is planning a huge increase in defence spending to overcome deficiencies in areas such as the submarine service.

Defence sources say the money, to be made available in the May budget, will be used to recruit thousands more defence personnel and offer incentives for existing staff to stay.

Numbers in the submarine service are 25 to 30 per cent below requirements. As a result, the number of days at sea per boat has been cut from a planned 127 this year to 87.

Sources said the navy was having problems retaining WA-based submarine crew members, who were being offered $135,000 to work in the private sector, particularly in the mining industry, almost double their usual pay.

The situation has become so serious that defence is "cold calling" former submarine crews and asking them to return.

Although increases in pay and retention bonuses are an incentive it doesn't help when your only Submarine Rescue system the Remora has been sitting at the bottom of ocean off Western Australia's Rottnest Island since December. I blogged a little about the Remora's problems here back in September 2005.

To the North Pole

A couple of interesting news items recently relating to the submarines operating at and under the north pole.

First TheSubReport links to an article about the upcoming Ice Exercise 2007 (ICEX-2007). Submarine Force Announces This Year's Ice Exercise Participants

(USS Salt Lake City (SSN 716} north pole 2006 - US Navy Photo)

The USS ALEXANDRIA (SSN 757), home ported in Groton, Conn. will particapate with a Royal Navy Trafalgar class submarine in classified arctic operations in March and April 2007. But if you're not a submariner on SSN 757 or that un-named Royal Navy Trafalgar class submarine you can still reach and submerge at the north pole either this summer or in 2008.

A group called Deep Ocean Expeditions ,that operates science expeditions using the Russian MIR submersibles and support ships, is planning the first ever descent to the Amundsen Plain on the ocean floor of the north pole. From a Russian new service Russian Submersible To Reach 5 Km Depth.

(Russian MIR Submersible - NOAA Photo)

Here is the link to the expedition website "Submersible Dive to the Real North Pole". It's a little rich for me at $80,000USD to dive in the MIR to a 14,500 feet depth at the north pole. As a non-diver it will cost $15,000 to stay aboard the support ship for the duration of the expedition. A lot cheaper than the Russian equivalent to space tourism.

It is a once a lifetime event and an adventure in making history riding a nuclear icebreaker to the north pole and diving in a submersible to the bottom on the arctic ocean at the top of the world.

(Gulf of Alaska seamounts 2002 - NOAA & WHOI Alvin Submersible Video)

The closest I could find to wet the appetite for deep sea exploration is the above video from the Gulf of Alaska.

If anyone wants to fund a blogger on the Expedition I'm willing to go and write about the experience. I'll try not to say it was "way cool".

First Day Back

I've been away from the Submarine Blogosphere for a few months and have missed it. Not to take things too seriously I thought this was appropriate. Enjoy...



And Admiral Stupid on the T-shirt is not my doing, so from one bubblehead to another no disrespect intended.

Navy over UConn 41-17

Damn I missed it, got invited by one of my USSVI friends to go see the Navy - UConn game and took the kids apple picking instead.

Oh well dad duty has its own reward - Fresh Apple Pie!

A New Army College Program?

When the U.S. Army airs recruiting commercials they usually say something about earning money for college or getting quality training you can get no where else. This usually requires some level of commitment of service to get that education benefit, fair enough. But Captain Mary Hanna of the Army Reserve seems to be trying a creative way of getting that education benefit without the service obligation.

From the Boston Globe Doctor's call-up by Army is Halted

The US Army paid $184,000 for Mary Hanna to go to Tufts University School of Medicine for four years, and in exchange she agreed to serve four years of active duty and another four in the reserve after becoming a doctor.

But just before Christmas, as she was nearing the end of her anesthesiology residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Hanna, 30, of Somerville notified the Army that her religious beliefs were now ``incompatible with military service."

Mary says she rediscovered her religion as a devout Coptic Orthodox Christian and "cannot participate in war in any form.". She is asking to be discharged as a conscientious objector. But the Army is not sending her to Iraq or Afghanistan no she is to be stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Of course the Army Reserve Captain and her lawyer say she's willing to pay back the $184,000 government investment in her education. Not that a qualified anesthesiologist in the Boston healthcare market would have much trouble with paying that back in a couple of years.

What I don't understand is how a doctor who took a Hippocratic oath and knew that joining the Army would mean treating injured soldiers in wartime could all of a sudden find both in opposision to her faith at the very moment she get orders to report for duty. Timing seems odd to me.

I think that Ms Hanna needs to take a lesson from the life of another conscientious objector, Desmond Doss, WWII U.S Army Medic and Congressional Metal of Honor recipcient.

Citation: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Medical Detachment, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division. He was a company aid man when the lst Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high. As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar and machinegun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them 1 by 1 to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and 2 days later he treated 4 men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within 8 yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making 4 separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small arms fire and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Pfc. Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aid man from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited 5 hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Pfc. Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter; and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers' return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of 1 arm. With magnificent fortitude he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Pfc. Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty.

Desmond Doss was a devout member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and refused to kill or carry a gun. Mr. Doss died earlier this year

Read War Hero Without a Gun to understand the true meaning of a conscientious objector and how religious beliefs can be compatible with military service.

Ms Hanna put whatever political beliefs you have aside and look to your faith and medical oath to fill your obligations. In refusing to serve you are waging war against those who protect your freedom to be a conscientious objector.

Soviet AGIs and DASOs Remembered

A little news film entertainment for us old Boomer weenies.

Yes, the Soviet AGIs were a pain in the butt back then. Station the AGI tracking party, and remember no ship's ball caps topside.

NIE Intel and motivated Terrorists

Tom Barnett blogs on the recent debate generated by the Washington Post and NYT reporting of now Iraq is making us less safe.

"This analysis is typical intell stuff: obvious, useless, and playing into a do-nothing mind-set that here says, "Do nothing to piss off the terrorists!"

Duh! When we engage the security situation--any security situation--in the Middle East, we piss off (and create more) terrorists. We do it when we're pro-active, like in Iraq. We do it when we're passive, like our military support to Israel. And we do it when we're behind the scenes, like our intell co-op with regimes throughout the region.

So it's never been a question of whether or not we piss off terrorists (who live to be pissed off, and when there's not enough going on, they'll get jacked over a film (e.g., Van Gogh), a book (Rushdie), a speech (Benedict)--whatever)."

Capitan Ed at Captain Quarters also argues that the conclusion reached "makes the classic logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation" citing how "Islamist radicalism didn't just start expanding in 2003" and concludes by saying "fighting terrorists and upsetting their plans for regional domination will make them mad".

Then the Counterterroism blog notes that "The 1997 NIE, the last one before the 9/11 attacks on global terrorism, mentioned bin Laden in only three sentences as a "terrorist financier" and didn't reference al-Qaeda at all". So much for historical credibility.

This debate won't get political will it?

Deployed

“Deployed” in a word that is what I’ve felt like over the last few months and why I’ve been absent from this blog since early July. Deployed also describes the software I’ve been the Project Manager (PM) for during that time as well. Let me explain my analogy to a submarine deployment and work environment.

My experience running a software project and outsourcing the development work to off-shore (India) has been a bit like being at sea, long hours under difficult conditions. Typically I worked a 12 to 18 hour day with, on average, four hours of sleep. On a good day I could go down for six, on a bad day it was about two hours in the rack. Muster for the India developer team was 11:00 pm EST (8:30 IST Bangalore) with a 1 hour conference call. Action items from that call resulted in another one to two hours of work for me and setting the day’s priorities for the developers. Roll out of the rack at 06:30 to be on watch at the client site at 07:30 am.

Each day at my client’s site involved a standard set of work expectations interrupted by a set of disaster drills. The delivered software would either blowup, meltdown or some sort of anomaly would occur to make me wish the previous deployment of the software was my last. The reality was I had a job to do and the client and my boss were dependent on me to drive through the issues and finish.

The primary responsibility I had as the PM was to ensure that the deliverables; specifications, U/I design prototypes and finally the production software were completed on time and on budget. It didn’t happen and went over on time and budget. Although I was impressed by the work ethic of my team in India, they were constantly delinquent “dink” on my project milestones. Walkthroughs of the specifications from the off-shore team required two to five passes before the client would signoff. The business knowledge and quality control of my off-shore team became a major concern. I eventually was standing in as a Business Analyst, QA Engineer and Technical Writer in addition to the PM role I signed on for. Not where I wanted to be on a fixed bid contract that had lost its entire on-site technical staff to another larger project.

Then a real causality happened. Leaving station and heading back to home port one evening I had a head on collision when another driver who decided that with limited visibility he would chance crossing two lanes of city traffic during rush hour. His gamble with a left hand turn in front of a stopped truck resulted in me finding my air bags deployed and not knowing what had just happened.

That coincided with the low point in the project. User Acceptance Testing UAT was ongoing and the level of software bugs was excessive.

Things tuned around when I as able to get my on-site technical team back from the other project. These guys put the extra effort forward to get the project back on track doing midnight calls with me and the developers in India and working extra hours at the client’s site. We identified inefficiencies and errors in the developed code and communicated them back to the off-shore developers.

Working with a team of qualified people started to become fun again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not down on Indian programmers, two of my best on-site resources were from India. But my first deployment involving off-shore developed software created some hard lessons learned about capabilities and managing a project of this type.

Word to the wise; be prepared for some rough water when you’re deployed to a different ocean.

It’s good to be back. - LL

Participating in a Tradition

This past week I had the honor to participate in the oldest Fourth of July parade in the country, the 221st Bristol 4th of July parade in Bristol, RI. I volunteered to drive some of my Subvet friends in the parade. Here's a little photo essay of my day with some shipmates.
(Click on each Photo for a larger view)

My vehicle in its dress red white and blues and ready for patrol.

Lead unit for the SUBVETS contingent with its hybrid boat model in tow.

One of the senior WWII Subvets and wife in attendance.
He served aboard the USS Batfish SS-310 during a number of War patrols including the patrol where they pulled a hat trick and sank three Japanese subs in three consecutive days during their sixth war patrol.

RI Senator Jack Reed and Representative Patrick Kennedy were there talking to the assembled veteran groups.

Midshipmen mustering in the hot sun before the parade.

Of course, the Air Force unit is mustering in the shade.

Marine color guard ready for action.

Unknown military unit. By the look of the uniforms possibly from Europe?

Three corner hat types were in abundance.

Marching bands in our staging area were too many to count.

Time for the Subvets to man battle stations.

Preparing to get underway!

I'm at the rudder and staying in the baffles, my elder Subvets taking point in front of our lead vehicle.

Don't give up the ship flag decorating the house above, point taken.

The sign in the photo above reads:
"America Home of the Free and Protected by the Brave"
Many people along the parade route had hand-made signs like the one above others just applauded us and said thank you.

There were only six of us US Submarine Veterans in attendance, one WWII veteran, three Diesel boat veterans, and two cold war Nuke boat veterans. We all had great day celebrating the founding of this great country.

The Science of Invertebrates

Al Gore could be the solution to global warming, WHOI knew!

The inconvenient truth is we humans don't know everything, including atmospheric and oceanic cycles. New findings are made every day that reinforce or refute Al's current enviromental crusade. Mr. Gore seems to think that man is the cause of and can do something about the approximately one degree increase +-.4 degrees in global temperatures over the last century.

BTW, I really don't think Al Gore is a semi-transparent, barrel-shaped marine animal. At least the marine animal part.

In the Rain - Fly Navy

Every year I take my son to the Rhode Island National Guard Air Show at Quonset Point, RI. Each year we get to stroll through the static displays of aircraft, eat greasy carnival style food and watch aerobatic and demonstration flights. The climax of the air show is either the Navy's Blue Angles or the Air Force Thunderbirds in alternate years. The Air Show was ths past weekend and this year it was the Thunderbirds turn.

Weather is a big factor for the success of the Air Show, light winds and clear skies being ideal. Not so this year though, we had fog, a constant light rain and a low cloud ceiling. At most I expected to see only the small diehard aerobatic planes flying and no jets.

By the time my son and I got there the crowd was mostly aircraft enthusiasts in ponchos hoping for the skies to clear, which didn't happen.

The RI National Guard put on a great show with their C-130Js, Blackhawks and Special Forces demonstrating short takeoffs, landing with combat team insertions.

U.S. Air Force Photo of a Navy F-18

At the end of the day the only thing left was the jets, lot of nice Air Force hardware A-10s, F-16s, etc. but no, weather was too marginal and the ceiling to low at a few hundred feet.

The only jet to venture out and into the heavy soup air was a single U.S. Navy F-18 Hornet and he did a killer low level show. The entire time the F-18 did it low level passes down the runway it was bleeding vapor the air was that thick with water. A good 30% of the time the aircraft was barely visible in the clouds. Twice he came close to if not breaking the sound barrier with the classic sphere of vapor around the leading edge of the wings accompanied by a small BOOM!, way cool!

Where was the Air Force? Back in the hanger.

FLY NAVY.....

Where is Your SSN Floating Off To?

That's the Social Security Number SSN!

Not only does the VA have cyber security problems but now its the Navy who has Sailor's SSNs and personal information floating around the internet.

From a Wired News piece today: Sailors' Data Posted on the Web

WASHINGTON -- The Navy has begun a criminal investigation after Social Security numbers and other personal data for 28,000 sailors and family members were found on a civilian website.

The Navy said Friday the information was in five documents and included people's names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole would not identify the website or its owner, but said the information had been removed. He would not provide any details about how the information ended up on the site.

If the warships side of the Navy leaked like the administrative side we'd have a lot of iron resting on the bottom. So who discovered the leak of information on Navy personnel to the internet, the operational Navy of course.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the breach. The initial discovery was made by the Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command, which routinely monitors the internet for such problems.

Who in the government is in charge of cyber security anyway, anyone, anyone? Apparently the federal government is aware that Identity Theft can be a costly and serious problem, imagine if the victim held a security clearance.

Two Sailors - My Dad and Me

I'm a Navy brat; my birth certificate is from the U.S Naval Hospital Yokosuka, Japan and my father was career Navy enlisted. Even though both my dad and I served in the U.S. Navy we had completely different experiences. You see my father was a Seabee and I was a Submariner. He served 22 years as a CE Construction Electrician and I did six as an ET Electronics Technician. He was in the hot end of the cold war, Korean War and three tours in Vietnam; I was in cold end doing strategic deterrent patrols in the dark reaches of the Atlantic.

Near the end of the Vietnam War my parents separated and my dad retired from the Navy. He later remarried a beautiful lady from the Philippines and they had three daughters. Dad is in his 70s now fully retired from a second 30 year career in civil service and I rarely get to see him.

My childhood memory of my dad is of a man who was tough as nails, a John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees kind of character, as corny as that sounds. In those days dad didn'’t like to repeat himself, he told you to do something once and expected it to be done. If you asked him a question and his answer was no, it had a distinctly military even Marine drill instructor sound to it. "Negative son the geedunk is off limits till after dinner."”

Dad rarely talks about his Navy career and the two wars he served during even though he had a chest full of ribbons, and a sleeve length of gold four year service strips. But while I was in the Navy I did get him to tell me a couple of Seabee sea stories, probably during a one of my visits between duty stations.

Two stories my dad told me was how he was slightly wounded twice in Korea. Once on foot patrol of a reportedly cleared area he had a North Korean soldier jump him from behind and put a bayonet to his throat. He reacted quickly by thrusting his head back and catching his assailant on the bridge of the nose with the back of his helmet. This reaction stunned them long enough for my dad to use his bayonet on and kill the North Korean "“woman"” soldier. It only took a few stitches of a needle and thread from a sewing kit to close the several inch long cut on his throat, he still has the scar to this day.

The other time he was injured was during a mortar attack. He was working on a generator barge when the attack started. He fell to the deck with his hand between the barge and dock. The concussion of one of the mortar rounds pushed the dock and barge together crushing my dad'’s thumb in the process. That injury is also still visible today.

The only Vietnam story my dad told me was this. During the Tet offensive the Vietcong had penetrated the parameter of the air base he was working at. My dad was on the roof of a building with a young Marine who had been in country for only a month or so. One of the Vietcong had managed to get on the building's roof and was approaching my dad and the Marine when my dad'’s 45 jammed. The green Marine froze and didn'’t react, my dad had to take the Marine'’s M-16 and kill the enemy before their position was overrun.

Writing this it's hard to believe my dad did these things; he has mellowed considerably over the years. It's been a while, but I seem to recall at least one Presidential Unit Citation in his ribbons but have never got any stories relating to his awards. No Purple Heart though, he talked his CO out of putting him up for the hand injury because he felt it was his own stupidity that caused it.

My service was not as gritty as my dad'’s, it was technical and tedious. The dangers I faced in the 1980s on SSBNs were less individual and more operational. We were chased by the Soviets a few times but knew that by then it was a game of information gathering and tracking. To go hostile on an operation SSBN meant the unthinkable was happening.

Stealth, being on station and operational readiness was the name of our game and we did it well. The stories I have to tell my son are ones computational calculations of Lat and Long, of pounds per square inch of sea pressure and weapons readiness drills.

You didn'’t make rate in the Seabees as fast as the technical rates did a decade later, both my father and I ended our Navy service as E6s. But in my eyes Dad will always get my respect for his service and his commitment as a Navy man.

Happy Fathers Day.

Damage Control Soccer

What if World Cup Soccer was played in the DC trainer.

Sub watching season in Southern New England

Had this sitting over my desk for years and it always gave me chuckle when it became the post memorial day tourist season here in Southern New England.

If you don't get the joke run down this list and check out items #9 and #11. Number nine is where I live and number 11 is close to where a far amount of HY-80/100 is berthed. -LL

Video - Subs in action

Yaaa Yaa, I know Lubber is doing that video thing again!


This one has been around for a while but I still think it's cool...

Memorial Day 2006 - Remembering Submariners

According to the Department of Veteran Affairs we are losing our WWII veterans at a rate of over 1,000 a day. As with every generation that is tested by conflict the men and women of that generation have much to pass along to those who follow. Today in parades and ceremonies throughout this country these walking pages of history demonstrate a sense of honor, duty and commitment by remembering their follow shipmates and comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice. A sacrifice made in defense of the ideas and principles embodied by their country, The United States Of America.

This Memorial Day may be one of the last in which the U.S Submarine Force has any surviving Congressional Metal of Honor recipients, the remaining hero being Rear Admiral Eugene Bennett Fluckey who is currently struggling with a prolonged illness. The following are the recipients of the Congressional Metal of Honor while serving in the U.S Submarine Service.

WWI – Congressional Metal of Honor recipient
Torpedoman Second Class Henry Breault

WWII - Congressional Metal of Honor recipients
Captain John Cromwell (awarded posthumously)
Commander Sam Dealey (awarded posthumously)
Commander Eugene Fluckey
Commander Howard Gilmore (awarded posthumously)
Commander Richard O'Kane
Commander Lawson P. Ramage
Commander George Street

The above recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor are representative of the submariner’s heroism and sacrifice. We can document the sacrifice in sheer numbers of boats and men lost, but by the nature of submarine operations we can only speculate on their heroism, much of which is lost in the great ocean depths.

If you wish to get a sense of the commitment the U.S Submarine Force has shown in it’s 100 plus year history I recommend visiting the “On Eternal Patrol” website and browse through the both peacetime and wartime listings of both Lost Boats and Crews.

Much is owed to this a small segment of the military and Navy who remain on eternal patrol.

A Little Blog Maintenance

If anyone really noticed I pulled the last post due to the overhead it took to load. I have a fast broadband connection and it took a painfully long time to load at times. It was a cool wave effect you could add to a picture but not worth the load time.

Updated my links to include The Cook Shack to my submariners blogroll.

Updated my link to Chaotic Synpatic Activity to his new site.

On a personal note I started a new job two weeks ago that requires me to travel a bit. I anticipate my blog and news reading to go down and subsequently posting will probably be about once a week at best. Maybe I can make put more effort into the weekly posts than my recent fascination with web video content.

Best - LL

Polaris Program - Book Find

A couple of months back my wife after visiting her parents came home with a book her mother thought I would enjoy. The book is titled "Adventure in Partnership The Story of Polaris" and had a limited distribution when produced in the mid 1960s.

The book came from her grandfather "Pa" who worked for Electric Boat in Groton back in the 60s as a QA engineer. I helped clean out Pa's basement in Stonington, CT just before he passed away at age 92 about a year ago. His basement resembled a museum to machining. I wished I talked with him more about his career before he left us.

I thought the book contained many interesting photos inside, below is a letter I found inside and a tiny sample of the 250+ Polaris program photos.

Department of the Navy Letter I found in Pa's book.


Commander and Chief at the time enjoying himself


SSBN SINS ally - Brings back memories for this former NavET


Torpedomen hard at work - so that's why they call it a Torpedo Skid.

This was for Pa, you may not be here to read this, but thanks for your years of hard work that helped make me safe when I rode SSBNs. -LL

The Evil Empire - Redux

This one is for my friend Ken heading to the 43rd International Submariners Convention starting in Moscow May 22 and ending in St Petersburg May 28.


Be safe comrade...