« Merry Christmas, Sandy | Main | Israeli deathwish »
December 25, 2006
Life at sea ain't what it used to be
More evidence -- from the "Give Me A Freakin' Break File" -- that our efforts to make the military seem like summer camp knows no bounds.
The U.S. Navy is having a morale problem with the Internet access it provides for sailors at sea. The problem is that the capacity (bandwidth) available to sailors is quite low. Think typical dial-up speeds, then cut that by 50-90 percent. It's so slow that web pages often time out before loading.
Sailors are not happy. To make them even less happy, many lower ranking sailors are not allowed to access the Internet on their work PCs, but must line up and wait for a turn at the public access ones on the ship.
Now all this is a case of, "no good deed goes unpunished." As ships at sea got more and more Internet access over the last ten years, morale rose. But the increased access could not keep up with sailor expectations.
Back at home, sailors were increasingly getting high speed access, while the shipboard access was stuck at a fraction (24 kps or less) of the old dial-up speeds (56 kps). This was happening just as more sailors were becoming more dependent on Internet access. For example, many of the navy educational programs, some of which are mandatory if you want to get promoted, are conducted over the web.
The internet?
Y'know, life aboard a warship has always involved isolation from the landlubbers, be they friends or family, for extended periods of time. While the initial days may prove depressing, with time, the isolation became liberating.
Even the most dedicated of family men appeared to enjoy, at some level, the camaraderie, the focus on completing the mission, the life at sea, things that came with having no contact with home.
And when we finally pulled into some foreign port o' call and waited for the yeomen to return with bulging mailbags, the tension was excruciating as the roll-call began, the lucky recipients answering up and reaching for tossed, flimsy airmail envelopes and crudely wrapped, strapped and taped bundles.
That's why being at sea was bittersweet; although confined within the cramped pressure hull of our submarine, we had freedom, the ability to ignore the mundane land-locked chores of our civilian brethren, as we instead fell into the familiar rhythms of life at sea: stand watch, chow, rack-time, chow, maintenance, cards, movie, back on watch, with occasional fires and flooding.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until we entered port.
But now, in a misguided effort to boost morale, the Navy offers near-realtime communications to the outside world, an effort that can only serve to distract the men from their focus on the mission.
And did I mention the difficulty maintaining operational security when every enlisted man can talk to any Tom Dick or Hamid via e-mail?
I can't think of any cruise that would have benefitted from my shipmates finding out on a daily basis all that was going wrong at home. In fact, as a radioman, I often carried teletype messages to the Skipper, bearing word of death, divorce and ill tidings; he often decided to wait until we were in port before delivering the bad news to the crewman, so as to avoid imperiling the rest of us while submerged and dodging the Soviets, because we needed every man to be able to do his job.
Furthermore, every enlisted man who wanted to study for the rate-related promotional exams had access through the Naval educational system to all the publications necessary to prepare, using things called "books."
The fellows at StrategyPage.com had it right when they quoted Mark Twain: "No good deed goes unpunished."
More warrior, less wussy. Iron men in iron ships.
Or at least HY-80 steel subs.
Posted by Mike Lief at December 25, 2006 09:37 PM
| TrackBack
Comments
I am a sailor who has stood with both feet in the worlds you describe. The Navy of complete isolation, with nothing but a thoroughly screened 40 word familygram once a week, and the one with internet access and email, towards the end of my career (though we never had it on Tridents before I left sea duty for the last time - the pampered whiners "fast attack tough" guys got that technology first, believe it or not).
As incredulous as it may seem, all those emails that go on and off the ships are screened as well. This I know from talking with Comm ET friends of mine who dread the chore of reviewing the emails before they go out. They have to flag them and let the DH know if there is anything objectionable in them. There are no secrets, trust me.
One last item. The Navy is relying more and more heavily on online self-paced materials for promotion, much in the same way we used to do the NRCC rate books to help us get promoted (there is even a whole website dedicated to all things Navy learning, called Navy Knowledge Online, and it's even available to retirees like me).
This is the way the Navy is moving, using current technology to it's fullest extent. Books are a thing of the past, which cost money to print, update, stock, and mail. Sometimes the books you needed weren't available for weeks or even months, and your Education Officer would have to put them on order. But, via the internet, everything you need to study for the next higher rate is available 24/7.
The caveat to that is, unlike the course books that you could send off for, and do at your own leisure, or borrow from someone else, you are bound by the resources and bandwidth of the ship's internet connection. The obvious result is that you will have substantial hurdles to overcome in trying to get promoted. If you don't get it done, you may face disciplinary action, due to no fault of your own because the Navy failed to provide adequate resources, because it's Navy mandated.
Telling your chief you couldn't download the pages of the course you needed won't fly. The more things change the more things stay the same.
So I guess life at sea is still bittersweet, just for different reasons. Or maybe now it's just bitter.
Posted by: sonarman at December 27, 2006 08:57 PM