Females on US Submarines:

Recently the Chief of Naval Operations stated that women will for the first time start serving on in the US submarine fleet. The integration is expected to commence in the fall of 2010 with women first joining the SSBN (ballistic missile) submarine fleet, then as submarines become updated, they will become integrated into the SSN (fast attack fleet).

The US submarine fleet has historically been a male only force. However this does not mean that women have not been on submarines. When I was attached to the submarine force, we routinely did mid shipman cruises and females would ride submarines, sometimes over night. We would also take women on public relations trips, these usually did not include an over night tour. But this is the first time in history that women will be attached to the crew of submarines.

As I stated earlier, women will first become integrated into the SSBN fleet, then the SSGN fleet and lastly the SSN fleet. This is because of the logistical concerns related with the submarine force. SSBN (ballistic submarines or 'boomers") are large missile carrying submarines. Crew members sleep in 9 man bunk rooms' in-between the missile tubes. This will provide adequate bunking to create a nine woman bunk room. The same is true for SSGNs which have similar bunk situations.

The SSN fleet is a whole different situation. They are on average three large bunk facilities. Since the crews are made of approximately 140 members and there are 100 rakes available, members have to 'hot rack' this means that when a crew member is on-watch, someone else is sleeping in his rack. Junior crew members may also sleep in the torpedo room along side a MK 48 torpedo or a Tomahawk Missile. There is absolutely no privacy when sleeping in the torpedo room. Members who sleeps there routinely get waken because the torpedomen (now called machinists mates - that'll be another article) have to perform maintenance. Most likely the first women on subs will be officers who will have a 3 person stateroom. However even junior officers have to sleep in the crew berthing area.

Next are the bathroom facilities. On an SSN (688 Los Angelis Fast Attack class) there are two crew heads (bathrooms are called heads on ships). That means there are three standup showers and four toilets for about 120 men (the chiefs and officers have their own). If one of these heads are for female use only (we used the lower level head when we took females underway), that means about 10 women (I'm estimating at the amount of female crew members they'll be) will have a head to themselves while the rest of the crew has to use the other head. This is not a big deal, but you put 140 people on deployment and under the water for a few months, and it becomes a very big deal.

As you can see, space availability is very limited. There are no changing rooms, there are no storage facilities, and there is barely room to walk past each other in the passageway. If you are one of the lucky crew members to get a rack, the racks are stacked three high and when you get out you have to get changed in the berthing passage way.

Submarines are not very habitable places for men, let alone women. Submarines are always at war. Many people think submarines just sit at the bottom of the ocean and listen and wait for launch orders. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is an extremely high stressed, uncomfortable, and taxing environment. This unique brotherhood is about to undergo an extreme culture shift for the first time in history and it will be very interesting to see how it plays out.