North Korea

[smartster]

Originally Posted by desertswo

Well, an interesting question. Sneaky and cunning; well yeah, that's sort of the nature of the beast. However, one must remember one thing about US submarine officers; they are, to a man, all nuclear qualified engineers, and they will all, at some point in their careers, do a tour as an engineer at sea. So to be quite frank, a lot of those guys are certifiable geeks with their calculators clipped to their belts and pocket protectors in their coverall breast pockets, complete with a different colored pen for every occasion. I've never been able to reconcile John Wayne with the typical modern submarine officer. However, geeks though they may well be, they are sneaking and cunning geeks.

my father served in various ships in the RN and I asked him the same question.

I suppose in war games/exercises it's hugely embarrassing if a sub on your own side sends you a signal to the extent of "Sorry old chap, but I've just detonated two fish underneath your keel! 'bye now" and I bet you end up with a royally cheesed off CO. Dad said the RN surface crowd tends to view them as sneaky and often up to no good. I guess SSN CO's make great poker players!

I have said to myself the last few years that subs would the best place for me if I went into the RN. Less sea-sickness, no storms, and harder to find than a ship. They probably earn their extra buck for being underwater for that long though!

Sub CO's I suppose end up being the most ambitious on whatever the equivalent of the chiefs of staff/war planners is? More so than a surface ship commander? I've always imagined that it'd be great to sit and listen for a few hours with a CO who'd done a fair share of 'Northern Runs'!

[AdmiralAnthony]

Originally Posted by smartster

I guess SSN CO's make great poker players!

I have said to myself the last few years that subs would the best place for me if I went into the RN. Less sea-sickness, no storms, and harder to find than a ship. They probably earn their extra buck for being underwater for that long though!

I'm a massive poker player myself! Play all the time! Went to Vegas last year for 10 days of solid poker. Longest stint was 14 hours straight with just food breaks in between lol. Biggest win was $230 on a Ace high diamond flush

Highlight of our stay? Been invited along to watch the American Bikini contest at the Mirage by the boyfriend of one of the models we met at the poker tables. Man the girls on the catwalk were smmmmoking!!

Some interesting prizes where that the casinos paid you if you lost on 'pocket rockets' or pair of Aces for those who don't know. Also you'd get paid $100 for any 4 of a kind ( i landed quad 7's and quad 10's which was nice) $250 for a straight flush and $500 for a royal flush!
Most outrageous win I saw was some lucky chap landed quad Jacks on the flop only to go on and loose to quad kings on the turn and river. Man i'd have been peeved if that happened to me!


Regarding Subs i too think if i was in the navy that a submariner is what i'd like to do.

[LondonFox]

Interesting report on BBC last night about NK.

[desertswo]

Originally Posted by smartster

Sub CO's I suppose end up being the most ambitious on whatever the equivalent of the chiefs of staff/war planners is? More so than a surface ship commander? I've always imagined that it'd be great to sit and listen for a few hours with a CO who'd done a fair share of 'Northern Runs'!

Actually, no. While there were some sub-drivers on the Joint Staff that I worked with, they were most often in J-4, J-5, and J-8 where various combinations of engineering savvy, planning around nuclear events, and computer skills were valued. Operations-wise, not so much. Like I said, "geeks." Cunning, sneaky, and very brave, but "geeks." No shame in that; they are very good at what they do, but it's sort of interesting because at let's say the Commander/LtColonel-Captain/Colonel level, they are far less experienced outside their particular specialty than the Surface and Aviation guys. They've been doing really cool, sexy stuff, below the surface, but in truth, don't know jack about what the rest of us do. Some of the worst seamen I've seen and heard of were submarine drivers for the very reasons you identified; they've never had to deal with storms, and all of the other things like UNREPing, and VBSS, and all of those things that require decisions beyond the trim of the boat, and what's on the CCTV tonight? I'm trivializing things, but you just need to understand that their world view is often circumscribed by the view through a periscope. I could go on, but the truth is, most of the Navy guys who dealt in the world of current operations like me on the Joint Staff were Surface or Aviation.

[Maximinus Thrax]

Interesting differences there. The current First Sea Lord, Sir Mark Stanhope, was a submariner. I believe he was the CO of [I]Orpheus and Splendid, he then went on to command a Type22 and [I]Illustrious. I'm sure I read somewhere that turning submariner poachers into surface gamekeepers was Royal Navy practice.

[Maximinus Thrax]

How the fuck do you make italics work?

[desertswo]

Originally Posted by Maximinus Thrax

How the fuck do you make italics work?

Well, you highlight what you want in Italics and left click on the slanted capital I above in the tool bar. Otherwise, I'm lost Max!!

[Splish]

edit

desertswo has provided the answer.

If you're typing the italic tags manually make sure you start it with [i] and close it with [/i ]

[CarMadMike]

Originally Posted by Maximinus Thrax

How the fuck do you make italics work?

The second code has to have a forward-slash before the i, like so [/i]


Hopefully this will work or else it'll be embarrassing

Splish beat me to it, nevermind.

[Maximinus Thrax]

Cheers guys, I'll wait a while before embarrassing myself though!

[desertswo]

Originally Posted by Maximinus Thrax

Interesting differences there. The current First Sea Lord, Sir Mark Stanhope, was a submariner. I believe he was the CO of [I]Orpheus and Splendid, he then went on to command a Type22 and [I]Illustrious. I'm sure I read somewhere that turning submariner poachers into surface gamekeepers was Royal Navy practice.

Used to be in the US Navy as well; a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. See, before the advent of the nuclear Navy and most especially, the SSBNs, being a lifelong submariner for an officer was a career dead end. Admiral Nimitz wore Dolphins but he realistically hadn't had much to do with submarines for 20 years or more. He was, for all intents and purposes, a CRU-DES guy like me. Hymen Rickover and the Nuclear Triad changed all that. There is such a demand that guys stay current in the nuclear engineering world for obvious reasons that their sea-shore rotations are heavy on the engineering world (as was mine, but for different reasons), and submarines. They rarely step out of that mold, because to do so will upset their career paths. As a result, they know a hell of a lot about submarines, nuclear power, SSBNs, Tomahawk employment, and how to make the rest of us look bad at sea, but beyond that, they have a fairly steep learning curve.

Here is their typical career path, and with few exceptions, it is almost all "nuclear submarine" in nature:



By the way, "major command" generally means an SSBN or command of a squadron.

I hasten to add that being nuclear engineers, they learn pretty quickly, but it's a trial nonetheless, which is why in the Joint world they do those things at which the are sublimely skilled, and those things tend to be very technical in nature, and not so much of the "how to make Marines, sailors, airmen, and soldiers work and play well together" variety.

Now that doesn't mean submariners don't become CNOs or Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. The current CNO certainly is, but it's been mostly a Surface Warfare club going back to the last submarine officer to sit in that chair in 1994. The submarine guys had a run of three straight up to that point, but frankly, the fact that they haven't had that sort of influence since is because the rules of the game changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and suddenly, the US submarine Navy was scratching around looking for a mission statement that justified their existence. Seriously, you can sort of trace the influence of the warfare group du jour in the Navy by who is sitting in the catbird seat.

As far as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it's not even close. The last, in fact the only, guy to wear Dolphins was Admiral William Crowe and he almost doesn't even count. He had command of one non-nuke boat, told Rickover to piss up a rope about becoming a nuke, and never commanded anything else at sea until they gave him command of a Submarine Division, which is solely an administrative job. However, Crowe was a true political animal, and I mean that in every respect. He popped up as Assistant-Naval Aide to President Eisenhower, and Aide to CNO, etc., etc.; but he also got a Masters Degree in Education from Stanford University, and another Masters and Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University. Guys, they aren't as old obviously, but in the States, those places have the same academic cachet as Oxford or Cambridge. He's scary smart, and he worked it. A guy with his sort of sea duty record today would be kicked to the curb in short order.

Anyway, they are some really smart guys, just not as experienced in other areas, and it sort of catches up with them eventually.

[jerseyboi]

Flight launch Path over Australia of the NK.Rocket.

See
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-1...ction=business

[WatcherZero]

Long range missile launched the 12th April 22:39 GMT

Japanese defences have been going to higher and higher states of alert all day, they even launched F-16 to protect the airspace of their Aegis ships tracking the launch as they feared that with their radars locked on the rocket Russian or Chinese fighters would sneak up close to take pictures and collect emmissions data.

Early reports is it was a failure, no tracking data yet. Last time it was a failure the NK claimed it was a complete success and pretended to play signals it was transmitting. US says they didnt pick it up and Japan saying they detected an object falling into the sea.

[JackSwan]

and only a few hundred thousand koreans had to starve. money well spent.

[SO143]

[Aaronj09]

And the rocket launch fails. God, what a pathetic country. LOL

[WhatIsBeauty]

LOL how embarassing

[AdmiralAnthony]

Kim Jong Un is just another in a long line of fat crazy mother fuckers.

[AdmiralAnthony]

Seems people in the know are expecting ramifications from NK due to the rocket launch failure. They're saying due to the huge embarrasment and the fact the North Koreans may want to save face, and still honour their founding fathers 100th birthday by going ahead with a nuclear test instead.

[LondonFox]

Maybe its a new kind of submersed rocket that transmits to dolphins and wales fitted with nukes to attack enemy ships.