How would you fix the NNPP

[JoshD1982]

I think that it is becoming clear that the program keeps getting softer and softer and apparently so are the baby nukes.  If someone can't survive power school from being on 35-5's saying they need more free time there is no way they would survive on a submarine.  I studied for 40 hours a week and had more than enough time to PT at least 4 times a week and get kind of crazy on the weekends.  Being a nuke on a submarine takes mental toughness.  In my opinion is prototype absoltely necessary, probably not.  However it puts young sailors in stressful situations to weed out more people that can't handle the fleet.  It also provides shore billets for guys that want to stay in the Navy.  I'm positive not many people could survive 20 years straight out at sea though I have seen it before.  The CMC in NY when I was there was on his first shore tour and he had been in for like 25 years. If you are at sea on a sub you can expecto to be on the boat (including duty) for at least 80 hours a week.   Enough to make you wish you were actually at sea because it is just easier to know that you arent going home.  Enjoy the pipline folks, it just gets harder after that.

[bawb]

Bravo, if you're too stupid to pass nuke school in six months studying as much as you think you can handle you don't belong anywhere near a nuclear reactor, the fleet always needs more paint chippers, mess cranks and stores handlers.

Another good one, why in the hell are my tax dollars paying for some non-qual nub student to get a minimum of six months of easy training with three and five day mini-vacations every month when their dink non-qual ass could be field daying a boat for six days out of seven when tied up to a pier or underway?!?!!?

Why are my tax dollars paying these goobers to go to college for six months while they are on prototype hold lounging around in a BEQ? They could be in the fleet field daying and giving the qualified and hard to retain sea going nukes a break?!?!?!?!

Now that's a complicated one, cops and firefighters are expected to be in shape too,...

I would gladly trade you five hours a week out of forty for you to keep in shape. Just give me back all my tax dollars spent on free of charge fitness gyms, swimming pools, golf courses, indoor basketball courts, baseball fields, and all those other taxpayer subsidised physical fitness amenities.

At the end of the day be careful what you ask for, you might just get it,...

I agree My sailor son has a sweet deal Marssim.
He is paid about the same as a woman with 3 kids on welfare. Less though if you include the cost of the maturity hospital. Then there's the food stamps.

[Marlin]

The casualty on the Thresher was caused by a material deficiency; however, the operators secured steam to the main engines because the procedure told them to do it, despite the fact that doing so disabled the ability for the boat to remain afloat. Whether or not the moisturized air froze pipes, that action in that situation put the ship at risk.

Following the Thresher incident, NR actually revised quite a few procedures in the RPM.

  The boat was driven to the surface (just below) by the power plant but because the response (emergency blow) to the flooding was too slow the boat was unable to keep that depth no matter what happened in the engineering spaces. Too imply that blind obedience to emergency procedures was part of it and the revisions to the Reactor Plant Manuals were an indictment of them is just plain wrong. These were men who served on the boats in the 60's, many of them were still around in the seventies when I qualified in fact I served with men who were transfered off of the Thresher just prior to it's sea trails.
  They did not send us through all of that schooling to shut down our thinking processes. If fact complying with a procedure you knew was wrong was considered "malicious compliance" and in normal operation you would simply stop and revise or operate under the "Engineers Night Orders". In one instance during an incident in the power plant I received a verbal accommodation for not following a procedure. I will admit I was very nervous about it even though I knew I did the right thing at the time until the reviews of the incident were over.
  I guess I should apologize for being overly sensitive to this but we are discussing actions of people who stood by their posts as the boat sank to test depth and was crushed all the while calmly calling out their depth to the support ships above. We were not brain dead automatons and hope that is not true of the Nuke Submariners of today.

[HydroDave63]

Yea, this is a real easy stance for people on the outside to take. Right now there are boats on the waterfront who have nukes working well over 100 hours a week to accomplish maintenance because we're in the 80% range for manning. So when you raise the standards and cause attrition to raise, where are you going to get people to stand watch and keep the plant together?

Are insufficient billing numbers the fault of NAVSEA08 having too high of standards (gee, how did they keep all the 594/637/688/CGN/CVN world going in the 80s and 90s with a much larger number of reactors at sea??), or really is it the fault of Big Navy that has 'torque wrench envy' over the nuke signup bonuses, higher SRB multiples, nukes don't volunteer for PC diggit events like the topsiders/coners, etc. and sets an inadequate number of nuke billets?

[andrewnavy]

In my opinion, the reason the navy cannot fill these billets is due to them not being able to keep people in.  I myself am one of three out of a 14 man division that reenlisted to go to a shore duty.  The rest got out.  The only reason I stayed was to finish college which I did.  I wouldn't even dream of going back out to the boat. The work itself is not bad but the way they run things in a lot of cases is unwarranted.  The big navy thinks just by offering ridiculous bonuses and fast promotion that people will stay.  In a generation that will take their 401k and walk, I think these people are dreaming.  I for one am proud to be a active submariner for a couple of more months and I think the navy is losing a valuable resource.  Very few people are fulfilled enough with the idea that they are serving their country to stay and do it for 20 years. Also, when your best recruiting tools (ex-sailors) cannot give a really good recommendation for their job to people thinking about it, it will only hurt the navy's manning.

Saying all of that, I think that I and the navy have extracted our pound of flesh from each other but I still know a large majority of people who do not see it this way.  I guess we might see a change in how things are run when the government can no longer afford to pay high enlistment/retention bonuses.  In this case they will have to find a new cheaper way to retain their talent.

To spekkio:  If you are on a boat, you should suck it up and go to work.  You get paid plenty to go to sea and when you get to shore duty (depending on the orders you take) you will get paid way more than the services you are providing.  For prospective, I did 1 yr in the ship yard, 2 deployments, and was three section in port for 4.5 years.  Take what you can from them and then separate.

andrewnavy

[Cycoticpenguin]

I agree My sailor son has a sweet deal Marssim.
He is paid about the same as a woman with 3 kids on welfare. Less though if you include the cost of the maturity hospital. Then there's the food stamps.

It's almost like your son had to volunteer or something...  hmmm   

[DDMurray]

I agree My sailor son has a sweet deal Marssim.
He is paid about the same as a woman with 3 kids on welfare. Less though if you include the cost of the maturity hospital. Then there's the food stamps.

My son is joining Feb 23.  I couldn't be prouder.   I don't know what a woman with 3 kids gets paid on welfare, but I'm pretty sure my son will have an acceptable standard of living.  The neat thing is if he works hard and applies himself, he can advance and make more money.  Even if he hates it and does six and out, he will be better for it.  Not sure what you mean about food stamps or maturity hospital.  Is that a place where adults who have a callow disposition go to grow up?

[OldHP]

Not sure what you mean about food stamps or maturity hospital.  Is that a place where adults who have a callow disposition go to grow up?

Good one DD. 

Actually I thought it was where the (presumed single) mother with three kids on welfare went to grow up so she didn't end up back in the maternity ward! 

[Cycoticpenguin]

Good one DD. 

Actually I thought it was where the (presumed single) mother with three kids on welfare went to grow up so she didn't end up back in the maternity ward! 

haha Im really glad someone else said it

I really dont understand that dudes point

[OldHP]

What I really wanted with this post was to claim post #637. 637 was the class of boat I earned my dolphins on: short hulled, deep diving, 5 watertight compartments and if you knew one S5W cold well, you knew one S5W cold. The oddest thing about the Navy's version of commonality is how it isn't,....

The Sturgeon was a great boat - my first as SS Engr - and the 637 Class a great bunch of boats.  The work-horses of their time.

And very true each S5W, "Boomer and Fast Attack" was very different!

[JsonD13]

Marssim,
   I agree with most of your assessment, but this kind of statement just shows how inexperienced and immature contestant #1 is.

To spekkio:  If you are on a boat, you should suck it up and go to work.  You get paid plenty to go to sea and when you get to shore duty (depending on the orders you take) you will get paid way more than the services you are providing.  For prospective, I did 1 yr in the ship yard, 2 deployments, and was three section in port for 4.5 years.  Take what you can from them and then separate.

I for one, do not think that Navy nuclear personnel (officer nor enlisted) get paid plenty to go to sea, or do any of their job for that matter.  Compared to what we make when we get out, you see that what we were working for while in the Navy was chump change.  Even when you factor in what you get out of the Navy and compare it to a 4 year degree (which usually works for meeting requirements if you do not have experience like the Navy), the time you put in is longer and the cost is higher.

For my second point, telling someone to "suck it up" when they have somewhat legitimate gripes about the Navy and are posting it on a "How you would fix the NNPP" thread is wrong.  It is shortsided and shows that the poster doesn't really know much (aka. lack of experience in other viewpoints).

I do agree however, with taking what you can and getting out, but since this is a thread about how you can fix things, it is not really a constructive statement other than conceding that no one person would be able to fix it.

Jason

[andrewnavy]

I said suck it up because after trying to fix it a thousand times, it just does not seem worth it.

[DDMurray]

spouses and parents are off-limits as they are not nukes,....


(perhaps not in extreme cases,....this one ain't it,... ;P)

At what point in my son's time in the navy do I get to become a parent? 

Reminds me of Jack Nicholson's line in "As Good as it Gets", except substitute nuke for man and parent/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/coner(Forward Area Guy) for woman.

[andrewnavy]

I understand that you now get paid the big bucks working in the commercial nuclear power industry.  My question is how did you get there?  Did you apply with them the day after you got your new shiny highschool diploma?  As a person with zero technical training, no experience, and no college, how is it that we are paid poorly?  The navy pays for your room, board, healthcare, training, legal services, gives you your paycheck, tuition assistance ($4500/yr), 9/11 GI bill, fitness centers etc...  I think you are comparing apples and oranges here.  I do not think that many people set out to become rich by operating navy nuclear reactors.  The money to me all equals out.  I would agree if with you if you actually spent 5 years at sea the whole time (only port calls).  There are times like the ship yard or shore duty where you do make more money than you worth.  For instance,  being let off for 3 months of a deployment to essentially be on a unchargable vacation.  I usually think of myself as well rounded but maybe I am being biased which is funny because I cannot wait to be done with my contract. I guess in general if you get out after a shore duty (not prototype) and only do one sea duty that you get paid fine.  After that, your resume dictates that you should probably get paid more than what you do if you were to go back out to sea.

andrewnavy

Marssim,
   I agree with most of your assessment, but this kind of statement just shows how inexperienced and immature contestant #1 is.


I for one, do not think that Navy nuclear personnel (officer nor enlisted) get paid plenty to go to sea, or do any of their job for that matter.  Compared to what we make when we get out, you see that what we were working for while in the Navy was chump change.  Even when you factor in what you get out of the Navy and compare it to a 4 year degree (which usually works for meeting requirements if you do not have experience like the Navy), the time you put in is longer and the cost is higher.

For my second point, telling someone to "suck it up" when they have somewhat legitimate gripes about the Navy and are posting it on a "How you would fix the NNPP" thread is wrong.  It is shortsided and shows that the poster doesn't really know much (aka. lack of experience in other viewpoints).

I do agree however, with taking what you can and getting out, but since this is a thread about how you can fix things, it is not really a constructive statement other than conceding that no one person would be able to fix it.

Jason

[shocker]

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/01/navy-nuke-recruiting-gets-tougher-013011w/

The Navy has one idea to try to fix it...  After reading this I got a somewhat controversial idea.  Require applicants to be over 21 years old to enlist as a NUCLEAR MM/EM/ET.  Allow applicants 18-21 to apply as an MM/EM/ET with a nuclear option in the future, but do not allow them to begin nuclear training until 21.

I know of far more people who do not make it through the program due to underage drinking than who failed math...

[DDMurray]

Perhaps instead of trying to "fix" NNPP on the whole, maybe we (I should say you since I'm no longer active) should focus on a specific area.  If I look at my career, there are portions of it that sucked.  But why did it suck?  The situations that almost drove me out were generally due to individuals, not necessarily the NNPP itself.  Most of the gripes I hear here are based on situations that were not necessarily due to the NNPP, but due to a culture at a given command.  I'd say serving at NPTU draws the most ire from the masses.  Since I never did a tour at NPTU, I'm not qualified to fix NPTU, but I can tell you what some senior nukes have told me who served at NPTU is a big problem:  NR/civilians do not let the navy people do their job in a manner that provides job satisfaction.  I saw this to a lesser extent at NNPTC my second tour there.

Some have suggested getting rid of prototype.  I'm not sure how we could do that and still meet NRC/DOE agreements that allow the NNPP to operate nuclear reactors in port without meeting all the "regular" reactor licensing requirements.   Just some random thoughts.

[OldHP]

If I look at my career, there are portions of it that sucked.  But why did it suck?  The situations that almost drove me out were generally due to individuals, not necessarily the NNPP itself.  Most of the gripes I hear here are based on situations that were not not necessarily due to the NNPP, but due to a culture at a given command.

JMO!  Is the program broke - I don't think so!  Does the Navy have problems at various locations due to individuals and command culture (DD's words) - probably yes - the same situation exists in the Army, Air Force, Marines, & Coast Guard (and probably in the SS, FBI, and all the other letter organizations.

The NNPP came into being with the authorization of the SSN-571 and came to the forefront with her first trip in '55 - (way before most of the complainers were even a glimmer).  Those folks went through prototype at S2W and they were very proud.  Maybe the problem with the NNPP is the attitude of the folks getting in today not with the training and the program.

As I started with - JMO! 

[andrewnavy]

JMO!  Is the program broke - I don't think so!  Does the Navy have problems at various locations due to individuals and command culture (DD's words) - probably yes - the same situation exists in the Army, Air Force, Marines, & Coast Guard (and probably in the SS, FBI, and all the other letter organizations.

The NNPP came into being with the authorization of the SSN-571 and came to the forefront with her first trip in '55 - (way before most of the complainers were even a glimmer).  Those folks went through prototype at S2W and they were very proud.  Maybe the problem with the NNPP is the attitude of the folks getting in today not with the training and the program.

As I started with - JMO! 

That is possible but I think it has kind of gone the way of the US Constitution.  There have been to many people with their interpretations (& motives) muddying the original framework of the program.  If there was more common sense being utilized in the everyday operations of the fleet, it would not so bad. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case from my perspective.  What do I know, I am just a first class

[spekkio]

Many of the responses to my post lead me back to my original statement...we'll never "fix" the NNPP because the prevailing attitude is "I did it, so it must not be screwed up."

Let's back up a bit: I passed power school without having to be put on extra hours at all. I have qualified everything early. I am not fledgling along, nor am I going to "tap" because I think the program is too hard. So some of you can stop responding to my posts as if I'm someone whining about struggling in a program that I think is too hard and I need to just "suck it up" -- that's not the case. This is a thread about how you would fix the NNPP, and I am posting about things I think are silly in the community -- things that, ultimately, drive people away.

I make reference to private companies because I have worked for 3 major companies prior to coming into the Navy. None of them had a physical fitness standard -- in fact, I can assure you I was in the top 10% of height/weight at all of them. Despite this fact, all of them either had a gym on the premises for employees to use free of charge or provided a membership to a nearby gym. Amazing.

I'm glad that you think being fit is a LIFE standard. Great. Some people don't agree with you. But the fact is, Navy says that fitness is a NAVY standard, so the NAVY should be providing time to work out. And it does in other communities outside the nuke world.

You say that you can't compare life in the Navy to a career in the private sector. That has some merit, but the fact of the matter is that the Navy is in competition with these organizations for workers. Companies have realized some time ago that high turnover costs a lot of money, so they took measures to make sure people felt taken care of at their jobs. Where the Navy is different is that the entire system relies on turnover and promotion, but the Navy still needs to retain enough experienced Sailors to man the experienced billets. That is where the Navy is failing.

I have friends in multiple different Naval communities. Some of them (ie, Aviation), actually still drop people for poor performance because they have enough people to fill billets. When I say poor performance, I mean getting below 90% on exams, not below 62% where the nuke community sets the bar. Yet they manage to keep high standards without making people's lives consumed with work. Amazingly, they have a lot higher retention than the nuke community, too. Imagine that. Other communities, even on submarines, manage to keep the boat going to sea in-port without working inordinate amount of hours. There are times where long hours and hard work is called for, and the Sailors rise to the occasion...for nukes, there is nothing but long hours and hard work. Does it really have to be like that? Probably not, but apparently there's no reason to think about how to make it better because you did it back in the day, so everyone else should just suck it up. Everything is relative, and if you factor in the amount a nuke works compared to other rates, they are one of the lowest paid communities in the Navy.

Ah, so we should just raise the standard, eh? Well, right now you'd need to decommission 3 boats in order to make the rest of the fleet at manning. Now you want to raise the standard when people aren't attracted to the community in the first place. A $2 billion asset that can't go to sea and the salary for all those Sailors is a lot bigger drain on your tax dollars than a baby nuke who doesn't work 120 hours a week to get a 65% on an exam because that's the way you did it. That method is resulting in a steady supply of Sailors who don't know enough about their rate in order to qualify in a timely fashion, and there really isn't time in the fleet between maintenance, mandatory training, and other random crap for them to play catch-up, so they end up qualifying with a very minimal amount of knowledge and the answer is just make the Chief be on station to watch him do everything on watch for the first couple of months. Apparently, though, that's a lot less wasteful than slowing down the program and making sure they actually know something.

But the training pipeline isn't the only problem. Once Sailors get to the fleet and get qualified, they will be introduced to one of many nuclear monitoring programs. At first, it doesn't seem so bad. Then one day some LCDR or CDR from off-hull will tell someone they did something wrong. Roger. They change the process and move on. Then another LCDR or CDR from off-hull comes down and says the way the other guy said to do it is wrong, and they should go back to what they were doing before. This process repeats itself ad-nauseum until everyone involved becomes frustrated and bitter. This is because a monitor is only perceived as effective if he finds deficiencies, and there's only so much you can find without making stuff up when Sailors are inserting a voltmeter into a panel and taking readings. It also doesn't help that most monitors have never done the maintenance themselves to begin with. The fact that many Sailors don't feel trusted to do their jobs without someone directly watching, and then that person makes comments that result in extra work to change a process they've been doing for years without incident or problems, turns a lot of people off to reenlisting. I would never, ever recommend ELT to anyone based on this fact alone. Everything you do will always be wrong when someone is watching, someone will watch you more frequently than anyone else, and what was wrong yesterday is right today and wrong tomorrow. Despite the fact that these monitoring programs have questionable usefulness, they keep expanding.

There is also the fact that Sailors spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to get stuff done. Since all work has to go through a watch officer, and there is only 1 watch officer to handle every job that has to get started, it creates a backlog. A job that takes 10 minutes to do easily turns into an hour and a half when you factor in writing a WAF, writing a tagout, getting the tagout approved, hanging the tagout, opening the WAF, setting up an electrical safety area to do dead checks, doing the dead checks, then you get to do the work. All of those stages require permission from the watch officer, and you're not the only person trying to get work done. This leads to a lot of frustration for someone who just wants to do his job so that he can go home to see his wife and kids in port or move onto the next thing to work on underway so they can hit the rack. How do you fix this part? I don't really know... if you got rid of it entirely, you run into the chance that people will do conflicting maintenance that damages equipment.

So we are where we are, and it'll pretty much stay this way until we have a reactor accident or another major Naval war.

I know of far more people who do not make it through the program due to underage drinking than who failed math...

So clearly the problem is the age of the applicant, not the Navy, and to a greater extent, America's ridiculous policy toward alcohol.

You would also be circumventing one of the main reason people join the Navy -- to pay for college. Now you're cutting the nuke community out from all those people.

[andrewnavy]

I agree.  The only thing that will cut down the nuclear frustration would be to have a naval war.   Nothing cuts through the crap like trying to stay alive.  During peace times the only way people can leave their mark is by instituting their policy.  After awhile you know how cumbersome it gets.

Spekkio:  I only said "suck it up" because there is no fixing it.  The best you can do is try to take the best care of the guys who work for you that you can. After that, utilize every opportunity the navy gives you (IE college) while you are still in.  I thought it was funny when my last captain asked what I had learned after my 4.5 years on the boat, I told him there were two things.  First, I told him that I learned how to keep my mouth shut and most importantly I learned that perception is reality. 

Good luck to those that have and who currently serve.

[HydroDave63]

I agree.  The only thing that will cut down the nuclear frustration would be to have a naval war.   Nothing cuts through the crap like trying to stay alive.  During peace times the only way people can leave their mark is by instituting their policy.  After awhile you know how cumbersome it gets.

The Brits lost a good chunk of their surface combatants in the Falklands War in 1982. It didn't help them get their crap in one sock then or today. If anything, taking those losses made it easier for careerists and budget cutters to start PowerPoint-ing how they don't need as much Navy or funding. One need only look to the recent UK debates on "sharing" carriers with France, whether or not to scrap or replace UK Tridents, at-sea collision of a UK SSBN with a French SSBN while on patrol etc. to see the overall effect of a major sea war vs. fleet readiness two decades later.

Right now we have a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was a nuclear department head on a CVN in a previous life. If positive suggestions for positive change are going to happen, this would be the time to do it IMHO. Get writing!!

[Marlin]

It didn't help them get their crap in one sock then or today. If anything, taking those losses made it easier for careerists and budget cutters to start PowerPoint-ing how they don't need as much Navy or funding.

A West Point grad I worked with referred to them as "Power Point Rangers", it fits in almost any military or corporate environ for those who work out of the Pentagon/Corporate office without any real field experience.

Guess who makes decisions for the school?   

[Cycoticpenguin]

How to fix the NNPP? Lower requirements to become a nuke, enlist a bunch, and fill every billet.

If we had fully manned divisions, holy cow deployment would be sweet. 5 and 25 rotation, MORE then enough people to get to do maintenance without getting racked out on your 6 hours off, enough people to man 8 section duty like the rest of the boat instead of 3 section.... more hands for orse preps.... Everything would be 1000% better.

But thats when the problems of relaxed standards come in...   "We didnt lower the bar, we made it easier to obtain".

I've met my fair share of mechanics that had no business being there, yet some how got in... Where do we draw the line?

Its a vicious cycle, being a nuke. Our jobs sucked because we didnt have enough people. Since the job sucked, few stayed in. Since few stayed in the job sucked and we didnt maintain enough people...  RAWR!


Just ranting.... Andrewnavy is accurate in my opinion.

Also, everyone experiences a different navy. We are all trying to compare everyones experience as our own. Very few of you guys had to deal with the amount of bull-@#$% I had to, but then again, Im 100% positive I never saw some your crap either. Its all relative and ultimately subjective.  (im out and mostly over it, so im not going for a "oh poor me" routine, so keep that at bay please )

[OldHP]

Also, everyone experiences a different navy. We are all trying to compare everyones experience as our own. Very few of you guys had to deal with the amount of bull-@#$% I had to, but then again, Im 100% positive I never saw some your crap either. Its all relative and ultimately subjective.  (im out and mostly over it, so im not going for a "oh poor me" routine, so keep that at bay please )

Well said CM.

[shocker]

If we had fully manned divisions, holy cow deployment would be sweet. 5 and 25 rotation, MORE then enough people to get to do maintenance without getting racked out on your 6 hours off, enough people to man 8 section duty like the rest of the boat instead of 3 section.... more hands for orse preps.... Everything would be 1000% better.

The current 10+ month wait between depping in and shipping to bootcamp for the Nuke program makes it hard to get more bodies to the fleet - regardless of pass rates through the pipeline.  As far as getting more bodies to the fleet is concerned the current bottle neck lies with spaces at NNPTC and Prototype, not with number of applicants.  Filtering the applicants more rigorously BEFORE wasting a seat in A-school could be done right now without an impact to new nukes to the fleet.  Graduating classes of 18 instead of 25-30 imply more people do not make it through the program in a timely manner than what the standards desire.