brett327 said:
Currious as to your thinking about this statement
Because after reviewing about a dozen training products regarding collisions, the "root causes" always boil down to similar categories. Even the O-6's and above put a statement saying this in the "managing the risk of collision and grounding" section for the manuals for operating.
schoolbubba said:
Just had the opportunity to interact with JOs from a boomer. They remarked how we've never had a reactor accident in 55+ years of nuke power, but we run aground or collide about once every three years or so.
Part of that is how the reactor has been engineered to be mostly Sailor proof. There's really not a whole lot you can do to cause core damage unless you really, really try. But nothing will stop you from hitting something except your own operational knowledge, experience, and situational awareness.
However, I agree that there is a huge disparity between engineering training and shipdriving training onboard submarines. FYI, SOBC is 2 1/2 months, not 4 months. If you want to include the 1 week JO schools for shipdriving, which a pre-schooler could pass, you get up to a whopping 3 months and 1 week. Shipdriving training is mostly trial by fire in trainers or an underway submarine. With tours being only 32 months, and only approximately 1/3 of that time spent at sea for a SSN, it is difficult for every JO to get adequate shipdriving experience on a real sub. Some of those JOs with little or no shipdriving experience will become DHs and be expected to conn the ship on mission. There is a 6 month SOAC course prior to the DH tour, but there are still things the trainers can't emulate (e.g., no environmental traces).
One thing to note is that we don't know if there was a JO or DH driving the boat in this incident. From what I hear, DH's don't stand watch on boomers except to maintain proficiency, but they are typically in the 3-section rotation as OOD on SSNs (or stand JOOD to help the newbie JO OOD).