{"id":20574,"date":"2010-09-23T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T23:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=20574"},"modified":"2010-09-23T19:46:58","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T23:46:58","slug":"submarine-officer-alleges-cheating-in-nuclear-fleet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20574","title":{"rendered":"Submarine Officer Alleges Cheating in Nuclear Fleet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonn asked me to put in my .02 about a story he was sent from THE DAILY BEAST<\/a> about a former submarine officer by the name of Christopher Brownfield, who has just had a book published called“My Nuclear Family”,<\/a> detailing his experiences and growing disillusionment with the submarine force and what he saw as the growing irrelevance of submarines.<\/p>\n

But more disturbing to me are his allegations of widespread cheating, or at the very least the “wink and a nod” regarding qualifications within the submarine force at large and nuclear power community specifically.\u00a0 To his credit, he did manage to finish his JO tour on USS Hartford, do an abbreviated tour at Submarine School in New London, CT, and even did a year in Iraq, although his biography and book description by Knopf\/Doubleday<\/a> would be embellishment to say the least.<\/p>\n

He graduated the Naval Academy as an English Literature major and chose a program where the vast majority (over 80 percent) of the officer candidates are Engineering, Math, or hard sciences majors, and wonders why he has difficulty passing BASIC Engineering Qualifications (BEQ)? What disturbs me greatly is his claim that the other officers on board turned a blind eye, and after MULTIPLE failures of the BEQ Exam, and they basically gave him the answers to the exam; i.e., allowing him to take it “open book”.\u00a0 In 12 years in nuclear power, from A-School, through Nuclear Power School, prototype, qualifications on two submarines and as radiological controls (radcon) on a tender, I NEVER saw an “open book” test, even for a training quiz.\u00a0 In submarines and particularly in nuclear power, this is a sin of unforgivable magnitude, to the tune of senior officers and enlisted going bye-bye without so much as a chance to explain themselves. While examinations are political in nature to the point where comments have been made on Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination (ORSE) evaluations if the average scores are too high, too low, or too many\/too few fail, to admit to basically GIVING AWAY an exam is not, and never has been an excusable action.<\/p>\n

Then he goes on to claim that the submarine force is that of a “white elephant”, irrelevant to the GWOT. Really, “sir”? I know I’m just a former blueshirt dumbass, but even I can find plenty of examples in which submarines would be of particularly high value, especially in terms of covert surveillance of enemy coastline and ports, insertion\/extraction of SEALs and other special operators, and as a last resort, launch of Tomahawks against targets inland or Mk-48’s against bad guys with ships (read: Iran). Then again, this is the same mental giant who wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times<\/a> claiming that we should have used explosives (even suggesting nukes) on the BP oil well, using at best dubious “facts”.<\/p>\n

I’m being kind when I say that Mr. Brownfield was a less than stellar officer. I’ve heard from others who have served with him who speak about him in less than flattering terms. It would be a shame for Mr. Brownfield to become the voice of the submarine community and of Naval Nuclear Power.\u00a0 Joel Kennedy over at milblog The Stupid Shall Be Punished<\/a> has some good submarine\/nuke takes on this subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonn asked me to put in my .02 about a story he was sent from THE … Submarine Officer Alleges Cheating in Nuclear Fleet<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}