Pressure Builds on Navy to Open Its Last All-Male Domain: Submarines

Inside the attack submarine Oklahoma City, sailors share bathrooms with 32 other men, sleep atop torpedoes and attend Sunday services in a space that also functions as the officers’ dining room, reading room and surgical theater.

Spending months at a time inside a 360-foot vessel with 145 men, a nuclear reactor and dozens of torpedoes and cruise missiles is like living inside a Swiss watch, crew members say.

And in the view of some submariners and their superiors, it’s no place for a woman.

The elite and insular submarine service is the last all-male bastion of the Navy. But it is under growing pressure to open the hatches of its 76 subs to women, despite warnings that doing so could cause touchy sex-related problems, increase acquisition costs, and diminish the speed and fighting power of these vessels.

Last month, a Pentagon advisory group formally urged the Navy to prepare to accommodate women on the next submarines it has built.

Last spring, Navy Secretary Richard Danzig lobbed a rhetorical bomb by warning members of the Naval Submarine League that the service is a narcissistic “white male preserve.” If submariners don’t become more diverse, he warned, their political support could ebb.

Navy officials say the sea change sought by mixed-gender advocates isn’t likely to occur within the next year or two. But the debate will continue, and some believe integration is inevitable.

In one sign of the issue’s polarizing effect, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson has declared there will be no change in the status quo during his tenure as the Navy’s top officer, which lasts until June.

“This is a very difficult, very political, very emotional issue,” said one senior officer who requested anonymity.

The persistence of the idea, which has been rejected several times, reflects the powerful pressure within all branches of the military to open more positions to both sexes. Women hold about 200,000 active-duty jobs. They are eligible to serve in 93% of military posts, and 94% of those in the Navy. Women are still barred from ground combat roles, but they command destroyers, fly combat aircraft and shoot artillery.

With recruiting problems increasing demand for military personnel across the board, the debate over where women can serve has moved to jobs ever closer to the thick of battle: the Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket System, Special Forces’ helicopters--and the Navy’s 18 nuclear and 58 attack submarines. The sub fleet accounts for 1 in 10 Navy jobs, and submariners receive slightly more pay because of the added risks they face.

If the Navy opens the submarine force to women, it might deploy them on a group of four Trident nuclear missile subs that may be converted to carry nonnuclear guided missiles within the next couple of years. It could also redesign the new Virginia-class attack submarines scheduled for deployment in 2004, although officials previously decided against doing so.

Traditionalists in the sub force argue that such moves would be misguided because of the unique circumstances of the “silent service.”

For starters, there is scant privacy: The Oklahoma City, for example, is equipped with only 114 permanent bunks for about 145 personnel. Some sailors sleep on removable bunks perched atop torpedo racks. Lower-ranking sailors must alternate with others to catch their allotted six hours of sleep, in bunks that are stacked three high and have only 18 inches of headroom.

Because of operational needs, sailors may be prowling the bunk areas at just about any time of day or night. Only by drawing a curtain across the bunk can a sailor achieve a semblance of privacy.

Speaking to a reporter last week at the Norfolk Naval Base, some Oklahoma City crew members said they have a hard time imagining why many women would want to put up with their fishbowl life.

“A woman would have to be an exhibitionist to want to be here,” said Fire Technician 2 Mike Paul.

Outside of the service, some conservatives argue that shipboard pregnancies could create an expensive problem for the Navy. Commanders could be forced to evacuate women midway through a mission, compromising secrecy. Navy officials, however, predict such episodes would be rare.

Long deployments pose other problems. The big strategic subs that carry nuclear missiles are typically deployed for two months, but attack subs like the Oklahoma City are supposed to be at sea for six of every 18 months; often the periods are longer. They can be submerged for 70 days at a stretch.

Because of the need to remain undetected, sailors are typically permitted to send only one 50-word message to family or friends twice a month. There is little opportunity for recreation, except for a daily movie, several pieces of stationary gym equipment and the four meals served daily.

Some argue that these conditions would compound the tensions that would arise if men and women worked together. A study done for the Navy in 1995 by Science Applications International Corp. predicted that mixed-gender crews would lead to problems involving romantic relationships, sexual harassment and favoritism.

“A mix-gendered crew will complicate submarine life,” said the study, and “could increase risk” for the vessel.

One key issue is how to reallocate space, which is more precious in submarines than in any other vessel. If the Navy added women, it would probably want them to make up at least 10% to 15% of the crew, and, following practices on surface ships, it would also want them to be accompanied by some female noncommissioned officers and officers.

To accommodate this group, designers would need to reallocate bunk and bathroom space, and probably increase the overall area devoted to these purposes, say officers. That could necessitate removing other gear--such as weapons.

“We would be hard-pressed to give up anything,” said Capt. John Bird, commander of the Atlantic submarine fleet’s 8th Squadron.

Expanding the sub even slightly would cost some speed and maneuverability, officers contend.

The Navy says it would cost $5 million to refit the Los Angeles-class submarines, $3 million to remodel the more spacious Trident ballistic missile submarines and up to $4 million for the new Virginia-class attack submarines.

Advocates of mixed-gender crews say the arguments about disruption are sadly familiar.

“We’ve heard a lot of this before, when the subject was surface ships,” said one officer. Women have been added throughout the fleet, he said, without causing the kind of the problems that critics had forecast.

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service, a 34-member group of civilians appointed by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, was not put off by the pessimists. It noted that subs are made to last for 40 years and urged the Navy to move now to “incorporate appropriate berthing and privacy arrangements” in the next submarines it builds.

Mary Wamsley, chairwoman of the committee, acknowledged in an interview that the issue is complex and that arguments about the subs’ unique working environment have some merit. Even so, she said, no evidence has been presented to suggest “that women can’t do the job on a submarine.”

On Capitol Hill, women’s advocates so far have not taken up the cause, but some foes are quite outspoken. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee, said in an interview that it is “the stupidest damned idea I’ve ever heard.”

Danzig, for his part, insists he has not made up his mind on the issue and said it is “possible” the Navy may ultimately decide that “the stress of submarines, the intimacy, the physical demands, the culture, make it so costly to integrate women that it isn’t worth it.”

Yet he noted that women are contributing ever more to the service. Among other things, five of this year’s top 10 Naval Academy graduates are women. “It’s a real cost to the sub force not to be considering people” like that, he said in an interview.

Aboard the Oklahoma City, Fire Technician 2 Scott Miller acknowledged the problem is complicated. Yet he has little doubt which way the wind is blowing.

The change, he said, “is definitely going to come.”