Posted to COMSUBGRU 10 Blog by Elaine Donnelly, on April 8, 2010 at 9:33 pm

http://csg10.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/women-in-submarines/

A recent article in the Washington Times titled “Women in Submarines Face Health Issues” (Apr. 5) exposed the fact that there is no carefully considered plan for solving unchanged problems with women in submarines that have nothing to do with their abilities as sailors.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ misplaced priorities regarding “career progression” are inadequate, short-sighted and irresponsible.

Secretary Mabus has made it clear that the Navy intends to assign women to submarines in numbers large enough to create a “critical mass,” including enlisted women as well as officers. It is not sufficient, therefore, to provide information only about the “first wave” of limited assignments of a few female officers on the largest submarines in the fleet.

More than a few critical questions come to mind, and answers must relate not just to the short-term, but to long-term consequences affecting operational readiness in the Silent Service. For example,

• Given the extremely low retention rates of female nuclear trained female surface officers, how can the Navy justify habitability intrusions and compromises to accommodate female sailors on all types of submarines? (Normal career paths include smaller subs as well as larger ones.)
• Given what is known about current non-deployment rates due to pregnancy among enlisted women as well as officers, what is the Navy’s estimate of comparable non-deployment rates of female officers and enlisted women on submarines? (As the Washington Times article made clear, extensive programs to discourage Navy pregnancies have failed—rates have increased.)
• How many mid-ocean evacuations are expected to occur on an annual basis and how will these evacuations be accomplished in remote areas; i.e., under the Polar icecap?
• If a submarine CO is faced with the operational necessity to continue an undersea mission, despite high risks of birth defects for a newly-discovered embryonic “passenger”–what does the Navy expect the skipper to do? (Elevated carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the constantly recycled atmosphere are safe for adults but not for embryos in the earliest weeks of life.)
• WRT life-threatening ectopic pregnancies, which are not statistically rare, how many women are likely to permanently lose reproductive capability due to botched undersea surgeries or worse—how many are expected to die due to hemorrhage in conditions offering no options for immediate evacuation via mid-ocean helicopter?
• What is being done to inform women of health risks to themselves and to future offspring in the embryonic stage of development?

If the Navy cannot provide answers to these questions and more, Secretary Mabus’ promise that “all questions” will be answered in a “very open, transparent” process needs to be withdrawn.

As long as female sailors want to bear children without elevated risks of birth defects, and as long as women want to retain the capability to have children even after a pregnancy emergency requiring specialized surgery, the Navy has irresolvable problems that are being ignored at incalculable risk.

Congress should intervene, ordering that the definitive report on this subject done by SAIC should be updated and fully analyzed before anything is done to put women in submarines. That report and more information is available in a section on our website, http://www.cmrlink.org.

Elaine Donnelly
President, Center for Military Readiness