Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.

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I got out in '98, Clive. I agree with him, there is absolutely nothing to keep people in the service. EM's are supposed to be a 12-man division (counting chief and LPO). We routinely ran with somewhere between 6 and 9 of us. I lived on Mt. Dew and Excedrin. An average day consisted of only two Excedrin in the morning, and two at lunch. A bad day....well, lets just say that I kept the fine makers of various pain relievers in business. Guys who'd been in for 15 years were getting out because the jobs outside were better...better benefits, better pay, better hours...it wasn't worth it to stick around and actually retire, Thank You Very Much Mr. Clinton. Seawolf was just coming online when I was gettin out, so the only things we heard about it was that they were CONSTANTLY cleaning and hosting dignitaries for 6-hour in-and-out trips to show off the new toys.

P-3's....glad to have them up there. Used to have a pic of one taken from our periscope, with cross-hairs on it. My ex was in a P3 squadron, I hung a copy up on their squadron bulletin board once. They didn't find it funny. Dunno why.

Cool story about P-3s, we were always giving them a hard time about not being able to find us even though they kept narrowing our operations box. Once we were scheduled to go out on a three-day "rabbit" op (we were the "aggressor" sub) to give the P3 guys another chance to find us. Something broke, and we cancelled the op. About noonish one day, we get this call that "hey, we found you!" Sure enough...the P3 hadn't gotten the word we weren't going out. So, tied up next to the pier, we had to concede the victory to them. They found us.
 
I got out in '98, Clive. I agree with him, there is absolutely nothing to keep people in the service. EM's are supposed to be a 12-man division (counting chief and LPO). We routinely ran with somewhere between 6 and 9 of us. I lived on Mt. Dew and Excedrin. An average day consisted of only two Excedrin in the morning, and two at lunch. A bad day....well, lets just say that I kept the fine makers of various pain relievers in business. Guys who'd been in for 15 years were getting out because the jobs outside were better...better benefits, better pay, better hours...it wasn't worth it to stick around and actually retire, Thank You Very Much Mr. Clinton. Seawolf was just coming online when I was gettin out, so the only things we heard about it was that they were CONSTANTLY cleaning and hosting dignitaries for 6-hour in-and-out trips to show off the new toys.

It was the same in the army. A buddy of mine who is still in, is understaffed and living in the field. He returned home from Iraq last October and has spent 8 of the last 10 months on and off in the field (he is an air traffic controller) because they are so understaffed. He has been home from the field for the last 2 weeks. He leaves again tomorrow for over a month, and then will go on leave before deploying again.

The military is not what it used to be anymore.
 
Why would we threaten them?

1. This has been done for years.

2. They have done nothing wrong. They are in international waters and have every right to be there. They are not threatening us by doing so. Should Italy threaten us everytime we send a boat in to the Med?

Think about it...
You have a point....But I still don't like it....:D
 
Been going on forever. I can remember US Navy blimps patrolling up and down the Jersey shore in the 1950s. Was one of the enduring images that I can recall from my childhood.

And like vB said, we do the same thing. No big deal IMO.

TO
 
"Extended Training Missions in International Waters". That's what they call it these days. And as long as nobody does anything stupid, its kinda an unspoken gentleman's agreement that yes, we know you're there, yes, we know you know we're there, but if you play nicely in my pool, I promise I won't piddle in yours. ...but I'm not turning my back, cuz I know you had alot to drink before you paddled over here.

One of these days they're going to find themselves either so undermanned that they will not be able to do anything, or the standards required for qualifying for certain technical jobs will be lowered so much that they'll notice a sharp increase in accidents and "incidents". heck, I probably wouldn't've made it through the training if I'd've gone in ten years earlier than I did. I can't help but think that there's going to be a wake-up call for the gov't and the military, and its going to cost someone some blood to do it. One would think that 9-11 would've opened eyes in Washington, but it doesn't sound like it.
 
"Extended Training Missions in International Waters". That's what they call it these days. And as long as nobody does anything stupid, its kinda an unspoken gentleman's agreement that yes, we know you're there, yes, we know you know we're there, but if you play nicely in my pool, I promise I won't piddle in yours. ...but I'm not turning my back, cuz I know you had alot to drink before you paddled over here.

One of these days they're going to find themselves either so undermanned that they will not be able to do anything, or the standards required for qualifying for certain technical jobs will be lowered so much that they'll notice a sharp increase in accidents and "incidents". heck, I probably wouldn't've made it through the training if I'd've gone in ten years earlier than I did. I can't help but think that there's going to be a wake-up call for the gov't and the military, and its going to cost someone some blood to do it. One would think that 9-11 would've opened eyes in Washington, but it doesn't sound like it.
Justin is hoping that they decide to start decomming the 688 class starting with the lowest numbers and working upwards to make more personnel available in the long run. Obviously much of the crew would be needed to decom the boat in the short run.

He also said that everyone is having tremendous trouble qualling anything because they are either working or endlessly looking for "deep dirt" and get no chance to qualify.
 
Why would we threaten them?

1. This has been done for years.

2. They have done nothing wrong. They are in international waters and have every right to be there. They are not threatening us by doing so. Should Italy threaten us everytime we send a boat in to the Med?

Think about it...

Exactly.

They play their games, we play ours.

No harm, no foul.
 
From what I've read about the Russian (AKA, former Soviet) Navy, I'd be less worried about them patrolling out there than having an "incident", catching fire and sinking out there. From what I've heard, the Russian serviceability rates have dropped dramitcally in the last 20 years. Putting two Fast Attacks out there has got to be straining their resources.

Wonder how long it will last? Probably not long.
 
We get buzzed by bears all the time in the north sea its been going on for years its just cat and mouse games.BB
 
If anything comes out of this, perhaps maybe, it will bring some much needed attention to our military and the need to address the issues people have brought up in this thread.
 

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