THE NAVY announced today, after the expiration of a period for Congressional intervention, that it will allow women aboard submarines as of 2012. How long will it be before the first child is conceived on a military underwater vessel or before a female commander turns the forced togetherness of submarine life into a maritime version of Mommie Dearest?

According to the Seattle Times:

Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, who led the Navy’s task force on integrating women onto submarines, brushed aside questions from reporters about the potential for sexual misconduct or unexpected pregnancies among a coed crew.

“We’re going to look back on this four or five years from now, shrug our shoulders and say, ‘What was everybody worrying about?'” said Bruner, the top sub commander at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in coastal Georgia, where the announcement was made.

Does he mean the same way people are shrugging their shoulders now about women abandoning duty because of pregnancies,  about thousands of charges of sexual harrassment by women soldiers against other soldiers, about the effect of women on troop cohesion, and about the military mothers who have had to leave their children behind?

The wives of sailors on subs have expressed their displeasure over this tight coed living. Why shouldn’t they? Our armed forces are part defense and part love-making. But Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a public statement, “We literally could not run the Navy without women today.” For thousands of years, countries defended themselves with men. Imagine. Everything has changed. Men literally could not do it.

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IMAGINE IF in addition to smallpox, inadequate supplies, and a numerically superior enemy, the American Revolutionary forces had to deal with hundreds of sexual assault cases filed by soldiers against other soldiers. Imagine Washington’s officers sifting through accounts of who touched whom. The Queen would be drinking tea in D.C. right now.

But that’s the situation our modern military finds itself in. In the past year alone, there have been more than 3,000 reported sexual assaults against service men and women, according to a newly-released Defense Department report. The majority of these reported assaults – 53 percent – are by service members against other service members. An assault by definition involves rape, sodomy, or the touching of private body parts. (more…)

The case of Holly Graf, the Navy captain relieved of command of a guided missile cruiser for abusing the crew with curses, insults, taunts and minor physical assault, is the subject of interesting discussion among military insiders here. A retired Navy captain writes:

WOMEN ARE 100% CAPABLE OF SERVING IN COMMAND OF NAVY COMBATANT SHIPS!! DO NOT DOUBT THAT FOR A MILLISECOND.  (more…)