Nukes, nubs and coners: The unique social hierarchy aboard a nuclear submarine
Aboard a US nuclear submarine.  What is missing from this article is the context of how much the boat impacts the culture.  A Russian or British submarine will have a different training system not just because they have a different military culture but also because the boat is physically different.  Communications pathways, be them electronic or physical, dictate how decisions are made.  A Russian submariner probably won&#x27;t make a move without orders not because he doesn&#x27;t know what to do but because there might not be a direct electronic report back at the command as to what is happening.  Doing things without orders on a Russian boat can result in command loosing awareness of a situation.  A US submariner can have better confidence that his actions will be automatically reported back to command via various sensors and monitoring systems.<p>This article focuses on the fact that the US submarine experience special because everyone is expected to have a working knowledge of every system.  That is different than the rest of the US military where people remain very specialized.  But mandating generalist knowledge is actually a norm in other countries.  The Brits&#x2F;Canadians tell a joke about US soldiers: Whereas each member of a british or canadian gun crew is expected to understand and perform all the jobs associated with firing a gun, an American is likely to respond &quot;I pull the rope.&quot;  Such hyper-specialization just doesn&#x27;t work in a submarine because people are not able to physically move around.  The environment, the submarine, dictates the culture.