SSBN. ETV. Will not respond to questions about sensitive or classified subjects. My views are my own and I do not represent anyone.

Hi there!

Edit: since this has been asked several times:

SSBN stands for “submersible ship, ballistic missile, nuclear powered”. That is, the same overall type of ship as the Red October.

ETV stands for “Electronics Technican, Navigation”, because N was already taken by Nuclear Electronics Technicians. I work with everything from interior communications and announcing circuits to Electronics, shipwide atmospheric monitoring, navigational inertial gyroscopes, strategic nuclear missile navigation, and tank level indicators to basic underwater submarine navigation using the voyage management system and even helming the ship itself.

33 points
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What color is the controller you use?

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16 points

Silver metallic with black handles. My specific class of ship still had the old analog electro-hydraulic steering wheels instead of the fancy XBox controllers.

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11 points

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/navy-xbox-controllers-attack-submarines/

Newest Navy attack sub uses an Xbox controller to operate its periscope

It sounds like the PC-console wars run deeper than might have initially been expected.

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23 points

haha cool I love submarines! What’s your favorite part about the nuclear reactor design? Can you share any PDFs explaining it?

not china btw

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16 points

Lol nice try China! No but seriously, the fact I get to work in a nuclear powered vessel by itself is the cool factor.

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10 points
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Favorite part: hot rock make water hot, spin spinny thing, boat go. No PDF’s. Look at Wikipedia / Google Who was Tankman?

Source-MMC/SS (Ret) 4 fast attacks, 21 years AD.

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2 points

I bet you don’t have any classified material haha prove me wrong. my email is notchina@google.com

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8 points

If OP plays games like World of Warships or War Thunder, you just have to get them angry enough to release classified material to prove a point.

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4 points

I heard they just use saltwater and some dirty unrefined uranium in their reactors. I will believe this until I see papers proving otherwise.

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1 point

I heard their reactor shielding is only 2cm thick aluminium paneling.
Change my mind

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16 points
  1. Do you guys ever see light of day during deployment/port to port?
  2. Do you guys resurface and just sunbathe for a few minutes then dive again?
  3. What are the alarms, not sure if you can answer this, inside a sub?
  4. Is there a man overboard event in a sub?
  5. So you ever need to learn how to scuba if you’re a submariner?
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12 points
  1. Unless there’s a swim call for some reason (which never happens on an SSBN), no.

  2. Nope. Unless there’s some emergency, or we’re replenishing food or repair parts.

  3. Alarms:

  • General Alarm - some kind of general emergency like fire or security violation
  • Diving Alarm - diving and surfacing
  • Collision Alarm - collision or danger of collision, flooding
  • Power Plant Causality - engine room emergency like radioactive material spill or steam line rupture
  • Missile Jettison Alarm - something is terribly wrong with a missile and we need to jettison it.
  1. Yes but only when we’re surfaced, for obvious reasons.

  2. No, it’s not required, but I learned anyways in my own free time!

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3 points
  1. Subs have crew members who have formal Navy diver training as a collateral (extra) duty. I think it came with some extra pay. They are there for emergencies, and have to do extra work to maintain their qualifications. They are there if we are away from home port and need underwater work done on the ship. Pretty rare, only happened twice on the boats I was on.
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14 points

How often do you hit your head on piping?

Ever played Iron Lung?

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12 points

Outside of “field day” aka cleaning quarters, not often. During field day, every single time I crawl into a space that has a single speck of dust and thus needs to be completely overhauled according to the nearest Chief. They didn’t design these places for humans, clearly! Ripped a fair number of good coveralls doing it too, and lost an uncountable number of good pens.

No, I’m not much into horror games! But it does sound like fun from what I’ve heard.

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6 points

Man, for a second, I thought you said “lost an uncountable number of good penis.”

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3 points

how do you clean on a submarine? vacuum, sweep, mop, etc?

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2 points

All of the above! I prefer sweeping.

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13 points

How much training did you need for your role?

Once you had your initial set of training, how often does it get refreshed?

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24 points

8 weeks of boot camp to become a sailor, 8 more weeks of basic submarining school, a month of rating specific apprenticeship school, a month of SSBN specific school, and then on the job training from there. The on-the-job training and qualifications process never stops, and you’re expected to be constantly working on certifications and qualifications for new roles, reading technical manuals and publications, memorizing regulations, and getting to know your equipment even better than when you woke up. Every year we get general naval training requirements, such as basic operational security and counterintelligence, and every time we return from a deployment we have to undergo recertification to return to sea as a crew at the training simulators.

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2 points

Jfc the Navy gave you less training for sub life than they gave me to work on aircraft.

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3 points

To be fair, I’m a Nav ET. Nuclear ratings get a whole year of training in addition to boot camp before they get to the ship. Some even come to the ship as an E5.

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