USS Nebraska Submarine Embark November 2008

slideshare.net

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Slides from a visit to Ohio Class Nuclear Trident USS Nebraska submarine. Go to slide 22 for interesting pictures

holy cow, I served with CDR Lahti on another ship 10 years ago!

Which boat was that? (I was based in Groton about 10 years ago...)

They have two armed guards on duty, 24/7, in the missile command centre on the submarine!?

Jesus. That's .. serious.

I come from a Navy family so I love this kind of thing. The pictures of the sub looming out of the fog were particularly cool. But I was surprised by how low-tech a lot of the onboard controls seemed. Or maybe that's just what they want us to think ...

Low-tech? Maybe. One, it takes a long time to design and commission a new modern naval vessel, aircraft, or even a tank. A decade or more. So most on-board electronics, including CPUs and displays will be outdated at any given time — somewhat outdated to possibly very old. (Side note: I've always been amazed at how quickly new ship and plane designs came out in war-time in the 1940s, but they were much simpler then and evolving much more rapidly. Can't really compare a P-51 Mustang to an F-22.)

Two, I don't really want the Navy finding bugs in the latest hardware. Better run an older, well-tested CPU than find a reactor control system crashing because of a f00f bug. :)

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