Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealhead
The fact that a Russian sub would have such a system throughout implies that the Soviet and then Russian Navy relies very heavily on draft sailors with poor skill sets unlike the US Navy, Royal Navy and most western navies which have mostly professional sailors that do not need constant supervision by SNCOs and officers they are also very well trained in damage control which would include fire fighting and any western submariner is easily twice as skilled at damage control as the typical sailor.
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Actually that is very untrue. While there are many branches of the Russian military which do rely on untrained personnel,the submarine force is not one of them. In fact the Russian submarine force, on average, is a made up of more highly-specialized professionals than Western equivalents - which is why, among other things, you'll notice that Russian submarines generally have much smaller crews than Western subs, relying more on automation and specialized skills of smaller teams. There are actually very few 'sailors' aboard to be supervised at all, as most of the crew is made up of specialist NCOs and officers. Personnel standards in the Russian submarine fleet are very high, and have some of the most robust training in the entire Russian military. So the skill and training is not the issue - although the personnel doctrine no doubt still played into the equation here. I don't doubt the reliance on automation aboard the sub and smaller crew size had something to do with how things turned out here.