According to the February 2011 Submarine Officer Detailer Community Status Brief, there were 18 female prospective submarine officers in the Nuclear Power pipeline, and eight prospective female submarine Supply Officers. This Navy Times story says that 10 of them have completed Nuclear Power School and moved on to prototype as of late April. While it's possible that there are a group of women that are going to SOBC between NPS and NPTU, I'm guessing that the eight officers who just reported to Groton are the Chops. I haven't heard if any of the original 18 nukes selected have been attrited yet, but the initial plan of putting two female nukes and one female Chop on each of 8 Ohio-class boats indicates that they're planning on losing up to two of the nukes, which is probably normal officer attrition -- of course, previous submarine officers haven't had to worry about pregnancy contributing to the dropout rate.
Update 1456 11 May: It looks like these eight young officers are actually nukes who are taking the "NPS/SOBC/NPTU" path, which totally sucks for anyone who draws that particular short straw; as a commenter mentioned, SOBC is supposed to be the chance to relax between nuke training and your first boat, instead of spending the whole time being worried about prototype and trying to remember everything from Nuke School.
I was interested in Pravda's take on this story. Excerpt:
What if the initiative will become a starting point for numerous sex scandals in the US navy? The wives of US submariners do not welcome the idea either. Needless to say that if two submariners, a man and a woman, want to have sex on board a sub, they will face a big problem of finding some room for it. Anyway, the command of the US Navy hopes that women's presence on nuclear subs will not result in an eruption of sexual activity.That pretty much says it all.
The author of this article, a former submariner of the Russian navy, recollected a story, which happened on board a nuclear submarine of the Northern Fleet. The story took place at the end of the perestroika period, when sex toys began to appear in small commercial stores in the country. The submarine was navigating for two months, when it suddenly became known that submariners started to catch a sexually transmitted infection one after another.
It was later revealed that the wife of an executive officer submariners gave him a sex toy - a rubber woman - prior to his departure. The officer had a separate cabin, so he could please himself with a toy woman from time to time. A young submariner found the appealing toy when he was cleaning the officer's cabin. The young man decided to give the toy a try.
The news about the toy was spread on the submarine very quickly. Apparently, one of the submariners was already infected with a veneral disease, which the rubber woman subsequently spread among the others.
One may say for certain that Russian women will never serve on Russian submarines. No one can say, of course, what is going to happen in 100 or more years, but for the time being it seems absolutely unacceptable and out of the question.
