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Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« Striking Out | Main | Profound »

My Oxymoron Meter

...is pegged, by the notion of a Jimmy Carter attack sub. Maybe it will have enough firepower to at least take out killer rabbits.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 16, 2005 06:00 AM

Comments

A bit shocked to see the Captain as Robert Kelso. Alas, it is Robert D. Kelso, not Robert M. Kelso (a NASA Flight Director).

Posted by Leland at February 16, 2005 06:28 AM

A waste of a perfectly good submarine

Posted by Michael at February 16, 2005 08:04 AM

Better a single sub than an entire class of subs... Now THAT would be quite oxymoronic...

Posted by John Breen III at February 16, 2005 08:35 AM

Oh, I don't know. I'm not fan of Carter as President or in his post-Presidential days, but he did serve with honor as a submariner, he was POTUS, and when I saw the naming ceremony a couple of years ago on CSPAN, Carter was genuinely moved by the gesture. Even for irony, I can't get worked up.

Posted by Andrew at February 16, 2005 11:46 AM

I enjoyed hearing you quoted, this thread, this blog, on CNN a few minutes ago.

But, ex-President-bashing aside, don't we owe some respect to Jimmy Carter's mentor, the father of the nuclear Navy, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover? Making America's Navy stronger would seem to be a basis for bipartsian support.

I have worked with commanders of nuclear submarines, in my official capacity at the time at Boeing, and made a 2-hour presentation to the top brass at the Navy about fire-control software. These professionals have made us safer, and that is more important than perceived Democrat/Republican bickering.

Further, if you feel kinship with geeks and nerds, per your "striking out" thread, remember that Jimmy Carter's Command Thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School actually used Laplace Transforms. The dude had more credentials as an engineer than as a "nuclear engineer" (which was PR puffery, to be sure). But perhaps more as a peanut farmer. These are not mutally exclusive. Given a choice, I'll take a peanut farner over a bean-counter any day. Consider that as the search for a real head of NASA grinds on... and the Shuttle is still not safe to fly, nor has NASA's "corporate culture" been reformed away from head-in-sand bureaucracy.

I've wandered off-topic, but my point is simple. America needs a good Military, and that includes submarines that do work, as opposed to prematurely deployed antimissile systems that don't.

Posted by Jonathan Vos Post at February 16, 2005 02:02 PM

Mr Van Post -

don't we owe some respect to Jimmy Carter's mentor, the father of the nuclear Navy, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover?

I'm not sure I'm following you, but there is a USS Hyman Rickover.

http://navysite.de/ssn/ssn709.htm

Posted by Andrew at February 16, 2005 02:43 PM

America needs a good Military

Yeah, Carter was really great in that regard. /sarcasm

Posted by B.Brewer at February 16, 2005 02:56 PM

The USS Bill Clinton will go down faster than any sub in history.

Posted by Mike Puckett at February 16, 2005 03:20 PM

Mike, don't you mean the SS Lewinsky?

Actually, I find them naming a Seawolf-class sub, itself an overpriced Cold War relic, after Jimmah rather approriate. What better symbol of out-of-style thinking is there?

Mr Van Post, Admr. Rickover deserves every ounce of respect he gets, and then some. The 688s a triumph of American ingenuity and technical skill, and would never have been without his drive and forsight. (Though what that has to do with this post is a mystery.)

I'm sure Jimmy Carter was a competent commander, and served his time faithfully. However, I think even you will admit his term as president was problematic, at best.

Posted by JP Gibb at February 16, 2005 04:12 PM

I must confess there is a lot of irony in naming a sub after a Nobel peace prize winner. However, nothing comfirms your navy is self-confident better than naming your ships after people not known for their violence and toughness. This is precisely why I support naming our next ship class the "Pansy". How better to send the message to our opponents that is doesn't matter what you call us you're still going to lose.

Sincerely and Tongue-Firmly-in-Cheek,
Lars

Posted by Lars at February 16, 2005 04:15 PM

The British navy had a destroyer named HMS Dainty. (See http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/c+d_class.htm )

I think the USS Jimmy Carter is clever psychological warfare. "The US has so many powerful warships, they ran out of names and had to call one 'Jimmy Carter'!"

Posted by Bob Hawkins at February 16, 2005 04:36 PM

Still interested in seeing what gets named after Bill Clinton. The Bush I is a carrier.

Posted by Al at February 16, 2005 05:37 PM

That is a bit of a head scratcher, Carter as president was never pro-military and has gotten alot worse since his days in office.

Posted by Al at February 16, 2005 06:15 PM

The British also had a fighter plane called the Nimrod. Maybe we could borrow that name.

-S

Posted by Stephen Kohls at February 16, 2005 08:02 PM

Be vewwy vewwy quiet...we are hunting wabbits...

Posted by Alan K. Henderson at February 17, 2005 12:13 AM

The sub in question is the third and final build of the "Seawolf" design. It's as much of a cold-war relic as a B-2 bomber - and far more costly, which is why even the USA decided it could only afford 3 of them.
And unlike her two sisters, this one has been specially fitted out for some very sensitive missions.
As her former engineering officer said :

...many open-source news outlets are reporting that Jimmy Carter will be replacing USS Parche, doing whatever it is that they did before being decommissioned. I honestly have no idea what the Parche did, but they did earn 10 Presidential Unit Citation and 9 Navy Unit Commendations for doing it...

So if you wanted to name the most expensive, silent and deadly "ninja" spysub ever built, what better name than "Jimmy Carter" for putting people off the scent?

Posted by Alan E Brain at February 17, 2005 07:23 AM

BTW I must say that your comment filter is really over-enthusiastic. I had to remove two URLs in the above, simply because one contained the string h-o-w-t-o and another contained o-n-l-i-n-e.
The ones removed were :
http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/H*WTOmakewar/default.asp?target=htsub
and
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickONL*NE_archive_38_2001.asp?pageid=666&co_pageid=3

Posted by Alan E Brain at February 17, 2005 07:27 AM

If the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) is nicknamed the "Big Stick", surely the JC will become the "Carrot"?

Posted by Doug Jones at February 17, 2005 09:07 AM

Personally, I take issue with naming anything taxpayer-owned after someone still living. There's just no telling what stupidity a person is capable of doing until they're gone.

Carter's already managed to put up enough bonehead moves, to demote him from a carrier to a sub. Who knows, a few more outbursts and he'd only be worthy of being on the bow of a Coast Guard dinghy.

And, speaking of Clinton, the only thing I'd name after him is a ship's anchor. That way, it would spend all of it's time with all of the other bottom-feeding, scum-sucking, algae eaters.

Posted by Dave G at February 17, 2005 10:23 AM

And the Navy is naming a submarine after Carter for what reason? He was a nuclear engineer? A suck-ass President? I imagine Clinton will get an aircraft carrier named after him.

BOHICA.

Posted by Jim Rohrich at February 17, 2005 09:44 PM

Irony would be naming a new class of ICBMs after Clinton and aiming them at China.

Posted by Leland at February 18, 2005 01:30 PM

Scratch that, they can just name a SSBN for Clinton.

Posted by Leland at February 18, 2005 03:24 PM

Submarines were originally were named after deep sea fish (Sturgeon, Skipjack, Thresher, Drum, etc).

It was Adm Rickover who pointed out "fish don't VOTE". Since then, submarines have been named after US cities, states, and political leaders (USS Ohio, USS Los Angeles, USS Jimmy Carter).

Posted by Pete H. at February 19, 2005 09:30 PM


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