Rickover's Lessons

It's certainly true the strategic arms processes and nuclear submarine engineering benefited in a long term view.

I just find myself asking if the US army recruiting tag line Be The Best You Can Be was really met, or if Rickover achieved what might be more akin to crystallography "local optimum" where there are better peaks out there, but this one is mine. (To borrow another army concept)

Viewed from Australia the current state of US submarine construction is woeful. We're on the brink of being ripped off having prepaid for access to Virginia class subs soon, and AUKUS subs in future. We expect to be told we cannot have Virginia class subs ever, we cannot have longterm crewing or command ever, but we can host them retained in US HANDS and we can continue to pay for them.

Not that Rickover made that happen, but whatever his lessons are, the US submarine building industry doesn't seem to have learned then, or be able to apply them.

His writing style is very good, and he succinctly summarizes the phenomenon where a technology that is substantially complete to the point that it has known issues is looked down upon while a technology that is purely "on paper" (the "paper reactor" as he calls it) is treated as a good alternative, since the paper technology isn't far enough along for the problems to even be known. That's not even a good TL;DR, so you should just read Rickover's essay.

Ex-Navy nuke here; I had to interview with the KOG [*] to get into The Program.

My guess is that most people on HN would do fine in a Rickover-style program — albeit likely after some culture shock. After 50 years I can still recite my own interview with the man pretty much verbatim. I served only five years on active duty; I've forgotten most of what I knew about the specific subject of nuclear engineering. But the no-bullshit, face-the-facts general management style that Rickover created and propagated in the nuclear Navy was likely the single biggest professional influence of my life. To this day I regularly quote Rickover to my law students: You get what you INspect, not what you EXpect.

And in the fleet, most of us nukes were regular people, not nearly as abrasive or peremptory as he could be.

[*] KOG = Kindly Old Gentleman: Of those four things, Rickover was at most two.

That's downright un-American!

I love hearing stories about him. One that I have heard, a couple of times, is that a salesgoblin went into his second-floor office at the Pentagon, with a sample of some electronic equipment.

Rickover is said to have grabbed the device, walked over to his window, and dropped it to the ground beneath. He then said something along the lines of "If it still works, we can talk."