Aboard a US nuclear submarine. What is missing from this article is the context of how much the boat impacts the culture. A Russian or British submarine will have a different training system not just because they have a different military culture but also because the boat is physically different. Communications pathways, be them electronic or physical, dictate how decisions are made. A Russian submariner probably won't make a move without orders not because he doesn't know what to do but because there might not be a direct electronic report back at the command as to what is happening. Doing things without orders on a Russian boat can result in command loosing awareness of a situation. A US submariner can have better confidence that his actions will be automatically reported back to command via various sensors and monitoring systems.
This article focuses on the fact that the US submarine experience special because everyone is expected to have a working knowledge of every system. That is different than the rest of the US military where people remain very specialized. But mandating generalist knowledge is actually a norm in other countries. The Brits/Canadians tell a joke about US soldiers: Whereas each member of a british or canadian gun crew is expected to understand and perform all the jobs associated with firing a gun, an American is likely to respond "I pull the rope." Such hyper-specialization just doesn't work in a submarine because people are not able to physically move around. The environment, the submarine, dictates the culture.
This article focuses on the fact that the US submarine experience special because everyone is expected to have a working knowledge of every system. That is different than the rest of the US military where people remain very specialized. But mandating generalist knowledge is actually a norm in other countries. The Brits/Canadians tell a joke about US soldiers: Whereas each member of a british or canadian gun crew is expected to understand and perform all the jobs associated with firing a gun, an American is likely to respond "I pull the rope." Such hyper-specialization just doesn't work in a submarine because people are not able to physically move around. The environment, the submarine, dictates the culture.