Not knowing the backstory, I can only go on what I've seen on a nuclear aircraft carrier in their reactor dept. as well as general experience in the squadron community (where people often work 18 hour days underway and are expected to be "on point" no matter what while maintaining aircraft), the engineering community and flight deck crews, etc. The big problem in the Navy now re: reactors is that the school in Charleston, SC is a joke... they take these kids for 2 years, train them on a sub down there for nearly a year, treat them like they're on deployment for half that time with the deployment watches and the hot racking (now and then just to give them a taste of it)... big deal right? Well, the issue is the qualification boards they have to memorize an extraordinary amount of info for... which violates one of the key commandments of the Navy in the first place... which is...

YOU DON'T MEMORIZE SHIT!

We would get screamed at and have our liberty curtailed if we were ever caught memorizing something like a maintenance cycle on gear, or the hazmat steps for a particular product, etc. As our chiefs would tell us, memorizing is for smart asses who aren't team players. You forget one step and somebody dies.

Yet they expect these "nuke" kids to memorize all this stuff, as if its some sort of mental challenge to differentiate them from the rest of the fleet. Totally dumb! They need to understand it more than anything else. The Navy keeps forgetting that, so does the Air Force.

Anyway, they spend days studying for these qual cert boards and then they get out to the fleet.. whether that be a sub or a nuclear aircraft carrier... and they're told by their chain of command... well, that was nice what you spent 2 years learning... its fucking useless out here in the fleet by the way!

The kids have to spend months re-qualifying on new platforms after spending nearly a year doing it already and a year before that going to school to do it. Their morale is further made worse by the restrictive rules on their liberty and personal options due to not being qualified as well as working 18-20 hour days, occasionally even in port when everyone else is getting off by at least 5 pm.

So am I surprised to see people cut corners? Nope. Half those nukes don't want to be "Nukes" anymore, I truly believed many of them on the Lincoln who said they wanted to go to Iraq. The only redeeming quality of it for some of them is the money (extremely high bonuses for nukes).

It has nothing to do with the war on terror or politics or even laziness.. its generally good kids getting sold a bad bill of goods by a Navy that eats its young religiously and rewards the few who survive with $75K bonuses to re-up after six years. (In the nuclear field at least).

Add in a totally risk-averse leadership style now (make one mistake as a CO or department head and your career is likely over) and you've unfortunately got some commanders and senior NCO's who fool themselves into thinking they'll get away with gundecking "just this once".

I know, I saw it repeatedly while I was on the Kitty Hawk from 2003-2006 supervising ship maintenance in port in Yokosuka. Its too powerful a temptation for most to ignore. They just don't have enough time in the world (or manpower for that matter) to do everything the rules expect them to most of the time.