Most kids who’ve had the opportunity to tour a submarine, be it a dry docked museum or an actual submarine, want nothing more than to join the navy immediately and go down deep into the ocean. Sailors, or submariners, as they’re called who’ve actually done it, liken a tour on a submarine to being in an underground basement below a boiler room for three months.
Couple that with the fact that a submarine is one of the most secure environments in the US armed forces and that’s an immediate recipe for mass boredom. If you think your grandmother reads a lot of paperbacks, just ask a submariner on their return home how many books they’ve read and some may even say 100, and that’s just on their last tour.
Because security and secrecy are the top priority on a submarine, communication with the outside world is nearly non existent. No calls home, no skype, no Facetime, no smartphones, no tablets no outside electronics, period. Classified military communications from inside a submarine could lead to a major military concern if it fell into the wrong hands. Devices with flashable storage are forbidden aboard a submarine.
That’s why the Navy General Library Program keeps over 100,000 volumes in it’s collection. The collection ranges from a full offering of approved non-fiction books to the latest thrillers from Tom Clancy, John Grisham and Robert Patterson. The collection also includes a large variety of navy focused history books as well as training materials and continuing education titles. On land, most of these titles are available as downloads to Navy approved e-readers. The rules for land stationed Navy men and women are much different than their submariner counter parts. Those on submarines actually get hard or paperback copy versions of the material.
Now, through a partnership with Findaway World and in conjunction with the US Navy’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation Program, many of the digital e-books are becoming available on a new tablet called NeRD, or Navy e-Reader Device.
Keeping with the Navy’s stringent policy on flashable memory all of the NeRD devices come preloaded with about 300 of the most popular titles from the NGLP. The titles are hard flashed to the memory of the devices and can not be changed.
“Since we have the digital product available while Sailors are on shore, we wanted to find a way to get digital accessibility while Sailors are on ships,” says Nilya Carrato, program assistant for the library program. “They can keep 300 books, that would have taken up their entire library locker, in their Sailors’ pockets now.”
The initial run for NeRD devices is 385. Those devices will be distributed with five being sent to each submarine in the Navy fleet to be shared among the crew. After this initial run the Navy will evaluate the success of the program as well as the hardware used. The immediate future could see an increase in the number of devices available to submariners. It could also mean a re-work of the hardware to perhaps allow more titles.
Source: US Navy
