Alfa-class speed collided with Soviet personnel structure

The Alfa class demanded technical skills that Soviet conscript personnel could not readily provide, so the boats operated with all-officer crews. Some of the best graduates then performed work normally assigned to junior sailors, gaining little experience of leading people before moving to other boats. A comparable Western vessel is imagined with experienced chiefs and senior officers, rather than junior personnel. These personnel problems coexisted with a formidable hunter-killer role: Alfas would wait for NATO submarines attempting to reach Soviet ballistic-missile boats while other Soviet submarines pushed beyond NATO barriers. The wider comparison stresses how professional NCOs preserved institutional knowledge and trained successive groups of conscripts. Soviet efforts to establish a comparable corps are judged unsuccessful here.