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USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#161

Post by diggernet »

brians wrote: post #146
ams6110 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes some sense to me. Conning officer instructs helmsman which direction to go. Helmsman then executes that and monitors/adjusts to stay on that heading without further attention. Same for speed. The officer is then free of the tasks of monitoring and adjusting speed and direction and can focus on what's happening outside of that.

Looking for good models for ops team improvement, I was just handed the Watch Officer's Handbook. It encourages new watch officers to give rudder orders, not desired headings.

Depends on the context.

When maneuvering, you are watching obstacles and can see how much you need to turn to avoid them. So you give rudder orders. Your actual heading is only a secondary concern.

When navigating, you simply order the desired heading (for minutes, hours, or days). Then you focus on other things while the helmsman sweats the details.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#162

Post by lucaspiller »

blknmild wrote: post #117
erydo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a devil's…inquisitor, I guess— I'm curious what the reasoning has been behind the Navy's (and WWII RAF's) preference for split/seniority control and in what situations that balances out, if any. Are those situations where some known, serious risk of error is mitigated by sharing responsibility? Is betting on experience over skill actually wrong, or is their implementation misguided? Or just not applicable to those…

I'm sure there's a good reason for the "tradition". Similar to a group of monastic monks following some bizarre ritual which could be done in a more efficient way. Someone from westpoint or the naval academy probably knows..

I’d say it’s the same reason why manual transmission vehicles are still more popular than automatic transmission in some countries. Automatic transmission of modern cars is easier (you can give more attention to the road than having to think about changing gears), gives a smoother ride, is more fuel efficient and causes less wear and tear on the engine.

It’s a habit that the organisation is used to, so there is resistance to change.

(I was born in one of those countries, and drove manual transmission for my first 10 years of driving, but am now a convert)

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#163

Post by averagewall »

foobarian wrote: post #129
katastic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

Don't get me started about TVs. When I grew up our family TV turned on in seconds, and pressing channel up/down reacted in tens of milliseconds.

How long ago? My color CRT TV took a good 10 s or so to warm up the tube before you'd see much/anything. But at least it responded instantly, so you could spend that time walking back to the couch instead of waiting for some stupid menu. Instant and trustworthy response is basically gone from most appliances. I think it's a combination of marketing (has to look high tech) and cost (touch buttons are cheaper than mechanically interlinked toggle buttons.

I still can't tell if my computer monitor is on or off because I don't know the weird LED flashing code it uses to communicate that (Holy crap! appliances use something like morse code to tell you important information about their state! How did they get so needlessly cryptic? If there's no picture, I have to check all the cables and push the power button a couple of times to see what happens.

Web programmers are as much to blame too. Show me a web video player that has play and pause buttons that always do what they say when they say it.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#164

Post by diggernet »

Bromskloss wrote: post #159
diggernet wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. That's precisely why things are this way. Source: me, Navy veteran

What about the question regarding having one guy doing direction, and another guy doing speed? Is that called for?

Absolutely.

Maintaining a ship's heading is a full time job. If you get distracted, you get off course pretty quickly.

Speed isn't even really handled on the bridge. The engine order (ahead full, back half, emergency stop, etc) goes to the engine room where multiple people do the work.

Note: This is in the context of oil and nuclear steam-powered ships. Gas turbine ships may well have an actual throttle on the bridge. Whether the bridge has a throttle or just an engine order telegraph, the helmsman can often have their hands too full to deal with it. But someone else can do it along with their other duties, as speed control is not so intensive.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#165

Post by averagewall »

Cyph0n wrote: post #147
dreamcompiler wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

> The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness. If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved…

The distance to the satellite has nothing to do with it. You're using big numbers to exaggerate the problem.

Decrypting and demodulating have be as fast as the data is coming, otherwise the delay would grow until you never saw the end of the show. So that's not the reason either.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#166

Post by [deleted] »

diggernet wrote: post #154
okabat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their point is that when changing engine output is labor-intensive, it made perfect sense to have an officer giving orders and somebody else implementing them. Why the command structure hasn't shifted to accommodate modern technology is an interesting question

It's not labor-intensive, it's attention-intensive. You want the person managing the speed to be focused on that. You want the person managing the heading to be focused on that. And you definitely don't want the officer to be distracted by maintaining course and speed when they need to be keeping track of what's going on around the ship.

[deleted]

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#168

Post by NickNameNick »

lucaspiller wrote: post #162
blknmild wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's a good reason for the "tradition". Similar to a group of monastic monks following some bizarre ritual which could be done in a more efficient way. Someone from westpoint or the naval academy probably knows..

I’d say it’s the same reason why manual transmission vehicles are still more popular than automatic transmission in some countries. Automatic transmission of modern cars is easier (you can give more attention to the road than having to think about changing gears), gives a smoother ride, is more fuel efficient and causes less wear and tear on the engine. It’s a habit that the organisation is used to, so there is resis…

Automatics are usually less efficient than manuals - the Hydraulic torque converter has to slip to function.

That said, the automatic might beat a manual in other metrics.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#169

Post by zaroth »

jordanb wrote: post #17

The real cause of the collision was poor seamanship and failure to follow the COLREGS on the part of the bridge crew of the destroyer. Most specifically they were seriously in violation of Rule 6: the Safe Speed Rule http://navruleshandbook.com/Rule6.html Every vessel shall at all times proceed at a safe speed so that she can take proper and effective action to avoid collision and be stopped within a distance appropr…

I completely agree, it seems like the speed was entirely excessive, and they literally lost control of their boat. Shameful.

This sounds like pandemonium and panic. Sounds like the bridge was totally out of control. They didn't even follow basic procedure to warn nearby ships of danger, they just plowed right in front of one.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#170

Post by zaroth »

jordanb wrote: post #134
eternalban wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USS McCain was traveling at over 20 knots at the time of the collision http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170821080742-04-uss-jo... Sorry. That does not compute. Based on that visual, the ship was dead in the water.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/CHINFO/USS+Fitzgerald+and+USS+John+S... The McCain entered the TSS at 20 knots and varied between 20 and 18 knots until the steering problem began. The OOD ordered the vessel slowed to 5 knots but due to confusion on the bridge the orders weren't carried out properly and the vessel was still making 11.8 knots and turning to port at the moment of impact. The Fitzgerald was also traveling throug…

This to me is the under reported fact. Realizing how fast these ships were moving up to and through the moment of impact, while the crew responded hopelessly is extraordinary. Absolutely tragic.
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