USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

Everybody come to the beautiful Lake of the Ozarks, where you too can be menaced on narrow inland waterways by giant overpowered wave-making monstrosities like that of 'exabrial's friend!

At least you won't have to worry about uncontrolled USN vessels...

Does this electricity charge a battery pack, which then is used to drive the electric motors which turn the screws? This would imply that the heat generation and turbine spin-up time merely need to respond before the batteries are discharged, potentially allowing response times of minutes or hours. It would give Tesla-like instant throttle response, where the operator would move the lever and the sub would jump forward.

Or does it directly power the engines? This would mean that your entire control loop would include the latency of the steam generation process. Move the lever, wait for the water to get hot, wait for the turbines to spin up, and then the screws would start to turn faster. Like the throttle response in an ancient diesel truck.

Given that the original diesel submarines used giant battery arrays to power the electric motors while the engines were off, and that the former gives much better control response, I'd assume that there are still large batteries in the loop. This paper [2] supports that assertion:

> The nominal cell voltage is 2.0 V. [1] The PDX-57 cell designed for Ohio-class submarines weights 2,100 pounds with a capacity of more than 10,000 Amp-hours and stored energy of 2.6 MWh. [1] The ASB-49 cell designed for the Los Angeles-class submarine weights 1,300 pounds with a capacity of 7,200 Amp-hours and stored energy of 1.8 MWh. [1] The LLL-69 type cell weights 1,500 pounds with a capacity of 8,100 Amp- hours and stored energy of 2.0 MHh. [1]

A couple megawatthours is plenty to run the screws while the steam loop and nuclear reactor respond.

Therefore, toomanybeersies comment:

> On a nuclear powered ship, yes, since you still essentially have a steam engine, the engine telegraph (throttle) isn't actually linked directly to the engine.

is technically correct but actually irrelevant. The nuclear reactor telegraph does control the steam turbine and eventually the battery charge, rather than the engine. But somewhere there's an electric motor controller which responds instantly.

[1] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1177196/?reload=true&tp=... [2] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph241/ditiangkin1/

If the military learned a lesson from exploding a reactor with an automatic control system, you might never know - it's not required to be reported to the public.

Maybe I’m too late or too simplistic, but why do ships and aircrafts have so complex control systems in normal functioning modes at all?

Why can’t layman ship commander like me just tell the system to be “there” in specific time via hand-drawn or standard route? If my engines malfunctioning, or steering lost it is one thing, but if everything is okay, can’t a simple swipe-to-sail iphone app just coordinate all ship controls to “be there in 3m08s” in most effective way according to the safety rules?

Now it seems like all the precise counters and sensors are passed to slow, biased, narrow-focused and error-prone device that is my mind to get goal-related feedback. And this device happens to be proud of being it. As a programmer, I just can’t understand it. Do commanders quickly solve unsolvable differential equations in realtime or what?

> the example of infantry tank. There is the driver who has speed and direction. Then there is the commander who gives orders but apparently has backup system to drive

The UK's Warrior armoured personnel carrier is an example of what I guess you mean by 'Infantry Tank'. It has a Commander, Gunner and Driver (plus the 'dismounts' - seven guys in the back who get out to fight on their feet). The driver - as the role name implies - does all the drving. The commander (who is also the loader, incidentally) directs the driver where to go. He does not have duplicate driving controls. If the driver is very inexperienced, the commander will give him very precise direction. If the driver is experienced - in the sense of understanding tactical movement considerations - the commander can be much more hands off.

If the vehicle commander is also a platoon commander, he is also giving orders to the commnanders of the three other vehicles in the platoon. He is much more likely to be paired with an experienced driver so he can focus more on the overall battle than control of his own vehicle.