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Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

navytimes.com

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Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#91

Post by jessaustin »

da_chicken wrote: post #86
dmurray wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "terrorist" has been reappropriated, possibly because "guerilla warfare", "asymmetric warfare" etc sound too glamorous. In the US it mostly means any military action by non-state actors against the US and its allies.

There is a term for it. "Act of war".

The war media and armaments lobbyists don't like using the actual word "war" much. That tends to highlight the fact that none of the military actions currently underway have been sanctioned by Congress as required by the Constitution. The last legal declaration of war occurred in 1942. "Terrorism" has been a useful catch-all for some time now, but when it wears out through overuse they'll come up with something else.

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#92

Post by cmurf »

In a related article at navytimes.com published two days earlier, the Panamanian owners of the other ship involved, have agreed to pay the U.S. government ~$27 million in a settlement. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/11/ship-own...

Naturally we're not supposed to infer “any liability, negligence, breach of duty, or wrongdoing” by either party as a result of such a settlement.

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#93

Post by bkohlmann »

gaius wrote: post #41
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CO and XO shouldn't be sleeping while their ship is crossing a busy sealane Why aren't these people "the best of the best", to quote the trite line from Top Gun? According to Wikipedia, the US Navy has 282 deployable combat vessels. It employs a total of 325,673 active duty personnel plus 270,265 civilian employees. So out of those 600,000 people, they can't find a few thousand who are willing, able, and capable…

The US Naval Academy alone graduates 1000 people a year. Where do they all go? What do they all do? In the Star Trek reboot Kirk goes straight from Academy sophomore to commanding a capital ship in a matter of days. It is not like that. It takes many years. Only a small percentage of Academy graduates will ever get there. And many have no ambition to either, there are lots of other challenging and prestigious jobs in…

But being a fighter pilot (and now, very rarely, a helo pilot), is the only way to command an aircraft carrier. Which is a pretty cool command!

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#94

Post by fixermark »

balabaster wrote: post #84
dmurray wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "terrorist" has been reappropriated, possibly because "guerilla warfare", "asymmetric warfare" etc sound too glamorous. In the US it mostly means any military action by non-state actors against the US and its allies.

When you say non-state, you surely mean by parties whom aren't favourable to US interests. It's interesting that when a government or party that's not in the US's best interests is in power, it's okay for the CIA to use asymmetric tactics to fund rebels and favourable terrorism, stage coups d'etat, overthrow governments and meddle in foreign elections but when those parties seek to do the same to the US, it's terrori…

I imagine when a country is founded on an illegal uprising against a significant world military and economic power that they go on to win, exceptionalism ends up baked into their cultural DNA.

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#95

Post by fixermark »

jessaustin wrote: post #89

I'm glad that OP changed the title from the goofy "Worse than you thought" that TFA has. As usual, when USA military keeps secrets, a prudent person assumes the absolute worst. This is actually sort of good news, in that we can probably determine at this point that there wasn't a meth-fueled sex orgy going on the bridge at the time of the collision. (although, those urine bottles...) Now as for the ongoing binge at 7…

It's useful to remember that the first instance of the government using "State Secrets" as a defense to withhold evidence was in a civil trial about culpability in the deaths of contractors that were testing Cold War equipment...

... and when the relevant documents were declassified, it was revealed that the secret the government was hiding was that test was run on a plane with a grossly-substandard maintenance history.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/383/origin-story/act-two-0

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#96

Post by fixermark »

TecoAndJix wrote: post #67

I was stationed on a Destroyer from 2015-2017 and subsequently deployed with them as an IT in the radio shack. CIC looks like something out of a movie (and really the only part of the ship that does) - it's very dark, has lots of glowing monitors covered in charts, surveillance feeds, and a whole lot of people. In the radio shack, we worked 12 on, 12 off, 7 days a week. I cannot remember CIC's watch rotation exactly…

The boredom is an interesting risk factor, and I'm wondering what could be done to address it.

For software, I'm familiar with a process of intentionally designing and executing a safe breakage as a sort of drill to keep people's heads in the game---no better way to find where you accidentally didn't have redundancy than by turning off a system that should have a fallback and seeing what else breaks. Is that practical for CIC, or is there insufficient redundancy in CIC to do something like that safely?

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#97

Post by gaius »

austincheney wrote: post #44
dba7dba wrote: post #19

> The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway. I was shocked to read above. You don't personally trust someone or people in CIC so you just don't communicate with CIC when you are crossing the most con…

Distrust of management is extremely common. I cannot stress enough just how common it is both in the military and the corporate world or how potentially toxic this is. Most people outside of management are absolutely incapable of seeing it, even when its excessively rampant, because they don't recognize the symptoms. The common reasons for not recognizing such symptoms, even when immediately apparent and excessive, a…

Most people outside of management are absolutely incapable of seeing it

Isn’t it the opposite - that management/officers are oblivious to their own toxic behaviour that led to the rank-and-file distrusting them?

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#98

Post by _wp3r »

curveship wrote: post #71
TecoAndJix wrote: post #67

I was stationed on a Destroyer from 2015-2017 and subsequently deployed with them as an IT in the radio shack. CIC looks like something out of a movie (and really the only part of the ship that does) - it's very dark, has lots of glowing monitors covered in charts, surveillance feeds, and a whole lot of people. In the radio shack, we worked 12 on, 12 off, 7 days a week. I cannot remember CIC's watch rotation exactly…

Thanks for your perspective, very interesting. I'm really surprised that all it takes to be declared qualified is the signature of someone else who's qualified. That leaves lots of room for slippage and social pressure, like the dip you mention. It also leaves no one specifically responsible for the crew's level of qualification. A cynic might say that was the point of the system: we know this is going to fail, so ma…

There is generally written testing involved, along with a multi-person board/interview that is a direct knowledge test under that inherent stress of face to face.

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#99

Post by watwut »

jessaustin wrote: post #73
chopin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more shocked of the pee-filled bottles on the bridge. This hints to deep cultural problems being present and an utterly incompetent upper management.

The officer of the deck is named "Sarah". How does a woman urinate in bottles in a public work setting? If she was the boss, why did she tolerate others doing what she can't? If she wasn't the boss, it seems she has a pretty good case for having been subjected to a toxic work environment. Of course this must be balanced against the fact that her poor performance killed sailors.

The Sarah officer was not officer in CIC which had pee bottles, Sarah officer was the one who did not contacted CIC.

Also, the answer to "If she was the boss, why did she tolerate others doing what she can't?" assumes a lot about the boss. Tolerating something boss himself cant do by boss is pretty normal. (Not that I think pee bottles are sign of good management.)

The answer to "If she wasn't the boss, it seems she has a pretty good case for having been subjected to a toxic work environment." is that well, that happen and soldiers tolerate a lot. She might have good reasons not to open that can of worms. It is usually better not to.

Re: Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision

#100

Post by danielvf »

jessaustin wrote: post #73
chopin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more shocked of the pee-filled bottles on the bridge. This hints to deep cultural problems being present and an utterly incompetent upper management.

The officer of the deck is named "Sarah". How does a woman urinate in bottles in a public work setting? If she was the boss, why did she tolerate others doing what she can't? If she wasn't the boss, it seems she has a pretty good case for having been subjected to a toxic work environment. Of course this must be balanced against the fact that her poor performance killed sailors.

The officer on deck - Sarah Coppock - was responsible for the entire ship while the captain was sleeping. She was on the bridge, not in the CIC where the bottles were.

However, the officer in charge of the CIC - Natalie Combs - was also female.

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