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Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

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Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#51

Post by scott00 »

genkimind wrote: post #38
scott00 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common are scenarios where there are multiple ships within visual distance? From reading the account of the collision, it seems like everybody relied primarily on one radar to make navigation decisions, and that radar was either broken, or its operators didn't know how to use it. It's hard for me to understand how they didn't realize they weren't getting useful data from that radar and switch their primary naviga…

Navigating with other ships in close proximity is pretty common -- mostly when transiting into port, out of port, and through shipping lanes. It is pretty silly that they didn't seem to realize that the radar wasn't tuned correctly. I wasn't a surface watchstander so I can't comment on the radar aspect in more detail. Normally inputs are taken from a variety of sensors, not just one busted radar.

So is it like a every day kind of thing or like a few hours every week or two weeks?

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#52

Post by genkimind »

scott00 wrote: post #51
genkimind wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating with other ships in close proximity is pretty common -- mostly when transiting into port, out of port, and through shipping lanes. It is pretty silly that they didn't seem to realize that the radar wasn't tuned correctly. I wasn't a surface watchstander so I can't comment on the radar aspect in more detail. Normally inputs are taken from a variety of sensors, not just one busted radar.

So is it like a every day kind of thing or like a few hours every week or two weeks?

It depends on the ship, but given the underway scheduling for DDG's in Japan, generically and loosely:

Repeat every 3-8 weeks randomly with gaps of 6 months every 2-3 years:

    2 hours of leaving port

    1-3 weeks later: 2 hours of entering port

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#53

Post by pdonis »

scott00 wrote: post #51
genkimind wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating with other ships in close proximity is pretty common -- mostly when transiting into port, out of port, and through shipping lanes. It is pretty silly that they didn't seem to realize that the radar wasn't tuned correctly. I wasn't a surface watchstander so I can't comment on the radar aspect in more detail. Normally inputs are taken from a variety of sensors, not just one busted radar.

So is it like a every day kind of thing or like a few hours every week or two weeks?

It depends on what the ship is doing. When a ship has to transit a high traffic area it generally takes at least several hours, and possibly many hours. This will happen every time the ship goes into port or comes out of port (the USS Fitzgerald was coming out of port), and it will happen whenever the ship has to transit a high traffic area to get wherever it's going (the USS McCain was transiting the Straits of Malacca, one of the most crowded shipping lanes in the world, when it had its collision). Those things are probably happening more often nowadays than they did during the Cold War, because more of the jobs Navy ships are being asked to do are close to shore instead of out in the middle of the ocean.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#54

Post by DuskStar »

pdonis wrote: post #37
jessaustin wrote: post #28

Regardless of other problems, TFA makes it clear that LTJG Coppock failed really hard between 0120 and 0130. Although her subordinates probably should have detected the Crystal sooner, she had ten minutes to save the lives of her crew, and she should have done so. Navigating out of danger might not have been possible, but an emergency stop like that executed by LTJG Breau a month earlier would have worked. The really…

> Although her subordinates probably should have detected the Crystal sooner One thing that jumped out at me was not having a lookout on both bridge wings. Yes, I know the ship was shorthanded, but that's the last place that should take a hit, particularly when navigating through a crowded shipping channel at night. Take someone from somewhere else.

To me it looked like a culture of taking the maximum that a person could be expected to do in one dimension, and expanding it to multiple dimensions. So, having one person watch both sides of the ship might be marginally possible - if they were only doing that. Similarly, teaching someone else while on watch might be marginally possible - if you only had one side of the ship to watch. Putting the two together though? Total failure.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#55

Post by pdonis »

DuskStar wrote: post #54
pdonis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although her subordinates probably should have detected the Crystal sooner One thing that jumped out at me was not having a lookout on both bridge wings. Yes, I know the ship was shorthanded, but that's the last place that should take a hit, particularly when navigating through a crowded shipping channel at night. Take someone from somewhere else.

To me it looked like a culture of taking the maximum that a person could be expected to do in one dimension, and expanding it to multiple dimensions. So, having one person watch both sides of the ship might be marginally possible - if they were only doing that. Similarly, teaching someone else while on watch might be marginally possible - if you only had one side of the ship to watch. Putting the two together though?…

> having one person watch both sides of the ship might be marginally possible - if they were only doing that

I'm not sure even that is possible, at least not at night in a crowded shipping channel. A lookout under those circumstances should be focused on one field of view, not having to move around.

> teaching someone else while on watch might be marginally possible - if you only had one side of the ship to watch

As I understand it, the person doing the "teaching" was the Junior Officer of the Deck, not a lookout. The JOOD is supposed to be doing multiple things, not be focused on just watching. Her staying on the port side teaching too long was a contributing factor, yes, but only because of the prior decision to accept no lookout assigned to the starboard side to begin with.

As for the culture that contributed to that decision, I'm not sure it was what you suggest as much as a simple failure to understand the impact of not having lookouts on both sides under those conditions. The fact that neither the captain nor the XO were even on the bridge during the transit is another indicator of that, IMO. The article says the captain was tired because of all the training that had been done that day and wasn't on the bridge because of that, but that just means more failure to understand the impact of tradeoffs: if push comes to shove, having more experienced supervision on the bridge during a challenging transit is more important than getting in some more training that day.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#56

Post by a3n »

danso wrote: post #48
jessaustin wrote: post #28

Regardless of other problems, TFA makes it clear that LTJG Coppock failed really hard between 0120 and 0130. Although her subordinates probably should have detected the Crystal sooner, she had ten minutes to save the lives of her crew, and she should have done so. Navigating out of danger might not have been possible, but an emergency stop like that executed by LTJG Breau a month earlier would have worked. The really…

The story notes that the ship's crew was overworked and overstretched due to the expedited schedule and crew cutbacks. On the night of the accident, there was only one person qualified to be a lookout, and was expected to watch both sides of the ship. The allocations of time and resources such that the USS Fitzgerald could never find time to make repairs or have adequately trained staff, at a time of increased patrol…

> On the night of the accident, there was only one person qualified to be a lookout,

That ship was therefore not fit for duty. Not that that would take a ship out of service, these days. They're probably all more or less unfit for duty, based on this and other articles about the same incidents.

Former enlisted Navy, decades ago, made three Western Pacific deployments in and around the area of the article's concern. Not a subject matter expert, and probably never was.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#57

Post by rangibaby »

smacktoward wrote: post #2

A dozen or so [maintenance issues] were considered more serious. They included problems with the ship’s primary navigation system. It was the oldest such system among destroyers based in Japan. It was running on Windows 2000, even though other ships had been upgraded. It could not display information from the AIS. The broken email system had a “major impact” on the ship’s day-to-day operations. Microsoft Outlook did…

Both sides have an incentive to over-engineer. The arms manufacturer wants to add as many systems as possible because more complexity = more money.

The navy as a whole might want to save money, but the parts that make it up want to spend as much money as possible; if they don't, their budget will get cut since they don't "need" the resources allocated to them.

What people sometimes forget about crude Russian engineering is that bubblegum and toothpicks are enough to get the thing operational.

Simplicity was always the Russian priority because even in the Soviet days they were broke, and even if they had the money to buy parts getting them to a frozen or muddy air(literal)field in the middle of the middle of nowhere was a feat in itself.

The US military-industrial complex has functionally unlimited resources, so the things they build require unlimited resources to operate and function.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#58

Post by a3n »

pdonis wrote: post #55
DuskStar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it looked like a culture of taking the maximum that a person could be expected to do in one dimension, and expanding it to multiple dimensions. So, having one person watch both sides of the ship might be marginally possible - if they were only doing that. Similarly, teaching someone else while on watch might be marginally possible - if you only had one side of the ship to watch. Putting the two together though?…

> having one person watch both sides of the ship might be marginally possible - if they were only doing that I'm not sure even that is possible, at least not at night in a crowded shipping channel. A lookout under those circumstances should be focused on one field of view, not having to move around. > teaching someone else while on watch might be marginally possible - if you only had one side of the ship to watch As…

> if push comes to shove, having more experienced supervision on the bridge during a challenging transit is more important than getting in some more training that day.

Think of any bureaucracy. The training or lack is documented. Paperwork must be done, and the activities backing that paperwork must be done, because that's what gets measured, since the measurers can't be on board to watch.

Sloppy procedures you might get away with, but lack of paperwork gets noticed immediately 100% of the time. And we all want to get promoted, officers especially in the military's "up or out" system.

I read another article, probably here, about this same incident. One of the officers on duty in the CIC was doing her paperwork, in addition/instead of her function at the time. I'm certain this is the norm, because the bureaucracy will be served, and it always expands, never contracts.

I would go so far to say that paperwork will increase even more, directly because of these specific incidents, "to make sure it never happens again."

The incentives are pathologically perverse.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#59

Post by favorited »

My brother had a carrier deployment in the Pacific end a week or so after the Fitzgerald collision. We asked him and his girlfriend (also a sailor) about it and they genuinely had no idea what we were talking about.

It was a revelatory moment for me. I can understand how the Navy wouldn't be excited to disseminate that kind of demoralizing news internally (though I still assumed they would one way or another). But sailors on his ship have sporadic internet access – I was really surprised that word didn't just get around.

Re: Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy

#60

Post by a3n »

InitialLastName wrote: post #42
ariwilson wrote: post #22

Officers used Gmail instead. Props to Gmail :).

Why is high-level military commanders using a private email server not a similarly big deal to a Secretary of State or First Daughter/Advisor to the President?

Because we don't vote for military commanders, and military commanders contribute little to nothing to political alliances outside the military, so there is no incentive for talking heads or Congress to notice it.

There's also a lot more of them than Secretaries of State and First Daughters, and the people that Congress and talking heads manipulate, us, couldn't sustain our interest past the second or third incident.

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