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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

#91

Post by ForHackernews »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #73
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…

And why are fighting ships using MS Exchange? And not some more hardened linux-based, simple UI/system thing that's easier to admin and keep up?

If I had to speculate, I'd say most likely because there are zero Linux vendors willing to run the gauntlet of a DoD procurement process.

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

#92

Post by Aromasin »

danso wrote: post #32

Good god this story is a gripping read, even at ~18,000 words. I had the pleasure of being colleagues with one of its authors, T., years ago, and was always amazed at how throughly nerdy in detail he was in investigating the document trail, while still being able to so elqouently describe impact and drama at the individual human level. It's not that the two skills are diametrically opposite, it's just that T may have…

I didn't even acknowledge that the article was 18k words long until reading your comment. You know it's an excellent author when they can make something that dense seem like a brief read.

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

#93

Post by metta2uall »

cryptonector wrote: post #63

Key 'grafs: > Although the Fitzgerald radars did not show them, more than two dozen ships surrounded the destroyer, all close enough to track. Three of them, large vessels off the starboard bow, posed a grave danger to the warship. They were closing in. Quickly. > But the ships didn’t appear on the combat room’s key radar, the SPS-67, because neither Combs, nor Woodley, nor anyone else, realized that it had been set…

It is just shocking & negligent UX - the radar screen should have at least had a coloured circle around the centre indicating the area that was not being scanned..

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

#94

Post by shard972 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #62
arminiusreturns wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to remind people that Hanlons razor is a logical fallacy, and really shouldn't be used nearly as much as it is, especially the way it is (in an isolated context)

I would disagree. Seeing corruption everywhere is your brain trying to assign order to chaos. The reality is that big military bureaucracy is among the dumbest of organizations and is capable of feats of illogic almost impossible to appreciate.

Maybe if you have never spent any time in the military.

Would it be ok for me to say that Theranos failed because of stupidity because halons razor? All i know is the company failed and i don't have time to read any articles so aren't i justified in saying it was stupidity not malice?

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

#95

Post by shard972 »

genkimind wrote: post #49
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…

Not sure about the firing squad... people make mistakes, I can certainly see how she was focused on trying to avoid a collision and forgot to sound the alarm. There must have been at least 5 other people on the bridge who could have done it as well. There were multiple failures that allowed the situation to get this out of hand. Ideally, she would have had forceful backup from the CIC. Of course it should go up the c…

> Not sure about the firing squad... people make mistakes, I can certainly see how she was focused on trying to avoid a collision and forgot to sound the alarm. There must have been at least 5 other people on the bridge who could have done it as well.

But she was the CO no? Maybe im wrong but isn't it the CO's job to lead? Not just expect the grunts to step and be a leader?

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

#96

Post by shard972 »

metta2uall wrote: post #93
cryptonector wrote: post #63

Key 'grafs: > Although the Fitzgerald radars did not show them, more than two dozen ships surrounded the destroyer, all close enough to track. Three of them, large vessels off the starboard bow, posed a grave danger to the warship. They were closing in. Quickly. > But the ships didn’t appear on the combat room’s key radar, the SPS-67, because neither Combs, nor Woodley, nor anyone else, realized that it had been set…

It is just shocking & negligent UX - the radar screen should have at least had a coloured circle around the centre indicating the area that was not being scanned..

Considering they can't even seem to have their radars working most of the time. I have a feeling UX might be low on the priority list for them.

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

#97

Post by EliRivers »

metta2uall wrote: post #89
genkimind wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent 5+ years on a ship in 7th fleet and am all too familiar with what was described above. I would attribute it to a few things. Mostly the over-extension of resources and people. The operational tempo in 7th fleet is absolutely ridiculous, so everything that isn't "mission accomplishment" gets pushed to the wayside. Training, making sure equipment is properly fixed.. our days were so jam packed full of bullshit…

I really don't understand why the operational tempo is so high given that it is peacetime?? Surely some "missions" can be sacrificed as the Navy was clearly not coping. It sounds to me like one possibility is that senior "leaders" wanted to keep increasing the tempo to make themselves look better on paper..?

If it's anything like UK Forces, it's not so much the leaders wanting to look better on paper as the powers that be simply always ratcheting the tempo up, and conversely training, maintenance, downtime, personnel numbers and budgets down.

Senior military officers self-select for being the kind of people who say they can do it. The system deselects people who say it can't be done.

Keep going and going until disaster hits to make everything reset; traditionally, a big war does this. At that point, people do start saying when things can't be done and it gets very hard to sweep failure under the rug when it involves being occupied by foreign powers and people's children never coming home.

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

#98

Post by EliRivers »

nerdponx wrote: post #36
dragonwriter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How the hell does a first-line warship of the United States Navy get into a state like this? Command negligence at very high levels, a high optempo without adequate attention to readiness and discipline. > Based on the article it sounds like the excuse they've settled on is just blaming everything on the crew Unless you are including the chain of command above the ship's commander up through and including the 7th F…

This is all infuriating to read as a civilian. This is what we get for all the billions we pour into the military? At least some heads rolled for it. But based on what I'm reading here, the problem is systemic.

But what you also get is everything that didn't end in disaster, for which you paid a lot less than you should have, because they skimped on maintenance, training, downtime, upgrades and so on.

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

#99

Post by Spooky23 »

shard972 wrote: post #94
Spooky23 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree. Seeing corruption everywhere is your brain trying to assign order to chaos. The reality is that big military bureaucracy is among the dumbest of organizations and is capable of feats of illogic almost impossible to appreciate.

Maybe if you have never spent any time in the military. Would it be ok for me to say that Theranos failed because of stupidity because halons razor? All i know is the company failed and i don't have time to read any articles so aren't i justified in saying it was stupidity not malice?

I’ve never been in the military, but I have lots of time in massive bureaucracy.

So many people are involved in the decision making process it’s nearly impossible to make a decision about anything. When I hear speculation about a conspiracy involving printer toner in Iraq, that sounds like nonsense without evidence.

Theranos is the opposite. A naive young founder pretending to be the reincarnation of Steve Jobs with a manipulative guru/mentor/lover pulling the strings is like a Petri dish for corruption.

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

#100

Post by trcollinson »

EliRivers wrote: post #98
nerdponx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all infuriating to read as a civilian. This is what we get for all the billions we pour into the military? At least some heads rolled for it. But based on what I'm reading here, the problem is systemic.

But what you also get is everything that didn't end in disaster, for which you paid a lot less than you should have, because they skimped on maintenance, training, downtime, upgrades and so on.

I understand where you are going but is this true? Did we really skimp on that or did we instead put into place a culture that is causing busy work and ineffective procedures that could be fixed with the people and resources we currently have?
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