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No question this is embarrassing for the military. These ships are supposed to be able to detect and shoot down missiles arriving at mach 3. But they didn't d
by marze 9y ago
No question this is embarrassing for the military. These ships are supposed to be able to detect and shoot down missiles arriving at mach 3. But they didn't detect a 40000 ton cargo ship traveling at 15 mph? A cargo ship that was broadcasting its GPS location constantly?
That said, this article really adds nothing to that which is already known about the incident, besides that someone tweeted "people weren't paying attention".
Very lucky there weren't more deaths.
- rhizome 9y agoFrankly I've been wondering if there wasn't some arrogance involved on the part of the destroyer's skipper.
- tyingq 9y agoEven discounting anything high tech, there's more than one person on watch, and the destroyer is much more nimble than a cargo ship. I imagine the postmortem will show a crazy breakdown across many processes.
- lostlogin 9y agoPossibly not a great choice of words given that the article mentions that actual post-mortems are currently being performed.
- nulldev 9y agoWhat word do you suggest he use? If anything, I feel like 'postmortem' most commonly implies an after-action report - with the specific word 'autopsy' being used to describe, well, autopsies - at least in US english.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 9y agoThis is presumably a US English v English thing then, as post-mortem wouldn't be the term used here usually, and certainly not if someone had died (unless if was being performed on them). To someone from the US it would perhaps seem a little distasteful to describe the investigation as an 'autopsy' - hence my comment.
- Vendan 9y agoOxford "British and World English" dictionary, post-mortem: "An analysis or discussion of an event held soon after it has occurred, especially in order to determine why it was a failure." https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-mortem https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-mortem. Maybe not common in the UK, but I'd say it's perfectly correct word usage.
- jessaustin 9y agoI grew up in USA Midwest, though I have been accused of a "southern" accent. "Postmortem" is completely idiomatic in this situation, but if you'd care to suggest a better term we'd all learn something.
- etrevino 9y agoThe problem is, I think, that someone, something, somewhere, did detect the Crystal, but didn't act on it. The technology almost certainly worked right. It was likely the people that screwed everything up. The Crystal was probably on autopilot with no one (awake?) in the bridge and it would appear that the Fitzgerald was in the same state. That said, for the US this is a pretty serious embarrassment, because it screams "not combat ready".
- okket 9y agoI am pretty sure that in a combat situation this collision would not have happened. It's the routine that is dangerous plus the mentioned "I am bigger" vs. "I am military" both assuming they have the right of passage.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]