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Red Over Red, the Failure of U.S. Navy Leadership

71 points by protomyth 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
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chiph 9y ago
I'd hate to have been the helmsman on the Fitzgerald and the McCain, knowing a collision was imminent. But unable to steer away because of a lack of orders to do so. (If they had, they would have been brought up on charges, in which their saving the vessel would have been a consideration, but not an excuse for their action)
- protomyth 9y ago
  I thought there was always an Officer of the Deck empowered to make decisions in these situations? I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article.
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    It's my understanding that the bow of the containership struck the side of the warship. The bow of a ship is typically much stronger than the side. I suspect that the damage report would be very different - if not a sinking, then catastrophic damage to the containership, and little damage to the warship if the situation was reversed.
    - dghughes 9y ago
      > The bow of a ship is typically much stronger than the side Especially if it travels through ice in northern nations like here in Canada, ice is like reinforced concrete. A certain amount of ice not icebreaker level but even an icebreaker rides up onto ice and breaks it with the ship's own weight.
      - astrodust 9y ago
        Only a handful of ships are reinforced to travel over light ice. They're called "ice strengthened" or "ice class" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_class). They're really not intended to charge head-long into ice, but are safer when in waters that may contain random and hard to spot chunks of ice. I'm not aware of any American combat ships outfitted to that standard. In fact, when it comes to ice-hardened ships in general the US has shockingly few, perhaps only two depending on maintenance cycles: https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/icebreakers-and-u-s-power-separating-fact-from-fiction/ https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/icebreakers-and-u-s-power-... An icebreaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker) is meant to go charging through and in some cases even over ice. They're tough as hell compared to most ships. The reason the bow is stronger isn't because of ice, it's because of the pressure exerted on the bulbous bow. It's a spherical protrusion that will have to be tougher or it'll collapse.
        dghughes 9y ago
        > An icebreaker is meant to go charging through and in some cases even over ice. There seems to be confusion in that sentence, an icebreaker "goes through ice" meaning it works in a region with ice not literally plowing through the ice. Although if the ice is loose and floating yes but an icebreaker is designed with a sloped bow that rides up onto ice and then the ship's weight pushes down breaking the ice. No ship pushes through ice it would be like trying to push on two ends of an egg. My dad worked for the Canadian Coast Guard for 33 years. He said for really thick ice (several meters) they'd sometimes have to use the ship's crane with a large cement block and pound at the ice at the sides of the ship. The crane is normally used for buoys. Sea ice, pack ice is like concrete great in compression but fails when a multi 100 ton ship in sitting on top (to a limit). This was the ship my dad served on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Earl_Grey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Earl_Grey
  - LiamMcCalloway 9y ago
    Both U.S. navy ships had damage consistent with being hit head-on by merchant vessels. We're talking about the navy ships' hulls and structure resisting forces necessary to slow down the container ship enough that the ships can disentangle. I would not underestimate the forces that applied.
  - chiph 9y ago
    My understanding is that the OOD can do it (obviously), or the officer in charge of CIC can command a turn (but had better have justification). There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      As I understand, the CIC Watch Officer reports to the OOD and ordinarily has no authority to order maneuvers (only the OOD or whoever either has been delegated the Conn by the OOD or assumed the Conn by authority—which the CO, XO, and Navigator can do—has that authority.)
  - JohnBooty 9y ago
    I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article. This question is what made me doubt the rest of the article, which is ostensibly written by somebody with some level of naval expertise. I have no naval expertise, and the rest of the article seemed quite logical, but it seems strange to me to insist that this collision shouldn't have seriously damaged the Fitzgerald. 1. The Arleigh Burke class destroyers aren't big ships; the cargo ship was over 3x the size. 9,000 tons for the USS Fitzgerald compared to 30,000 tons for the cargo ship: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/path-ship-hit-uss-fitzgerald.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/pa... 2. I am not sure that any ship ever designed by humankind has been built to withstand a 20-knot broadside collision with a vessel of its own size without taking any damage, much less one with three times as much mass. As I said above I'm no naval expert; please take me to school if I'm spectacularly wrong here. 3. While it would certainly be possible to build such a ship, the weight of the ship would need to be increased by an incredible amount. It would be a very slow ship. Or it could be fitted with a much more powerful propulsion system, at a tremendous cost - more weight, more fuel consumption, more $$$. 3a. Modern (the last 100+ years or so) ship collision survivability design principles basically revolve around bulkheads. It's impractical to make the entire hull thick enough to survive any conceivable disaster (because the boat still needs to float - you can't just add ridiculous amounts of armor everywhere) so the general principle here is to contain hull breaches, not to make sure that no hull breach ever occurs. 4. Generally, modern naval battles are not fought by ships ramming each other. 5. So we can understand why the Navy didn't optimize for that possibility, and at some point decided on a "please try not to let other ships ram you broadside" doctrine. Which made a tremendous amount of sense for a very long time, until our ships' crews decided to start tossing themselves about into the paths of oncoming vessels. 6. Seriously though: building ships to withstand this kind of thing without a scratch is crazy for basically the same reasons why building planes to withstand midair collisions with bigger planes (or, really, anything bigger than a seagull) is crazy. All things considered, hats off to the designers of the Arleigh Burke class and the Fitzgerald's and John McCain's damage control crews. Considering the amounts of force involved here and differences in mass it's actually quite admirable that the god damn ships didn't snap in half or sink instantly.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I thought there was always an Officer of the Deck empowered to make decisions in these situations? As I understand there must be an OOD, and there may also be a Conning Officer (usually the Jr. OOD) delegated under him and a Command Duty Officer above him, all with authority over shiphandling. > I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article. As I understand, that's expected; warships are lighter, designed for speed and agility, and never double hulled (because that compromises speed and agility.)
    - agrajag 9y ago
      There isn't a command duty officer when underway - the operational chain when it comes to shiphandling is Captain->OOD->Conning officer. Even on smaller boats like minesweepers there'll still be a conning officer, though often it's a more senior enlisted.
  - Animats 9y ago
    The big question in all this is "what the hell was the OOD doing before the collision"? Whoever had the deck had primary responsibility for knowing the situation around the ship. Here's a comment by someone who's been the OOD in those waters.[1] The other ship should have been seen tens of miles away on radar, and miles away visually. A destroyer has more than enough maneuverability to avoid almost any collision. Here's a Burke-class making a hard 180 degree turn.[2] Those ships have 108,000 horsepower gas turbines, huge dual props, and large dual rudders. If the OOD calls for an emergency maneuver, a direction change happens fast. This isn't some underpowered, heavily loaded freighter. Why isn't the Navy disclosing more about this? Are they hiding something? Eventually it's going to come out. [1] https://www.facebook.com/richard.nikoley/posts/473488339650238 https://www.facebook.com/richard.nikoley/posts/4734883396502... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs
- deleted 9y ago
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- ars 9y ago
  > But unable to steer away because of a lack of orders to do so. Is this actually the case? They saw the collision coming but were forbidden to do anything? Or are you just engaging in conjecture? Because if that is actually the case then it reminds me of NASA and Challenger.
beambot 9y ago
> And how, in 2017, when any civilian can purchase a handheld Iridium satellite phone for less than the price of the latest iPhone and a portable EPIRB for much less, could the communications system of a US Naval warship be so damaged and the ship’s leadership so shaken, that it takes the ship a full thirty minutes to transmit a Mayday (via Cell Phone no less)? Appalling.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Now that's a pretty simple question. The Navy especially is filled with little empires, and acquiring anything is a chance for each prince to put their mark on the world. Military (and government) acquisitions are an appalling mess, those that win bids are the ones that are experts at navigating the process to win bids, and not necessarily those with engineering prowess.
nl 9y ago
The Navy will relieve the admiral in charge of the service’s 7th Fleet based in Japan in response to four embarrassing accidents this year, two of which killed sailors at sea, two U.S. officials said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22/in-the-navy-a-premier-surface-fleet-faces-new-scrutiny-after-deadly-disasters-at-sea/?tid=pm_pop https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22...
dmix 9y ago
Well, from a completely cynical perspective I'm curious if this is what it takes to get government agencies with an operating policy completely disconnected from reality to start functioning properly. Similar to how the competition between the CIA/FBI and the two-decade-too-late lack of connection between information systems prevented them from being able to detect 9/11 despite having multiple (disconnected) early indicators. I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know the American Navy (and Airforce) are completely disconnected from the reality of modern warfare by still being obsessed with billion dollar aircraft carriers and expensive 'stealth' jets from a bygone era (3-4 decades ago) which would be the lowest hanging fruit in any modern war. Basically billion dollar machines that will be predictably destroyed within the early hours of any combat by a barrage of low cost missiles and highly mobile small attack boats by today's well known adversaries. Although those are the disconnects from the highly complex real-world situations their stated mandates would put them in...whereas crashing into a commercial boats in high-traffic sea lanes seems like something that no sophisticated Navy should suffering from twice in a few months...let alone having multiple fatalities from each. So I'm not sure how to react to this honestly. Other than having zero surprise that it's happening to one of the bigger modern governments where disfunction is the status quo and cronyism outranks tangible progress. [1] https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a-fake-aircraft-carrier-how-can-you-tell/ https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a...
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know ... The War Nerd is stimulating and entertaining, but the author, John Dolan, is a sometime English professor with no military expertise or experience. Per Wikipedia, his "PhD thesis on the literary works of the Marquis de Sade." Apparently, he did geek out on military hardware books when he was young, so there's that. On the other hand, as I said, it's a fun, stimulating read. If you like Dolan, I recommend his old publication (where the War Nerd originally appeared, AFAIK), The Exile, if you can find it. I've never read anything like it.
  - warcher 9y ago
    That was quite the ad hominem right there.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
There's a human factor here that I think cuts close to some startup practices: sleep deprivation. The watch schedules and setup for sailors is just ridiculous - https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain_collides_with_merchant_ship/dlx2esb/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain... You wouldn't let a civilian heavy equipment operator or truck driver work under that level of sleep deprivation.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  don't we (for some reason) seem to demand similar schedules from medical residents, people who are operating with our very lives (let alone heavy machinery or trucks)?
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    There's some evidence that shorter shifts cause errors too, because you have to hand patients off between doctors more often, and you lose information. I don't know what the state of the science is on this but it's one issue (of many). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.h...
    - GVIrish 9y ago
      Seems to me like the solution is to work on improving handoffs rather than trading the risk of handoffs for the risk introduced by sleep deprivation. From the medical professionals I know, handoff problems are partly because of missing/difficult to find/ignored information in charts and in healthcare IT systems. Improving on that front might be a way to allow a switch to more sensible schedules that don't invite bleary-eyed mistakes from doctors/residents.
      - colechristensen 9y ago
        Give everyone paper, pens, handwriting lessons, and AI powered OCR. Healthcare IT systems are a mess, and taking writing away from people makes them worse at their jobs. Every medical professional I've ever managed to get talking about healthcare IT gave me the impression that it gets in the way more than helps. The ... lets call it ergonomics of record keeping are vitally important in medicine and plenty of other disciplines. Computers have been used as a way to enforce and expand bureaucratic rules, not as a tool to make record keeping more expressive and powerful.
rurounijones 9y ago
“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.” Colonel John Boyd, USAF Cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 Cough
- dmoy 9y ago
  Well now I know where Walter Jon Williams got his ideas about dumb rigid military doctrine in Dread Empire's Fall. I thought that sort of stupid was fiction, wow.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  ...and we wonder why we haven't won a war, or even honorably withdrawn from one, since WWII. (Wars in the Caribbean don't count. Talking about Grenada would sort of prove my point...)
  - nl 9y ago
    Gulf War 1 was pretty successful.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      It wasn't a win for the same reason Korea wasn't. The troops still haven't come home, because if they did everything they "accomplished" would collapse immediately.
      - nl 9y ago
        Gulf War 1 (1991) involved removing Iraq from Kuwait. It was entirely successful, and the troops withdrew. It involved leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq until the entirely different and disastrous Gulf War 2.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        USA soldiers have continuously occupied Kuwait, Saudi, and Iraq since that time. Famously, their ongoing presence in Saudi was cited as a "justification" for 9/11, a decade later. Good job guys!
killjoywashere 9y ago
> How then does half of the complex ship loose power completely? What? You don't think a massive midships collision would disrupt of power distribution? I'm amazed the ship had power at all. If you want an example of brittle power distribution look at the 2011 outage of all San Diego county: one maintenance worker at the Arizona border did that. Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city. > did the damage control efforts result in a reduced situational awareness after the collision? Yes. Definitely. Being that it was dark out didn't help. Fog of war. > What design and construction tradeoffs were made that resulted in a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership None. If you drive a semi into the side of an F-1 race car, that race car is going to be hella worse for the wear. Anyone who has ever played American football understands the actor with more kinetic energy is going to come out on top in a collision. Konrad's shriller lines, as above, make it difficult for me to focus on the rest of the topic. He raises some good points. Unfortunately, he also lambasts Richardson for looking into "operational tempo, trends in personnel, material, maintenance and equipment." Well, actually, those were exactly the things I would think should be looked into. Konrad has some decent points, but tread lightly while reading. Unless you know something about ships, it'll be hard to pick out what makes sense.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Konrad seems more reliable when one considers he wrote this back in June: My criticism come not from a lack of respect but from the knowledge that even the best run organizations have things they need to improve… and, for the US Navy, avoiding collisions with civilian ships in congested waters certainly needs improvement. [0] He wasn't wrong! [0] http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-answers/ http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-an...
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city. That's not exactly what happened. I was skeptical that a Naval ship's generator could be quickly and safely connected to the power grid during a short term (~12 hour) power outage, so I looked it up: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/in... Officials also thanked the U.S. Navy for powering up generators aboard its many ships in port, freeing up the utility to restore power sooner to other customers. So it sounds like the Naval ships switched from shore power to their own onboard generators, which meant that the utility didn't need to restore power to them, and that as the restored power, the considerable electrical load from large vessels didn't need to be restored immediately. I'd be surprised if a modern carrier even had a feasible way to get the power from the main generator off-board and into a common electrical grid.
csense 9y ago
How is it that the world's most advanced technological nation in 2017 can't keep its navy ships from running into each other?
- ciconia 9y ago
  1. Too much technology. Without their gadgets American soldiers would be helpless. 2. Too much money. Warships costing billions, war plans costing $100m. A ship is sunk? Let's just throw more money at the Navy. 3. A superiority complex. "We're the best, biggest, strongest, richest, and morally superior to all other nations. We can't possibly be wrong."
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  I'll give you a hint. Its the technology. More specifically, over reliance on it. I'm speculating, but my cyberwarfare spider sense is tingly all over. Perhaps some entity is testing new GPS spoofing, hijacking, or other similar things? What confuses me the most is someone with NVGs should a seen the thing and raised hell. Either they didn't, or did and didn't get a response in time. The human factor of having sailors should always be part of the failsafes to prevent exactly this kind of complacence, if that's what it is. For what its worth, I am speaking outside of my expertise, being from the men's department of the Navy.
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    No ship captain would rely solely on GPS charting displays to avoid a collision, because they know that not all ships report positioning data (Navy ships, for example rarely report AIS data because they don't want to be easily tracked) So it's not GPS spoofing that caused this collision. If the ship ran aground, sure, I could believe they followed their GPS onto the ground.
    - arca_vorago 9y ago
      Then how has this happened so many times in the recent past? Its easy to say "a captain wouldn't do X", but I'm having a hard time understanding how this happened without such a level of complacence. Obviously there should be multiple mechanisms, but none of them worked. Why? Also I said GPS or similar. Obviously they shouldn't be relying on AIS data from other ships alone, why did radar not pick it up? Why did the bridge not see it with flir/nv? Something really isn't making sense here.
Animats 9y ago
I read that report. It's all about post-collision damage control efforts. There's nothing about the events leading up to the collision. The timeline starts at the collision. Presumably there's a more useful report internal to the Navy.
yread 9y ago
After listening to http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/ http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/ after the Fitz collision I was surprised we don't see more collisions. When I sail with my mates the cockpit is more disciplined than their bridge.
classicsnoot 9y ago
I know it is a stretch, but there is enough unexplainable error that is not uncommon in past events to indicate the possibility of a bit more going on behind the scenes. words are worth their weight in gold, and double from the mouth of a non-expert. Regardless, if some malicious software had found its way into the navigation system causing an accident like this, i would do my best (were it my responsibility) to hush up the whole thing, up to and including unfair firings and forced resignations. I know this feels wrong, but i am reminded of the brave and morally ambiguous members of Ultra during WWII. Time and again, they did not act on good intel that would have saved lives because keeping the enemy in the dark was the most important objective. Nonetheless, this is little more than daydreaming. The US Navy is in a very hard place to be. The US Navy is about the size of every navy in the world combined. It is the second largest air force in the world. It operates concurrently in every maritime zone on the planet. It is supposed to be able to provide humanitarian relief as well as the fire of god at a moments notice to almost any location. Accidents happen regardless of training. I think the author is dead on in terms of institutionalizing bad habits, but at the same time we do not know the whole story.

71 points by protomyth 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

I'd hate to have been the helmsman on the Fitzgerald and the McCain, knowing a collision was imminent. But unable to steer away because of a lack of orders to do so. (If they had, they would have been brought up on charges, in which their saving the vessel would have been a consideration, but not an excuse for their action)

protomyth 9y ago
I thought there was always an Officer of the Deck empowered to make decisions in these situations? I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It's my understanding that the bow of the containership struck the side of the warship. The bow of a ship is typically much stronger than the side. I suspect that the damage report would be very different - if not a sinking, then catastrophic damage to the containership, and little damage to the warship if the situation was reversed.
  - dghughes 9y ago
    > The bow of a ship is typically much stronger than the side Especially if it travels through ice in northern nations like here in Canada, ice is like reinforced concrete. A certain amount of ice not icebreaker level but even an icebreaker rides up onto ice and breaks it with the ship's own weight.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Only a handful of ships are reinforced to travel over light ice. They're called "ice strengthened" or "ice class" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_class). They're really not intended to charge head-long into ice, but are safer when in waters that may contain random and hard to spot chunks of ice. I'm not aware of any American combat ships outfitted to that standard. In fact, when it comes to ice-hardened ships in general the US has shockingly few, perhaps only two depending on maintenance cycles: https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/icebreakers-and-u-s-power-separating-fact-from-fiction/ https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/icebreakers-and-u-s-power-... An icebreaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker) is meant to go charging through and in some cases even over ice. They're tough as hell compared to most ships. The reason the bow is stronger isn't because of ice, it's because of the pressure exerted on the bulbous bow. It's a spherical protrusion that will have to be tougher or it'll collapse.
      - dghughes 9y ago
        > An icebreaker is meant to go charging through and in some cases even over ice. There seems to be confusion in that sentence, an icebreaker "goes through ice" meaning it works in a region with ice not literally plowing through the ice. Although if the ice is loose and floating yes but an icebreaker is designed with a sloped bow that rides up onto ice and then the ship's weight pushes down breaking the ice. No ship pushes through ice it would be like trying to push on two ends of an egg. My dad worked for the Canadian Coast Guard for 33 years. He said for really thick ice (several meters) they'd sometimes have to use the ship's crane with a large cement block and pound at the ice at the sides of the ship. The crane is normally used for buoys. Sea ice, pack ice is like concrete great in compression but fails when a multi 100 ton ship in sitting on top (to a limit). This was the ship my dad served on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Earl_Grey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Earl_Grey
- LiamMcCalloway 9y ago
  Both U.S. navy ships had damage consistent with being hit head-on by merchant vessels. We're talking about the navy ships' hulls and structure resisting forces necessary to slow down the container ship enough that the ships can disentangle. I would not underestimate the forces that applied.
- chiph 9y ago
  My understanding is that the OOD can do it (obviously), or the officer in charge of CIC can command a turn (but had better have justification). There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    As I understand, the CIC Watch Officer reports to the OOD and ordinarily has no authority to order maneuvers (only the OOD or whoever either has been delegated the Conn by the OOD or assumed the Conn by authority—which the CO, XO, and Navigator can do—has that authority.)
- JohnBooty 9y ago
  I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article. This question is what made me doubt the rest of the article, which is ostensibly written by somebody with some level of naval expertise. I have no naval expertise, and the rest of the article seemed quite logical, but it seems strange to me to insist that this collision shouldn't have seriously damaged the Fitzgerald. 1. The Arleigh Burke class destroyers aren't big ships; the cargo ship was over 3x the size. 9,000 tons for the USS Fitzgerald compared to 30,000 tons for the cargo ship: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/path-ship-hit-uss-fitzgerald.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/pa... 2. I am not sure that any ship ever designed by humankind has been built to withstand a 20-knot broadside collision with a vessel of its own size without taking any damage, much less one with three times as much mass. As I said above I'm no naval expert; please take me to school if I'm spectacularly wrong here. 3. While it would certainly be possible to build such a ship, the weight of the ship would need to be increased by an incredible amount. It would be a very slow ship. Or it could be fitted with a much more powerful propulsion system, at a tremendous cost - more weight, more fuel consumption, more $$$. 3a. Modern (the last 100+ years or so) ship collision survivability design principles basically revolve around bulkheads. It's impractical to make the entire hull thick enough to survive any conceivable disaster (because the boat still needs to float - you can't just add ridiculous amounts of armor everywhere) so the general principle here is to contain hull breaches, not to make sure that no hull breach ever occurs. 4. Generally, modern naval battles are not fought by ships ramming each other. 5. So we can understand why the Navy didn't optimize for that possibility, and at some point decided on a "please try not to let other ships ram you broadside" doctrine. Which made a tremendous amount of sense for a very long time, until our ships' crews decided to start tossing themselves about into the paths of oncoming vessels. 6. Seriously though: building ships to withstand this kind of thing without a scratch is crazy for basically the same reasons why building planes to withstand midair collisions with bigger planes (or, really, anything bigger than a seagull) is crazy. All things considered, hats off to the designers of the Arleigh Burke class and the Fitzgerald's and John McCain's damage control crews. Considering the amounts of force involved here and differences in mass it's actually quite admirable that the god damn ships didn't snap in half or sink instantly.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I thought there was always an Officer of the Deck empowered to make decisions in these situations? As I understand there must be an OOD, and there may also be a Conning Officer (usually the Jr. OOD) delegated under him and a Command Duty Officer above him, all with authority over shiphandling. > I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article. As I understand, that's expected; warships are lighter, designed for speed and agility, and never double hulled (because that compromises speed and agility.)
  - agrajag 9y ago
    There isn't a command duty officer when underway - the operational chain when it comes to shiphandling is Captain->OOD->Conning officer. Even on smaller boats like minesweepers there'll still be a conning officer, though often it's a more senior enlisted.
- Animats 9y ago
  The big question in all this is "what the hell was the OOD doing before the collision"? Whoever had the deck had primary responsibility for knowing the situation around the ship. Here's a comment by someone who's been the OOD in those waters.[1] The other ship should have been seen tens of miles away on radar, and miles away visually. A destroyer has more than enough maneuverability to avoid almost any collision. Here's a Burke-class making a hard 180 degree turn.[2] Those ships have 108,000 horsepower gas turbines, huge dual props, and large dual rudders. If the OOD calls for an emergency maneuver, a direction change happens fast. This isn't some underpowered, heavily loaded freighter. Why isn't the Navy disclosing more about this? Are they hiding something? Eventually it's going to come out. [1] https://www.facebook.com/richard.nikoley/posts/473488339650238 https://www.facebook.com/richard.nikoley/posts/4734883396502... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ars 9y ago
> But unable to steer away because of a lack of orders to do so. Is this actually the case? They saw the collision coming but were forbidden to do anything? Or are you just engaging in conjecture? Because if that is actually the case then it reminds me of NASA and Challenger.

beambot 9y ago

> And how, in 2017, when any civilian can purchase a handheld Iridium satellite phone for less than the price of the latest iPhone and a portable EPIRB for much less, could the communications system of a US Naval warship be so damaged and the ship’s leadership so shaken, that it takes the ship a full thirty minutes to transmit a Mayday (via Cell Phone no less)? Appalling.

colechristensen 9y ago
Now that's a pretty simple question. The Navy especially is filled with little empires, and acquiring anything is a chance for each prince to put their mark on the world. Military (and government) acquisitions are an appalling mess, those that win bids are the ones that are experts at navigating the process to win bids, and not necessarily those with engineering prowess.

nl 9y ago

The Navy will relieve the admiral in charge of the service’s 7th Fleet based in Japan in response to four embarrassing accidents this year, two of which killed sailors at sea, two U.S. officials said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22/in-the-navy-a-premier-surface-fleet-faces-new-scrutiny-after-deadly-disasters-at-sea/?tid=pm_pop https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22...

dmix 9y ago

Well, from a completely cynical perspective I'm curious if this is what it takes to get government agencies with an operating policy completely disconnected from reality to start functioning properly. Similar to how the competition between the CIA/FBI and the two-decade-too-late lack of connection between information systems prevented them from being able to detect 9/11 despite having multiple (disconnected) early indicators. I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know the American Navy (and Airforce) are completely disconnected from the reality of modern warfare by still being obsessed with billion dollar aircraft carriers and expensive 'stealth' jets from a bygone era (3-4 decades ago) which would be the lowest hanging fruit in any modern war. Basically billion dollar machines that will be predictably destroyed within the early hours of any combat by a barrage of low cost missiles and highly mobile small attack boats by today's well known adversaries. Although those are the disconnects from the highly complex real-world situations their stated mandates would put them in...whereas crashing into a commercial boats in high-traffic sea lanes seems like something that no sophisticated Navy should suffering from twice in a few months...let alone having multiple fatalities from each. So I'm not sure how to react to this honestly. Other than having zero surprise that it's happening to one of the bigger modern governments where disfunction is the status quo and cronyism outranks tangible progress. [1] https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a-fake-aircraft-carrier-how-can-you-tell/ https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a...

forapurpose 9y ago
> I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know ... The War Nerd is stimulating and entertaining, but the author, John Dolan, is a sometime English professor with no military expertise or experience. Per Wikipedia, his "PhD thesis on the literary works of the Marquis de Sade." Apparently, he did geek out on military hardware books when he was young, so there's that. On the other hand, as I said, it's a fun, stimulating read. If you like Dolan, I recommend his old publication (where the War Nerd originally appeared, AFAIK), The Exile, if you can find it. I've never read anything like it.
- warcher 9y ago
  That was quite the ad hominem right there.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

There's a human factor here that I think cuts close to some startup practices: sleep deprivation. The watch schedules and setup for sailors is just ridiculous - https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain_collides_with_merchant_ship/dlx2esb/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain... You wouldn't let a civilian heavy equipment operator or truck driver work under that level of sleep deprivation.

mgkimsal 9y ago
don't we (for some reason) seem to demand similar schedules from medical residents, people who are operating with our very lives (let alone heavy machinery or trucks)?
- roywiggins 9y ago
  There's some evidence that shorter shifts cause errors too, because you have to hand patients off between doctors more often, and you lose information. I don't know what the state of the science is on this but it's one issue (of many). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.h...
  - GVIrish 9y ago
    Seems to me like the solution is to work on improving handoffs rather than trading the risk of handoffs for the risk introduced by sleep deprivation. From the medical professionals I know, handoff problems are partly because of missing/difficult to find/ignored information in charts and in healthcare IT systems. Improving on that front might be a way to allow a switch to more sensible schedules that don't invite bleary-eyed mistakes from doctors/residents.
    - colechristensen 9y ago
      Give everyone paper, pens, handwriting lessons, and AI powered OCR. Healthcare IT systems are a mess, and taking writing away from people makes them worse at their jobs. Every medical professional I've ever managed to get talking about healthcare IT gave me the impression that it gets in the way more than helps. The ... lets call it ergonomics of record keeping are vitally important in medicine and plenty of other disciplines. Computers have been used as a way to enforce and expand bureaucratic rules, not as a tool to make record keeping more expressive and powerful.

rurounijones 9y ago

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.” Colonel John Boyd, USAF Cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 Cough

dmoy 9y ago
Well now I know where Walter Jon Williams got his ideas about dumb rigid military doctrine in Dread Empire's Fall. I thought that sort of stupid was fiction, wow.
jessaustin 9y ago
...and we wonder why we haven't won a war, or even honorably withdrawn from one, since WWII. (Wars in the Caribbean don't count. Talking about Grenada would sort of prove my point...)
- nl 9y ago
  Gulf War 1 was pretty successful.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    It wasn't a win for the same reason Korea wasn't. The troops still haven't come home, because if they did everything they "accomplished" would collapse immediately.
    - nl 9y ago
      Gulf War 1 (1991) involved removing Iraq from Kuwait. It was entirely successful, and the troops withdrew. It involved leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq until the entirely different and disastrous Gulf War 2.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        USA soldiers have continuously occupied Kuwait, Saudi, and Iraq since that time. Famously, their ongoing presence in Saudi was cited as a "justification" for 9/11, a decade later. Good job guys!

killjoywashere 9y ago

> How then does half of the complex ship loose power completely? What? You don't think a massive midships collision would disrupt of power distribution? I'm amazed the ship had power at all. If you want an example of brittle power distribution look at the 2011 outage of all San Diego county: one maintenance worker at the Arizona border did that. Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city. > did the damage control efforts result in a reduced situational awareness after the collision? Yes. Definitely. Being that it was dark out didn't help. Fog of war. > What design and construction tradeoffs were made that resulted in a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership None. If you drive a semi into the side of an F-1 race car, that race car is going to be hella worse for the wear. Anyone who has ever played American football understands the actor with more kinetic energy is going to come out on top in a collision. Konrad's shriller lines, as above, make it difficult for me to focus on the rest of the topic. He raises some good points. Unfortunately, he also lambasts Richardson for looking into "operational tempo, trends in personnel, material, maintenance and equipment." Well, actually, those were exactly the things I would think should be looked into. Konrad has some decent points, but tread lightly while reading. Unless you know something about ships, it'll be hard to pick out what makes sense.

jessaustin 9y ago
Konrad seems more reliable when one considers he wrote this back in June: My criticism come not from a lack of respect but from the knowledge that even the best run organizations have things they need to improve… and, for the US Navy, avoiding collisions with civilian ships in congested waters certainly needs improvement. [0] He wasn't wrong! [0] http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-answers/ http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-an...
Johnny555 9y ago
Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city. That's not exactly what happened. I was skeptical that a Naval ship's generator could be quickly and safely connected to the power grid during a short term (~12 hour) power outage, so I looked it up: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/in... Officials also thanked the U.S. Navy for powering up generators aboard its many ships in port, freeing up the utility to restore power sooner to other customers. So it sounds like the Naval ships switched from shore power to their own onboard generators, which meant that the utility didn't need to restore power to them, and that as the restored power, the considerable electrical load from large vessels didn't need to be restored immediately. I'd be surprised if a modern carrier even had a feasible way to get the power from the main generator off-board and into a common electrical grid.

csense 9y ago

How is it that the world's most advanced technological nation in 2017 can't keep its navy ships from running into each other?

ciconia 9y ago
1. Too much technology. Without their gadgets American soldiers would be helpless. 2. Too much money. Warships costing billions, war plans costing $100m. A ship is sunk? Let's just throw more money at the Navy. 3. A superiority complex. "We're the best, biggest, strongest, richest, and morally superior to all other nations. We can't possibly be wrong."
arca_vorago 9y ago
I'll give you a hint. Its the technology. More specifically, over reliance on it. I'm speculating, but my cyberwarfare spider sense is tingly all over. Perhaps some entity is testing new GPS spoofing, hijacking, or other similar things? What confuses me the most is someone with NVGs should a seen the thing and raised hell. Either they didn't, or did and didn't get a response in time. The human factor of having sailors should always be part of the failsafes to prevent exactly this kind of complacence, if that's what it is. For what its worth, I am speaking outside of my expertise, being from the men's department of the Navy.
- Johnny555 9y ago
  No ship captain would rely solely on GPS charting displays to avoid a collision, because they know that not all ships report positioning data (Navy ships, for example rarely report AIS data because they don't want to be easily tracked) So it's not GPS spoofing that caused this collision. If the ship ran aground, sure, I could believe they followed their GPS onto the ground.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Then how has this happened so many times in the recent past? Its easy to say "a captain wouldn't do X", but I'm having a hard time understanding how this happened without such a level of complacence. Obviously there should be multiple mechanisms, but none of them worked. Why? Also I said GPS or similar. Obviously they shouldn't be relying on AIS data from other ships alone, why did radar not pick it up? Why did the bridge not see it with flir/nv? Something really isn't making sense here.

Animats 9y ago

I read that report. It's all about post-collision damage control efforts. There's nothing about the events leading up to the collision. The timeline starts at the collision. Presumably there's a more useful report internal to the Navy.

yread 9y ago

After listening to http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/ http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/ after the Fitz collision I was surprised we don't see more collisions. When I sail with my mates the cockpit is more disciplined than their bridge.

classicsnoot 9y ago

I know it is a stretch, but there is enough unexplainable error that is not uncommon in past events to indicate the possibility of a bit more going on behind the scenes. words are worth their weight in gold, and double from the mouth of a non-expert. Regardless, if some malicious software had found its way into the navigation system causing an accident like this, i would do my best (were it my responsibility) to hush up the whole thing, up to and including unfair firings and forced resignations. I know this feels wrong, but i am reminded of the brave and morally ambiguous members of Ultra during WWII. Time and again, they did not act on good intel that would have saved lives because keeping the enemy in the dark was the most important objective. Nonetheless, this is little more than daydreaming. The US Navy is in a very hard place to be. The US Navy is about the size of every navy in the world combined. It is the second largest air force in the world. It operates concurrently in every maritime zone on the planet. It is supposed to be able to provide humanitarian relief as well as the fire of god at a moments notice to almost any location. Accidents happen regardless of training. I think the author is dead on in terms of institutionalizing bad habits, but at the same time we do not know the whole story.