4 ms·

Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time is responsible. That's what the position means, if it means anything at all. The sailors could be poorly traine

Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time is responsible. That's what the position means, if it means anything at all. The sailors could be poorly trained, but the buck has to stop somewhere. How else can a command-structure organization work? At the very least, she'd have to effectively lose her job through loss of confidence in ability to command, even if she weren't court-martialed. Blaming higher leadership (which has also happened in these navy accident cases) in the military has the same problem. They're just products of their environment, too, put there ultimately by a chain of appointments ending with the President, Congress, and ultimately the voters. It's much better to focus on process improvement than on assigning blame. But command-authority organizations like the military don't really work that way, and it's difficult to improve the culture of the military when that culture is shaped by unwise demands — excessive operational demands, fiscal constraints, and directives that end up micro-managing and constraining what commanders do — from above. Even navy admirals have their hands tied in many ways, and they're just trying to do the best they can do with a bad hand.

pdonis 8y ago
> Even navy admirals have their hands tied in many ways, and they're just trying to do the best they can do with a bad hand. Trying, but still failing in this case. Playing a bad hand means you have to put more emphasis on the basics, not less. After all, ultimately military units are for fighting wars, and any war is going to be full of bad hands that you still have to play. A military that can't succeed in that kind of environment is not a military worth having.
nostrademons 8y ago
I'm curious then - how does the culture & process of the military get improved? Wartime, where everything and everyone that's ineffective gets discarded? Defeat, when the whole nation ostensibly being protected goes down?
hudibras 8y ago
>Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time is responsible. That's what the position means, if it means anything at all. The OOD is the very definition of a "You Had ONE Job!" job, and that one job is "Don't run into other ships or the land."
- Stranger43 8y ago
  Except that the systematic aversion to allow any delegation of power that haunts all western military forces, means that the reality is that the OOD ends up with dozens of contradictory tasks all of highest priority. On a merchent marine ship traveling that kind of waters there would be a team of 2-3 people with the most junior seaman present having more experience at see then the average junior US Navy officer, and no bullshit about having to coordinate with combat centers or signal intelligence in addition to having to navigate. Where as it sounds like several dozen of mostly inexperienced seaman was involved on the Fitzgerald incident.

pdonis 8y ago

> Even navy admirals have their hands tied in many ways, and they're just trying to do the best they can do with a bad hand. Trying, but still failing in this case. Playing a bad hand means you have to put more emphasis on the basics, not less. After all, ultimately military units are for fighting wars, and any war is going to be full of bad hands that you still have to play. A military that can't succeed in that kind of environment is not a military worth having.

nostrademons 8y ago

I'm curious then - how does the culture & process of the military get improved? Wartime, where everything and everyone that's ineffective gets discarded? Defeat, when the whole nation ostensibly being protected goes down?

hudibras 8y ago

>Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time is responsible. That's what the position means, if it means anything at all. The OOD is the very definition of a "You Had ONE Job!" job, and that one job is "Don't run into other ships or the land."

Stranger43 8y ago
Except that the systematic aversion to allow any delegation of power that haunts all western military forces, means that the reality is that the OOD ends up with dozens of contradictory tasks all of highest priority. On a merchent marine ship traveling that kind of waters there would be a team of 2-3 people with the most junior seaman present having more experience at see then the average junior US Navy officer, and no bullshit about having to coordinate with combat centers or signal intelligence in addition to having to navigate. Where as it sounds like several dozen of mostly inexperienced seaman was involved on the Fitzgerald incident.