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>We create rules enforcing mandatory sleep requirements stupidly believing that we can eliminate the potential for a user of the system to be drowsy while at th

>We create rules enforcing mandatory sleep requirements stupidly believing that we can eliminate the potential for a user of the system to be drowsy while at the controls. >stupidly believing Dick move by author to reveal his level of ignorance of USN operation tempo around McCain collision until the last few paragraphs. There were lol 4 fucking surface ship collisions and a grounding in westpac in 2017 because sailors were ran ragged, leading to operation pause. UX wasn't the primary problem. Sailors weren't "drowsy", they were sleep deprived, hopped up on stimulants etc due to manning shortages and long deployments, and likely lax training (due to shortages), which caused USS Connecticut accident a few years later. I'm sure you can improve UI for audience subsisting on 3-5 hours of sleep, but maybe the more pressing thing to try is to get them more sleep. IIRC there was study on navy sleep hyigene and like 100% of sailors in bottom quartile experienced bewilderment/confusion. https://news.usni.org/2017/09/18/admiral-captain-removed-part-investigation-uss-john-s-mccain-uss-fitzgerald-collisions-head-surface-forces-puts-early-retirement-request https://news.usni.org/2017/09/18/admiral-captain-removed-par...

moconnor 2y ago
Ignorance is not a “dick move”, it’s having something to learn. The extreme sleep deprivation doesn’t really conflict with the author’s point that better UI could have avoided this. Better sleep could have too.
- DSingularity 2y ago
  Certainly true but I think he is saying that the author should have indicated his limited knowledge of the context of the collision early on in the article.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    Yes, I'm being overly uncharitable, but it takes very inept research to study Mccain accident and not be exposed to the other 3 accidents, or be generally aware of the state of 7th fleet / condition of sailors from any of the reports. 4 major accidents do not happen in that specific fleet (out of 7) because of UXUI, when the other 6 fleets operate the same ships. Extra side eye of commentary/conclusion reducing cripplingly bad culture around sleep to "drowsiness" because elevating UXUI / blaming checkbox works less well when operators are mentally not there. You don't UXUI truckers so they can drive safely on a few hours of sleep, you regulate how long they can drive to make sure they get enough sleep.
    - InsomniacL 2y ago
      > UXUI truckers so they can drive safely on a few hours of sleep I think truckers have significant UXUI AND regulation on how long they can drive. The Author does a good job oh highlighting the issues around UXUI that have not been analysed enough anywhere else and also raises the other issues which have been reported on. > "first and only public source of real design criticism" > "Add inexperience, insufficient training, and lack of sleep to the situation and you have a recipe for disaster"
  - davisoneee 2y ago
    In the 3rd paragraph (of which the preceding 2 were very short) ... "Before going any further, I want to make it clear that I am just a civilian piecing together this story from whatever information I can glean from the internet."
    - singleshot_ 2y ago
      Having read some great articles on the spate of pacific fleet collisions contemporaneous with the McCain incident, this is when I stopped reading this pointless article.
      - Woodi 2y ago
        And I came to that comment page to say: "I really want to memorize all that hilarious design problems" - like eg. physical steering wheel not working and then suddenly turns itself into a exactly wrong direction... You know for https://xkcd.com/742/ https://xkcd.com/742/ purposes. But then I read few comments on navy systemic sleep depravation... And how air force solved this 60-70 years ago. And how some peoples says UX problem is not a problem becouse sleep is a problem (and there are contemposomething evidences of other problems) and obviously two or more of them can't compound simultaneously ! /s Just want to add: if there is so basic problem with working conditions then there obviously are much more human (and not only) problems in that navy force. Seems quite identical to what Russia is demonstrating in last years and in case of conflict results will be identical - a lot of lost american lives for stupid reasons. Just pointing obviousness.
  - jki275 2y ago
    The author isn't an expert on anything Naval. He's clearly a design guy, and his analysis ok in that respect. 7th Fleet's issues are well known, but not necessarily outside the community of those of us who lived them.
actionfromafar 2y ago
I didn't read it necessarily like that. It can also mean that even with fully rested sailors, the same confusion can still happen again, because the interface is inherently confusing. In a sudden life-and-death situation combined with information overload, a bad interface can be what tips the scale into disaster.
pjc50 2y ago
This is also very important for lorry drivers, to the extent that there's all sorts of tracking and enforcement for how long they're driving. But in this case it sounds like poor staff management: this isn't a convenience store running on zero-hour contracts, they should have a shift plan in place that provides adequate cover before even leaving port.
- maxglute 2y ago
  Bingo. Problem is USnavy has large + increasing at sea staff/billet shortages, but at the same time has to (or insist on) on doing more missions with less sailors. You can build a better checkbox, but can you build a good enough checkbox to allow a lorry driver to drive 20 hours a day?
  - alright2565 2y ago
    Of course you can. Just take a cue from the standard physical throttle design: https://i.imgur.com/mK0vYth.png https://i.imgur.com/mK0vYth.png Now there's no such concept as a ganged/unganged state. You move the middle (which has the larger area, since it's the most common tool) to move them together, and the side sliders if you want to control thrust individually.
- nradov 2y ago
  The shift (watch) plan is set by the ship's officers but they have to work with the personnel that they're assigned. There is a constant shortage, especially for experienced sailors on surface vessels. But they have to put to sea anyway to accomplish the mission, which causes personnel burnout due to overwork thus worsening the shortage in a vicious cycle. The only real solutions would be for Congress to either significantly increase personnel funding, or trim back the mission set to make it sustainable at current personnel levels. There is no political support for either solution and so the problem will persist.
  - ianbicking 2y ago
    If they are putting people on shift who are too tired to competently do their job, I assume many of those jobs aren't actually important. Some of the jobs are important (and when done wrong lead to these kinds of incidents), but given how widespread sleep deprivation is from people's comments here, clearly a lot of the jobs can be done very poorly without affecting operations. That sounds like a management issue. Congress doesn't manage how ships run. The Navy makes all those choices itself.
Kamq 2y ago
> Dick move by author to reveal his level of ignorance of USN operation tempo around McCain collision until the last few paragraphs. There were lol 4 fucking surface ship collisions and a grounding in westpac in 2017 because sailors were ran ragged I read it as "mandatory sleep requirements don't actually mean people don't show up to a shift without enough sleep". Basically acknowledging the difference between how the world is on paper and how the world is in reality. Even if there's rules about people getting enough sleep, designing a system that assumes everyone who works it will get enough will get people killed.
aaron695 2y ago
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cameldrv 2y ago
Yes I’ve heard from multiple sources that the Navy’s training is not what it once was. For officers, much of their training is done on the ship via self study in their spare time instead of in a classroom. I think that in this case probably the UI could have been better, but it was functional, and with a well trained helmsman, it shouldn’t have presented a safety issue.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > For officers, much of their training is done on the ship via self study in their spare time instead of in a classroom The problem here isn't "instead of in a classroom", it's "self study in their spare time" instead of "learning by doing the job under the supervision of more experienced people". The way I learned to drive ships was by driving ships under the supervision of more experienced ship drivers. Sure, there was some classroom preparation before that, but the biggest value add was the supervised hands-on time.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - simtel20 2y ago
    What's your source on this? Beyond age-basee chauvinism/get off my lawn type tropes, what about fitness of a generation is different now from past decades?
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      The average physical health due to activity levels hasn’t been as low historically. Not every wealthy nation is dealing with this to the extent.
      - skeaker 2y ago
        This is not a source
pc86 2y ago
I mean it only takes five sentences for the author to make it clear he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about: > > Before going any further, I want to make it clear that I am just a civilian piecing together this story from whatever information I can glean from the internet.
maxglute 2y ago
E: since many are quoting authors preface about not knowing much, but doing their own research My beef is, given disclaimer, I read piece to end thinking author made good faith effort at research, only to see author characterize, near conclusion, sailor/operator severe lack of sleep hygiene as "drowsiness" which can be designed around. That expecting enforcement of better operational conditions is "stupid", which may feel true in military context. But 7th fleet went from 4 accidents in one year to none after brief operational pause for a month, I dont think the result is because USN bureaucracy figured out a way to improve UXUI on Arleigh Burkes software. Also note the other 6 fleets with... more relaxed tasking relative to west pac weren't suffering from same level of dysfunction. UXUI is important yes, but sometimes operations are ran so badly that you should prioritize improving the way it's run instead of pretending it can be bandaid over with a better checkbox.
- tonetegeatinst 2y ago
  Yeah a better steering wheel will not help address people who fall asleep at the wheel or are drowsy and mix up the gas and brake.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    But if the wheel hides whether it has been turned and which way then chances of remediation of a situation are much lower. Design matters. I'm surprised that in the description of the incident there is no mention of a checklist like pilots use?
Xen9 2y ago
A factor to note: Proportion of humans who know how to use touch UI but not the other UI. --- I wonder if there exist systems that measure response times, error presses etc. consistently over time for different mediums. There is huge amout of underlying behaviour to model from fact that one mistake may cause more risk in different types of ship-environment-task scenarios to the fact that probably certain variables need mapping to others, which complicates analysis little bit. --- Empirical data from use is actually not sufficient for testing. For the designs, one essentially wants to subject then to high voltages, acid, sea water, high pressures, coffee et cetera in extreme amount systematically in a lab. For complex systems like ships, it may be reasonable to even simulate what'd happen if your good component was in a ship and someone put a shit replacement part there. --- Extreme non-seen-in-field testing includes extrems of the human condition. Labeling buttons with icons instead of text makes things more understandable to those who don't speak English, but what if your crew spends one and half year underwater waiting for nuclear launch command, staring at those icons? One should design interfaces such that even extreme delusions, depressive tendencies, anxiety will not reduce the crew members ability to do their job. Or if someone loses a hand, they will still be able to work.
qo34j52o84j5 2y ago
I ran the nuclear power plant on the USS La Jolla (SSN-701) for five years. Per the Engineering Department Organization Manual, you're not allowed to do any operations in the power plant if you haven't gotten a certain number of hours of sleep in the past however many hours. This is the most laughably ignored rule on the ship. It's very normal to have people operating the power plant after being awake for 40 hours straight. (I still remember getting yelled at for falling asleep during training because I'd been awake for >24 hours, and the training was about the importance of being well rested and how the Department of Transportation developed its sleep requirements by studying railroad operations. Maximum irony.) Naval Reactors, the organization that supervises the whole navy nuclear program, knows this is the norm and helps hide it. I remember, during the briefing prior to every reactor startup, the engineering officer would say loud and proud "If you don't think you can perform your duties for whatever reason, any reason at all, if you're too tired, raise your hand." One time I had been awake for more than a day straight and I was suicidal, I had been scheduled for 12 hours on watch, 6 hours off watch for several days, so I said fuck it, and I raised my hand. "Per the EDOM, I am not allowed to stand watch because I've been awake for far too long." The engineer recommended me for Non-Judicial Punishment for 1) not being ready to stand watch and 2) having stood watch previously already too sleep deprived to stand watch. I wasn't actually punished because I threatened to call the DoD Inspector General. The whole system is rotten as fuck.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  While I obvious can't vouch for you, I absolutely can vouch that this is 100% believable and plausible.
  - jki275 2y ago
    Agree. Should not ever happen, but we all know it does.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  > I ran the nuclear power plant on the USS La Jolla (SSN-701) for five years. Per the Engineering Department Organization Manual, you're not allowed to do any operations in the power plant if you haven't gotten a certain number of hours of sleep in the past however many hours. This is the most laughably ignored rule on the ship. It's very normal to have people operating the power plant after being awake for 40 hours straight. And this is why aviators mock nukes. Because we actually understand what gets people killed and avoid it.
gwbennett 2y ago
Having spent 10 years as a Navy Nuclear Propulsion Operator on two different submarines operating the reactor plant, I can tell you I am not surprised by incidents like these. In order of importance: 1) Lack of sleep (it wasn't unusual to operate on no sleep over a 36-48 hour period) 2) Poor or insufficient training. Just because you are "trained or qualified" doesn't mean you know how to operate. 3) Poor or missing procedures (let's call it UI/UX for today's lingo). Many procedures were vague, and drawings were hard to understand. The Navy has a feedback system for this, but it often takes months/years to resolve. Having said all that, the issues pointed out in the comments and the article, including my comments, have existed for decades in the Navy. At some point, it comes down to the command's leadership and superiors to ensure these issues don't happen. A poorly designed checkbox is the last thing that caused this issue.
- gwbennett 2y ago
  It's good to see all the Navy nukes comments on this article. MM1/SS, one tour on an SSN, and one on an SSBN!
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  In your opinion, did any of those accidents occur in operations of some importance, small or large? What if the military simply ran fewer missions? So what if there were Chinese naval operations in a place where American operations occurred?
  - nradov 2y ago
    The military doesn't really have the autonomy to reduce their own mission set. The major missions in terms of maintaining certain capabilities or protecting against certain adversaries are assigned by Congress and the President. The military then has to figure out how to execute within a budget that, while enormous in absolute terms, is still inadequate for everything they're tasked to do. There is no political will to fix this problem.
- alexjplant 2y ago
  > Many procedures were vague, and drawings were hard to understand. The Navy has a feedback system for this, but it often takes months/years to resolve. When I worked for a DoD contractor I worked on a system that was designed to tighten one such feedback loop. The publicly-available copy regarding this unclassified effort [1] says that it was > [a] framework for an end-to-end Change Request (CR) workflow system that will improve turn-around time and speed to the fleet. We are leading the innovation of a paperless cockpit through the design and development of an eFC mobile application that will provide responsive, reliable information for our aircrews on mobile devices at the touch of a button. I thought that it was a pretty novel idea - it was certainly the most technically-progressive project I worked on when in defense contracting by a country mile. When I attended a program picnic at the Captain's house, however, I found no shortage of people who were skeptical of what we were building. When I pressed them for reasons why it basically amounted to "I learned what we have years ago and I don't want to change". Institutional rot is very real. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240821032432/https://webdev.amewas.com/home-page/our-services/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240821032432/https://webdev.am...
kstrauser 2y ago
The Navy has the stupidest possible ideas of sleep hygiene, boiling down to "it sucked for me so it should suck for the next guy, too". I had friends in departments who worked 6 hours on, 6 hours off, 6 hours on, 6 hours off repeatedly. In that pattern you never get a solid 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, ever. Yeah, it's possible that emergencies will arise where you have to work 24-48-more hours straight without relief because the ship is under attack, or on fire, or barely afloat. That's not a reason to try to kill sailors with sleep deprivation the rest of the time.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > The Navy has the stupidest possible ideas of sleep hygiene, boiling down to "it sucked for me so it should suck for the next guy, too". See also: medicine.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Definitely. Modern residency was literally shaped by a coke addict.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  Six and six is fine, if you actually do it. In reality, junior officers do six on watch, six on a computer doing paperwork, six back on watch, a couple hours eating/bathing/cleaning, then perhaps get five of actual sleep each day.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    It’s not. You can’t ever have a full night’s rest. That’s not sustainable.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      Navies have been doing some version of six and six for centuries. It isn't total bunk.
oatmeal1 2y ago
On the other hand, in a time of war, it's likely the exact same conditions of sleep depravation and poor training could exist. UX is the element that could be fixed permanently. The Navy absolutely should fix all of the issues in the NTSB report, and all the UX issues discussed in this blog post.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  Something similar came up when Ukraine sunk the Moskva. Some speculated that the Russian radar systems would require an operator to focus on a screen for hours at a time, while most western systems would notify the operator when something unexpected happened. This pretty much ensured that a soldier would fail during wartime. It's not that the US navy should operate by forcing sailors to forgo sleep, but their systems should be able to be operated by someone who has had very little sleep during actual combat. Touch screens seems counter to that. Two physical throttles, which can be moved either individually or together would be a much clearer indication of the current mode. Humans can feel extremely small misalignments, but trying to line up two lines on a monitor and we need to hold up a piece a paper to check if they are 100% aligned.
EnigmaFlare 2y ago
You're putting a lot of weight on the distinction between drowsy and sleep deprived in a casual comment at the end. How many people really know the distinction and use the correct word in the correct situation? He's clearly looking at it from a UI design perspective and other issues like you mentioned aren't the point of the article. Accidents have multiple causes. Somebody else might blame sleep deprivation and stimulants then a smart-ass would complain that they just waved away "confusing controls" without understanding how they worked.
Drunkfoowl 2y ago
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bpodgursky 2y ago
The thing that bothers me most about the navy sleep deficit is that this is a peacetime sleep deficit. If sailors are at the ragged edge of capacity in peacetime, how are we possibly setting them up to function in a real war, when things will be 3x more chaotic and stressful?
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  The Navy operational region in question isn't exactly in peacetime. It's not in full-scale war, either, but it's definitely not peace.
HenriTEL 2y ago
The normalization of deviance around lack of sleep and experience if definitely the number 1 issue, but come on. That design to maneuver the ship was fucked up at too many levels. > Thrust transfer during which different people can operate on each propeller. > Thrust transfer that automatically disable gang. > The steering rudder that gets reset when transferred. > The steering taking the current state of the steering wheel when transferred. > The manual mode that became the default mode, allowing the transfer of controls to empty stations. The problem with touchscreens is not the touchscreen, it's the abstraction that makes possibles things that would make no sense with real controls. Why would, at any point, the current position of controls be different depending on the station you're looking at?
cwmma 2y ago
I mean the real thrust here is that the controls were extremely confusing even when you weren't sleep deprived so sleep hygene is never going to be a fix for something that is frankly bewildering even when fully rested.
ForOldHack 2y ago
USN Ships are crowded, and unworkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision#/media/File:Greeneville_control_room_with_DVs.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville... Note: Japanese ships do not get into collisions. Why? Their trains run on time. You have 4 control surfaces? And a steering command? Why not have all 5 people looking at each other and communicating. Add two people who are Looking each direction to know where the ship is GOING? When you fix the organizational attitude, that its supposed to be hard...
- ForOldHack 2y ago
  You are again, talking about a massive organization that ran an aircraft into a sand bar, using Windows. "In 1983, just such a moment was jarringly interrupted when the USS Enterprise ran aground a mere 1,000 yards out from the shoreline. In a photograph released by the Naval Institute, the massive carrier tilts slightly to its side, with its crew positioned on the deck." https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uss-enterprise-navy-nuclear-powered-aircraft-carrier-ran-aground-207619 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uss-enterprise-navy-n...
anbotero 2y ago
There is a Chapter in “Turn the Ship Around”[1] where the author mentions a case of a navy officer (I think) that practically abandoned post because of all the unorganized ways and routines made him actually have sleep deprivation. There are other tidbits of information in the book, of course from one point of view, that are mentioned in other comments here that are still happening and it’s baffling to me, not because I believe 100% of the book, but because you’d think at some point they would get fixed or partially mitigated with a migration plan. I hate it such malpractices are still acceptable and even encouraged by an institution as important as the Navy. -------- [1]: https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/ https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/

moconnor 2y ago

Ignorance is not a “dick move”, it’s having something to learn. The extreme sleep deprivation doesn’t really conflict with the author’s point that better UI could have avoided this. Better sleep could have too.

DSingularity 2y ago
Certainly true but I think he is saying that the author should have indicated his limited knowledge of the context of the collision early on in the article.
- maxglute 2y ago
  Yes, I'm being overly uncharitable, but it takes very inept research to study Mccain accident and not be exposed to the other 3 accidents, or be generally aware of the state of 7th fleet / condition of sailors from any of the reports. 4 major accidents do not happen in that specific fleet (out of 7) because of UXUI, when the other 6 fleets operate the same ships. Extra side eye of commentary/conclusion reducing cripplingly bad culture around sleep to "drowsiness" because elevating UXUI / blaming checkbox works less well when operators are mentally not there. You don't UXUI truckers so they can drive safely on a few hours of sleep, you regulate how long they can drive to make sure they get enough sleep.
  - InsomniacL 2y ago
    > UXUI truckers so they can drive safely on a few hours of sleep I think truckers have significant UXUI AND regulation on how long they can drive. The Author does a good job oh highlighting the issues around UXUI that have not been analysed enough anywhere else and also raises the other issues which have been reported on. > "first and only public source of real design criticism" > "Add inexperience, insufficient training, and lack of sleep to the situation and you have a recipe for disaster"
- davisoneee 2y ago
  In the 3rd paragraph (of which the preceding 2 were very short) ... "Before going any further, I want to make it clear that I am just a civilian piecing together this story from whatever information I can glean from the internet."
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    Having read some great articles on the spate of pacific fleet collisions contemporaneous with the McCain incident, this is when I stopped reading this pointless article.
    - Woodi 2y ago
      And I came to that comment page to say: "I really want to memorize all that hilarious design problems" - like eg. physical steering wheel not working and then suddenly turns itself into a exactly wrong direction... You know for https://xkcd.com/742/ https://xkcd.com/742/ purposes. But then I read few comments on navy systemic sleep depravation... And how air force solved this 60-70 years ago. And how some peoples says UX problem is not a problem becouse sleep is a problem (and there are contemposomething evidences of other problems) and obviously two or more of them can't compound simultaneously ! /s Just want to add: if there is so basic problem with working conditions then there obviously are much more human (and not only) problems in that navy force. Seems quite identical to what Russia is demonstrating in last years and in case of conflict results will be identical - a lot of lost american lives for stupid reasons. Just pointing obviousness.
- jki275 2y ago
  The author isn't an expert on anything Naval. He's clearly a design guy, and his analysis ok in that respect. 7th Fleet's issues are well known, but not necessarily outside the community of those of us who lived them.

actionfromafar 2y ago

I didn't read it necessarily like that. It can also mean that even with fully rested sailors, the same confusion can still happen again, because the interface is inherently confusing. In a sudden life-and-death situation combined with information overload, a bad interface can be what tips the scale into disaster.

pjc50 2y ago

This is also very important for lorry drivers, to the extent that there's all sorts of tracking and enforcement for how long they're driving. But in this case it sounds like poor staff management: this isn't a convenience store running on zero-hour contracts, they should have a shift plan in place that provides adequate cover before even leaving port.

maxglute 2y ago
Bingo. Problem is USnavy has large + increasing at sea staff/billet shortages, but at the same time has to (or insist on) on doing more missions with less sailors. You can build a better checkbox, but can you build a good enough checkbox to allow a lorry driver to drive 20 hours a day?
- alright2565 2y ago
  Of course you can. Just take a cue from the standard physical throttle design: https://i.imgur.com/mK0vYth.png https://i.imgur.com/mK0vYth.png Now there's no such concept as a ganged/unganged state. You move the middle (which has the larger area, since it's the most common tool) to move them together, and the side sliders if you want to control thrust individually.
nradov 2y ago
The shift (watch) plan is set by the ship's officers but they have to work with the personnel that they're assigned. There is a constant shortage, especially for experienced sailors on surface vessels. But they have to put to sea anyway to accomplish the mission, which causes personnel burnout due to overwork thus worsening the shortage in a vicious cycle. The only real solutions would be for Congress to either significantly increase personnel funding, or trim back the mission set to make it sustainable at current personnel levels. There is no political support for either solution and so the problem will persist.
- ianbicking 2y ago
  If they are putting people on shift who are too tired to competently do their job, I assume many of those jobs aren't actually important. Some of the jobs are important (and when done wrong lead to these kinds of incidents), but given how widespread sleep deprivation is from people's comments here, clearly a lot of the jobs can be done very poorly without affecting operations. That sounds like a management issue. Congress doesn't manage how ships run. The Navy makes all those choices itself.

Kamq 2y ago

> Dick move by author to reveal his level of ignorance of USN operation tempo around McCain collision until the last few paragraphs. There were lol 4 fucking surface ship collisions and a grounding in westpac in 2017 because sailors were ran ragged I read it as "mandatory sleep requirements don't actually mean people don't show up to a shift without enough sleep". Basically acknowledging the difference between how the world is on paper and how the world is in reality. Even if there's rules about people getting enough sleep, designing a system that assumes everyone who works it will get enough will get people killed.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

cameldrv 2y ago

Yes I’ve heard from multiple sources that the Navy’s training is not what it once was. For officers, much of their training is done on the ship via self study in their spare time instead of in a classroom. I think that in this case probably the UI could have been better, but it was functional, and with a well trained helmsman, it shouldn’t have presented a safety issue.

pdonis 2y ago
> For officers, much of their training is done on the ship via self study in their spare time instead of in a classroom The problem here isn't "instead of in a classroom", it's "self study in their spare time" instead of "learning by doing the job under the supervision of more experienced people". The way I learned to drive ships was by driving ships under the supervision of more experienced ship drivers. Sure, there was some classroom preparation before that, but the biggest value add was the supervised hands-on time.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
[flagged]
- simtel20 2y ago
  What's your source on this? Beyond age-basee chauvinism/get off my lawn type tropes, what about fitness of a generation is different now from past decades?
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    The average physical health due to activity levels hasn’t been as low historically. Not every wealthy nation is dealing with this to the extent.
    - skeaker 2y ago
      This is not a source

pc86 2y ago

I mean it only takes five sentences for the author to make it clear he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about: > > Before going any further, I want to make it clear that I am just a civilian piecing together this story from whatever information I can glean from the internet.

maxglute 2y ago

E: since many are quoting authors preface about not knowing much, but doing their own research My beef is, given disclaimer, I read piece to end thinking author made good faith effort at research, only to see author characterize, near conclusion, sailor/operator severe lack of sleep hygiene as "drowsiness" which can be designed around. That expecting enforcement of better operational conditions is "stupid", which may feel true in military context. But 7th fleet went from 4 accidents in one year to none after brief operational pause for a month, I dont think the result is because USN bureaucracy figured out a way to improve UXUI on Arleigh Burkes software. Also note the other 6 fleets with... more relaxed tasking relative to west pac weren't suffering from same level of dysfunction. UXUI is important yes, but sometimes operations are ran so badly that you should prioritize improving the way it's run instead of pretending it can be bandaid over with a better checkbox.

tonetegeatinst 2y ago
Yeah a better steering wheel will not help address people who fall asleep at the wheel or are drowsy and mix up the gas and brake.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  But if the wheel hides whether it has been turned and which way then chances of remediation of a situation are much lower. Design matters. I'm surprised that in the description of the incident there is no mention of a checklist like pilots use?

Xen9 2y ago

A factor to note: Proportion of humans who know how to use touch UI but not the other UI. --- I wonder if there exist systems that measure response times, error presses etc. consistently over time for different mediums. There is huge amout of underlying behaviour to model from fact that one mistake may cause more risk in different types of ship-environment-task scenarios to the fact that probably certain variables need mapping to others, which complicates analysis little bit. --- Empirical data from use is actually not sufficient for testing. For the designs, one essentially wants to subject then to high voltages, acid, sea water, high pressures, coffee et cetera in extreme amount systematically in a lab. For complex systems like ships, it may be reasonable to even simulate what'd happen if your good component was in a ship and someone put a shit replacement part there. --- Extreme non-seen-in-field testing includes extrems of the human condition. Labeling buttons with icons instead of text makes things more understandable to those who don't speak English, but what if your crew spends one and half year underwater waiting for nuclear launch command, staring at those icons? One should design interfaces such that even extreme delusions, depressive tendencies, anxiety will not reduce the crew members ability to do their job. Or if someone loses a hand, they will still be able to work.

qo34j52o84j5 2y ago

I ran the nuclear power plant on the USS La Jolla (SSN-701) for five years. Per the Engineering Department Organization Manual, you're not allowed to do any operations in the power plant if you haven't gotten a certain number of hours of sleep in the past however many hours. This is the most laughably ignored rule on the ship. It's very normal to have people operating the power plant after being awake for 40 hours straight. (I still remember getting yelled at for falling asleep during training because I'd been awake for >24 hours, and the training was about the importance of being well rested and how the Department of Transportation developed its sleep requirements by studying railroad operations. Maximum irony.) Naval Reactors, the organization that supervises the whole navy nuclear program, knows this is the norm and helps hide it. I remember, during the briefing prior to every reactor startup, the engineering officer would say loud and proud "If you don't think you can perform your duties for whatever reason, any reason at all, if you're too tired, raise your hand." One time I had been awake for more than a day straight and I was suicidal, I had been scheduled for 12 hours on watch, 6 hours off watch for several days, so I said fuck it, and I raised my hand. "Per the EDOM, I am not allowed to stand watch because I've been awake for far too long." The engineer recommended me for Non-Judicial Punishment for 1) not being ready to stand watch and 2) having stood watch previously already too sleep deprived to stand watch. I wasn't actually punished because I threatened to call the DoD Inspector General. The whole system is rotten as fuck.

kstrauser 2y ago
While I obvious can't vouch for you, I absolutely can vouch that this is 100% believable and plausible.
- jki275 2y ago
  Agree. Should not ever happen, but we all know it does.
psunavy03 2y ago
> I ran the nuclear power plant on the USS La Jolla (SSN-701) for five years. Per the Engineering Department Organization Manual, you're not allowed to do any operations in the power plant if you haven't gotten a certain number of hours of sleep in the past however many hours. This is the most laughably ignored rule on the ship. It's very normal to have people operating the power plant after being awake for 40 hours straight. And this is why aviators mock nukes. Because we actually understand what gets people killed and avoid it.

gwbennett 2y ago

Having spent 10 years as a Navy Nuclear Propulsion Operator on two different submarines operating the reactor plant, I can tell you I am not surprised by incidents like these. In order of importance: 1) Lack of sleep (it wasn't unusual to operate on no sleep over a 36-48 hour period) 2) Poor or insufficient training. Just because you are "trained or qualified" doesn't mean you know how to operate. 3) Poor or missing procedures (let's call it UI/UX for today's lingo). Many procedures were vague, and drawings were hard to understand. The Navy has a feedback system for this, but it often takes months/years to resolve. Having said all that, the issues pointed out in the comments and the article, including my comments, have existed for decades in the Navy. At some point, it comes down to the command's leadership and superiors to ensure these issues don't happen. A poorly designed checkbox is the last thing that caused this issue.

gwbennett 2y ago
It's good to see all the Navy nukes comments on this article. MM1/SS, one tour on an SSN, and one on an SSBN!
doctorpangloss 2y ago
In your opinion, did any of those accidents occur in operations of some importance, small or large? What if the military simply ran fewer missions? So what if there were Chinese naval operations in a place where American operations occurred?
- nradov 2y ago
  The military doesn't really have the autonomy to reduce their own mission set. The major missions in terms of maintaining certain capabilities or protecting against certain adversaries are assigned by Congress and the President. The military then has to figure out how to execute within a budget that, while enormous in absolute terms, is still inadequate for everything they're tasked to do. There is no political will to fix this problem.
alexjplant 2y ago
> Many procedures were vague, and drawings were hard to understand. The Navy has a feedback system for this, but it often takes months/years to resolve. When I worked for a DoD contractor I worked on a system that was designed to tighten one such feedback loop. The publicly-available copy regarding this unclassified effort [1] says that it was > [a] framework for an end-to-end Change Request (CR) workflow system that will improve turn-around time and speed to the fleet. We are leading the innovation of a paperless cockpit through the design and development of an eFC mobile application that will provide responsive, reliable information for our aircrews on mobile devices at the touch of a button. I thought that it was a pretty novel idea - it was certainly the most technically-progressive project I worked on when in defense contracting by a country mile. When I attended a program picnic at the Captain's house, however, I found no shortage of people who were skeptical of what we were building. When I pressed them for reasons why it basically amounted to "I learned what we have years ago and I don't want to change". Institutional rot is very real. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240821032432/https://webdev.amewas.com/home-page/our-services/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240821032432/https://webdev.am...

kstrauser 2y ago

The Navy has the stupidest possible ideas of sleep hygiene, boiling down to "it sucked for me so it should suck for the next guy, too". I had friends in departments who worked 6 hours on, 6 hours off, 6 hours on, 6 hours off repeatedly. In that pattern you never get a solid 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, ever. Yeah, it's possible that emergencies will arise where you have to work 24-48-more hours straight without relief because the ship is under attack, or on fire, or barely afloat. That's not a reason to try to kill sailors with sleep deprivation the rest of the time.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
> The Navy has the stupidest possible ideas of sleep hygiene, boiling down to "it sucked for me so it should suck for the next guy, too". See also: medicine.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Definitely. Modern residency was literally shaped by a coke addict.
sandworm101 2y ago
Six and six is fine, if you actually do it. In reality, junior officers do six on watch, six on a computer doing paperwork, six back on watch, a couple hours eating/bathing/cleaning, then perhaps get five of actual sleep each day.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  It’s not. You can’t ever have a full night’s rest. That’s not sustainable.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    Navies have been doing some version of six and six for centuries. It isn't total bunk.

oatmeal1 2y ago

On the other hand, in a time of war, it's likely the exact same conditions of sleep depravation and poor training could exist. UX is the element that could be fixed permanently. The Navy absolutely should fix all of the issues in the NTSB report, and all the UX issues discussed in this blog post.

mrweasel 2y ago
Something similar came up when Ukraine sunk the Moskva. Some speculated that the Russian radar systems would require an operator to focus on a screen for hours at a time, while most western systems would notify the operator when something unexpected happened. This pretty much ensured that a soldier would fail during wartime. It's not that the US navy should operate by forcing sailors to forgo sleep, but their systems should be able to be operated by someone who has had very little sleep during actual combat. Touch screens seems counter to that. Two physical throttles, which can be moved either individually or together would be a much clearer indication of the current mode. Humans can feel extremely small misalignments, but trying to line up two lines on a monitor and we need to hold up a piece a paper to check if they are 100% aligned.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

You're putting a lot of weight on the distinction between drowsy and sleep deprived in a casual comment at the end. How many people really know the distinction and use the correct word in the correct situation? He's clearly looking at it from a UI design perspective and other issues like you mentioned aren't the point of the article. Accidents have multiple causes. Somebody else might blame sleep deprivation and stimulants then a smart-ass would complain that they just waved away "confusing controls" without understanding how they worked.

Drunkfoowl 2y ago

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bpodgursky 2y ago

The thing that bothers me most about the navy sleep deficit is that this is a peacetime sleep deficit. If sailors are at the ragged edge of capacity in peacetime, how are we possibly setting them up to function in a real war, when things will be 3x more chaotic and stressful?

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
The Navy operational region in question isn't exactly in peacetime. It's not in full-scale war, either, but it's definitely not peace.

HenriTEL 2y ago

The normalization of deviance around lack of sleep and experience if definitely the number 1 issue, but come on. That design to maneuver the ship was fucked up at too many levels. > Thrust transfer during which different people can operate on each propeller. > Thrust transfer that automatically disable gang. > The steering rudder that gets reset when transferred. > The steering taking the current state of the steering wheel when transferred. > The manual mode that became the default mode, allowing the transfer of controls to empty stations. The problem with touchscreens is not the touchscreen, it's the abstraction that makes possibles things that would make no sense with real controls. Why would, at any point, the current position of controls be different depending on the station you're looking at?

cwmma 2y ago

I mean the real thrust here is that the controls were extremely confusing even when you weren't sleep deprived so sleep hygene is never going to be a fix for something that is frankly bewildering even when fully rested.

ForOldHack 2y ago

USN Ships are crowded, and unworkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision#/media/File:Greeneville_control_room_with_DVs.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville... Note: Japanese ships do not get into collisions. Why? Their trains run on time. You have 4 control surfaces? And a steering command? Why not have all 5 people looking at each other and communicating. Add two people who are Looking each direction to know where the ship is GOING? When you fix the organizational attitude, that its supposed to be hard...

ForOldHack 2y ago
You are again, talking about a massive organization that ran an aircraft into a sand bar, using Windows. "In 1983, just such a moment was jarringly interrupted when the USS Enterprise ran aground a mere 1,000 yards out from the shoreline. In a photograph released by the Naval Institute, the massive carrier tilts slightly to its side, with its crew positioned on the deck." https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uss-enterprise-navy-nuclear-powered-aircraft-carrier-ran-aground-207619 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uss-enterprise-navy-n...

anbotero 2y ago

There is a Chapter in “Turn the Ship Around”[1] where the author mentions a case of a navy officer (I think) that practically abandoned post because of all the unorganized ways and routines made him actually have sleep deprivation. There are other tidbits of information in the book, of course from one point of view, that are mentioned in other comments here that are still happening and it’s baffling to me, not because I believe 100% of the book, but because you’d think at some point they would get fixed or partially mitigated with a migration plan. I hate it such malpractices are still acceptable and even encouraged by an institution as important as the Navy. -------- [1]: https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/ https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/