[vtsnowedin]

I can not get past that these sailors lost their lives while no enemy was attacking their ship and their lives were lost due to a failure of command and control.

[Newfie]

Here is one mans opinion

https://inhomelandsecurity.com/reason-n ... t-vessels/

[vtsnowedin]

Here is one mans opinion

https://inhomelandsecurity.com/reason-n ... t-vessels/

They just were asleep at the wheel.

That is pretty much the bottom line. Hard to explain that to their wives and children.

[Newfie]

Navy going to prosecute both COs, pretty hard charges.

https://news.usni.org/2018/01/16/former ... collisions

[KaiserJeep]

Yes, hard charges indeed. But the Admirals and everybody in the Chain of Command above these CO's also bear some responsibility for the lack of training and poor state of preparedness on these vessels.

[Newfie]

The OD in the Fitzgerald plea bargained to 3 months half pay and a letter of reprimand. Very light punishment. Other defendants seem to be taking a hard line of defense. Current circumstantial events seem to indicate the Navy does NOT want a fully disclosed examination of these incidents. Accusations of the ship being in a chronic state of disrepair, etc. no good summary link in this yet. I’ll post one if I can find it.

[KaiserJeep]

Do we know if the OD was actually conning the ship when the collision occurred, or if he was on the bridge?

[Tanada]

The OD in the Fitzgerald plea bargained to 3 months half pay and a letter of reprimand. Very light punishment. Other defendants seem to be taking a hard line of defense. Current circumstantial events seem to indicate the Navy does NOT want a fully disclosed examination of these incidents. Accusations of the ship being in a chronic state of disrepair, etc. no good summary link in this yet. I’ll post one if I can find it.

Not a light punishment for a career naval officer, that letter means he will never get another promotion. The best he can now hope for is to get his 20 in and have retirement to the private sector with his pension intact. Before this collision he had about a 50-50 chance of making Admiral someday depending on his political connections which would have let him stay in service until he aged out or died.

[KaiserJeep]

In theory, the OD is on the bridge, alert, and scanning the area, or at least overseeing the spotters whose duty it is to visually observe other vessels in the area. This is how things worked from the wooden ship era onwards.

The problem is that technology overcame this scheme decades ago. In the 1970s, the USCG vessels I saw, everything from 30' plywood boats up to WHEC's (White High Endurance Cutters) had autopilots. The course was set on an analog dial and the engines were throttle controlled with servo motors hooked to a lever on the bridge. The manual ship's wheel and engine controls still existed as backups, but everything was automated and Otto the Pilot was actually controlling the boat almost always. Likewise, the radar set "sees" many miles further than human eyes. The capabilities of the automated controls actually promote carelessness.

Nowadays, everything is controlled by computer mouse and keyboards. Everybody can literally be asleep and as long as somebody eyeballs the radar screen every 15 minutes or so, collisions can be avoided. The OD can even stroll to the wardroom for coffee and a pastry.

The a**hole covers are of course firmly in place, we'll never know the precise truth. Ultimately the Captain and the OD are responsible and one or both will take the fall. It sounds like the OD has copped a plea and will probably turn on the others, implicating them with damaging testimony.

[Newfie]

Apparently the freighter was tracking 25-30 targets.

The Fitz could only see 8.

The Fitz with BILLIONS of sophisticated radars and a dedicated staff could not see the freighter they hit.

Think about that.

[KaiserJeep]

I saw the retirement of the USCG lightships in the early 1970s. In fact the Lightship Nantucket was the last one in service.

Lightship duty was long periods of boredom relieved by minutes of utter terror. The Merchant ships all had radars, automated controls,and minimum crews, and in theory there was always somebody on the bridge to avoid collisions. But Otto was steering almost always, and the USCG Lightship was anchored right at the entrance to the Boston channel reserved for large ships. As a tanker or container ship bears down on your lightship, you blast the air horn, hoping to wake up the crew of the merchant vessel. You also started the diesel engine, hoping you could throttle up and drop the anchor chain and dodge the oncoming ship. All too often, the lightship would be cut in half and sink with all hands. This happened to the LV-117 Nantucket on January 6, 1934, when she was cut in half by the HMS Olympic, the sister ship of HMS Titanic.

Finally 1970's tech including GPS enabled the construction of a station-keeping buoy that replaced the Nantucket on that most difficult duty station. It was anchored, but when the anchor dragged, it would raise anchor, start it's engine, and return to station.

Station-keeping buoys are still lost in collisions, but at least they are unmanned.

Newfie, the USS Fitzgerald is an original Arleigh Burke class destroyer, costing about $1.5B after all the technology upgrades. The two surface search radars do not cost "billions", they total about $4M, peanuts compared to the SPY antiaircraft radar array, or the sonars used for anti-submarine warfare. The surface-search radars are variants of commercial systems, it is even possible that the container ship had the same electronics.

[Newfie]

We have spent BILLIONS building the Arleigh Buck class vessel. If the vessels are essentially useless then it is billions wasted.

The surface search radars May have been the same, but these vessels have more expensive, supposedly more advanced radars for target tracking and acquisition.

The freighter was tracking 25-30 ships with their surface search radar and a 2 man bridge crew. The Fitz was tracking about 8 with about 15 people split between the bridge and CIC.

If the Fitz can track 25-30 with 2 men and off the shelf hardware while delivering the goods and he Fitz can’t, the Fitz is a waste. If it extends to all the rest of the class, given the number of accidents recently, then it is reasonable to consider the whole fleet of AB vessels a waste of many billions.

More likely the waste of billions is attributable to PPM Piss Poor Management. It is we have incompetent nincompoops running the navy then they are responsible for wasting billions. Look at the new Ford class carrier.

Think of it this way: your town spent $100,000 on a high tech ambulance. But they never did a tune up and the day you had your heart attack they could not get it started. So you died. What was that ambulance worth on that day?

[KaiserJeep]

Newfie, the Arleigh Burke Guided Missile Destroyers have been in USN service since 1991. They are the commonest destroyer design, and were originally scheduled to be replaced by the Zumwalt class ships from 2016 onwards, which ended up being cancelled after 3 were launched and then more Arleigh Burke's were ordered. The Zumwalt's newer design did not improve performance, but cost more money.

In fact the Fitzgerald got two Battle E's for excellance in the recent past, it's not the ship that lacks performance, it's the present crew.

I got interested after I saw the science fiction movie Battleship (2012). The movie is a guilty pleasure for me, it is totally unlikely and unbelievable, but I can't help enjoying it. The invading aliens destroy three Arleigh Burke destroyers in battle, then their surviving crews board and take the USS Missouri battleship away from the museum dock and attack them with the "Big Mo's" 16-inch guns. If you ever played the Hasbro game "Battleship", there's a tie-in to that game in the movie as well.

BTW, the number of targets being tracked is a factor of which range setting is on the radar. In the case of a crowded seaway, the most useful setting would be the short range one, in order that you can pick out those vessels on a collision course.

I suspect nobody was even looking.

[Newfie]

If no one is looking in a crowded sea way is the ship still valuable or is it a waste?

Zumwalts a waste, ABs a waste, Ford class carriers that can’t catapult a waste, literal combat ships with interchangeable combat modular that don’t work a waste. It was a Arab that shot down an Iranian passenger jet.

So yeah, maybe they can stand off and lob a few guided middles at stationary targets provided there are no hostile s in the area.

Did you see the front page story (manybe hype?) that the pentagon can’t account for 21 TRILLION dollars. If over blown by an order of magnitude it is stunning.

According to prosecution the AB radar was on the wrong pulse width setting. According to defense the setting was controlled by an engineer in another compartment and the operator doesn’t know what pulse setting is being used. Really? I’ve used radar on aircraft and on my own boat. Pulse steering is proportional to range. Change on you change the other. Once upon a time I was even certified as a Marine radar technician by Uncle Sam. Sounds to me like they have made the whole operation bureaucratic and too complex. I guarantee you that the freighter, who was tracking 25-30 targets with two watch standers was getting far more value out of their cheap off the shelf commercial radar. BILLIONS down the toilet. If you can’t operate it it is WORTHLESS.

If you cluelessly run around at high speed on a poorly mainted vessel with an untrained, over worked, and fatigued crew you are worse than worthless, you are a hazard, a negative asset, a liability. You will hit something, get your name in the paper, be an embarrassment, and kill innocent people.

[KaiserJeep]

That figure is in fact way overblown. The Annual Federal budget was $3.94T last year, the entire military is $594B, which after entitlements is the largest discretionary part of spending. The entire Federal deficit is only $12T, so wherever you got that $21T is a really really inaccurate source of information.

[Newfie]

Yeah, makes my BILLIONS look like peanuts.

[Tanada]

The Arleigh Burke, though classed as a destroyer, is a shrunk down version of the Ticonderoga class air defense cruiser. Sure they can 'engage submarines and surface targets' but their main job is firing missiles, both against surface and air targets. The last dedicated 'destroyer' the US Navy built was back in the late 1970's and those have all long since retired because it was decided by those on high that missiles were the only important armament. They kept the small ASW suite of weapons but since the end of the cold war every weapon fired in anger has been a missile. Heck even the ASW torpedoes are launched by missile to strike at subs over the visible horizon. Point being when you focus all your energy on looking for air threats incoming or small terrorist type surface vessels like the boat that got the USS Cole back in 2000. From the time of the first gulf war to today the US Navy has been splitting its focus on defense against air and small boat attacks on the one hand and attacking with long range missiles mostly against shore targets with the other. Freighters don't fit in either class of focus so generally people get sloppy around them. They should not get sloppy, but human nature prevails. Unless the command staff keeps the watch standers aware and active they get sloppy.

[KaiserJeep]

I can't imagine that missiles would very useful against an armada of tiny suicide vessels

The Arleigh Burke class vessels have an official top speed of about 35mph, but have been reported to exceed 40mph. Not too many small craft can catch them, especially the typical scows in the Middle East. The four massive gas turbines total 105,000 bhp, and they have twin variable-pitch screws.

The USS Cole was attacked while tied to a buoy and fueling. Nobody has come close since.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

While all you say is true it misses the point.

That point being that the vessel was not maintained in a sea worthy state, broken equipment. It’s Captain and deck crew did not understand or adhere the fundamentals of navigation, more than doubling the normal speed and not obeying sea lanes. Standard operating procedures denied it the ability to use its most valuable asset in those conditions, not turning on AIS. The crew was over worked and fatigued, routine 20 hour wordays.

The design and intent of the AB is not in question. The point is that these expensive and complex pieces of equipment are being allowed to degrade through persistent long term equipment failure and the crew is not diligent and the command structure has not effect adequate management to correct these wrongs.

It’s not the ship; it’s the management. Appearances are they are only successful in set piece engagements in a no threat situation.

Unfortunately once can look across the Navy and find other similar incidents of mismanagement, particularly in procurement. But the other two AB incidents had similar characeristics. Broken or misused or unused systems, incompent staff, and failed procedures.

In short, the Navy is a mess, an expensive mess.