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Good grief!

What are they using for collision avoidance systems?  Rear view mirrors?

From the link:

Aside from the USS McCain and USS Fitgerald incidents, the Navy crusier USS Antietam ran aground dumping over 1,000 gallons of oil in Tokyo Bay in Februray. In May, another cruiser, USS Lake Champlain, hit a South Korean fishing vessel.

Midshipmen ought to be encouraged given career advancement opportunities.

 

There is no way given the avoidance systems on these ships along with the eyes of look outs and lastly the maneuvering capabilities of these ships that an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer  should be hit by any other vessel much less a huge oil tanker. 

There has to be head scratching going on at the highest levels of the Navy wondering if our protection and defensive systems have been compromised by foreign adversaries.  I just heard where several naval careers of  major officers on the Fitzgerald are given up due to that incident so you know other officers, on ther ships, are very aware of the consequences of similar incidents and are on increased alert to avoid such events.

There are several layers of protection and counter measures to protect these Arleigh Burke-class destroyers from attack from missiles and other weapons much less something as slow and large as another sailing vessel.  The greatest insult and embarrassment is that it happened with such a huge bulky, slow, cargo vessel as an oil tanker.  IRAN and other nations have fast attack small boats that are designed to move stealthy, quite, and very fast and be so maneuverable as to potentially threaten a ship the likes of a destroyer and often IRAN makes runs at our ships to test such capabilities.  The fact that here two events involving bulky cargo ships that should be far outclassed by the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers indicating major failures on many several levels and systems along with indications of a breakdown at the human level should give great immediate concern especially  in the light of sailing in the hostile waters of the South China sea and the waters around North Korea what with the tensions there. 

It should be readily apparent that if you cannot identify and avoid a lumbering cargo oil tanker that you surely cannot identify and avoid an incoming missile moving at hyper speeds and as small as they are.  I'm sure some very tough questions are being ask at the highest levels over the course of the last 24 hours.

I suspect that the Ol'bama era Navy made sure that the men were well trained---in cultural and sexual preferences/perversion sensitivity classes. After spending most of the training budget on the important things there was little left over for the less important things like seamanship and war fighting skills.

gbrk posted:

There is no way given the avoidance systems on these ships along with the eyes of look outs and lastly the maneuvering capabilities of these ships that an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer  should be hit by any other vessel much less a huge oil tanker. 

Unless things have drastically changed in the Navy since I retired 11 years ago, any collision involving a U.S. Navy ship can be blamed on human error.  Besides the watch team in the pilot house, there are port and starboard lookouts and a stern lookout.  These lookouts are the ships last chance, after RADAR, to detect other ships.  All talk on a common internal network.  If a lookout sees a ship, he is supposed to report it to the Officer of the Deck.  If the ship continues in visual range, the lookouts are supposed to continue reporting on the ship.  The lookouts are supposed to be trained to determine if other nearby ships are on a collision course.  So, somehow, all these eyes failed to see the other ship, or failed to report what they saw, or were not trained properly, or whatever...

Ultimately, it is human error.

Unless all the lights were out on the other ship, which should have been picked up and tracked by RADAR. 

I have no doubt that like with most industrial catastrophes and  accidents involving major loss of life there are multiples of levels that have broken down, the human for sure one of those.  I know in the industries that I worked in when there was any kind of major accident most investigations revealed breakdowns on many levels involving several people and not just one system and one person. 

That said let's hope that is the issue and not some actual breech of our Navy's defense system that would render the ships protection measures inactive.   One report or article that I read did go there and indicated that they thought it was potentially a cyber attack upon our Navy and one in which they were probing deeper to find out just out much more they could hurt us.

Human breakdown is a given, at least to me, given the extreme maneuverability of the destroyer.  Heck if a seasoned and trained crew was on board and at the helm even if the tanker had been overtaken by pirates or Muslim combatants  with a desire to sink the destroyer it would be a futile task given the destroyer's power and maneuvering capabilities.  It could simply out run and out maneuver most any other ship in it's class and others close to it's size and that's not even taking into consideration the radar capabilities and built in protection measures that surely are secret and classified. 

I believe what we will have is yet another major turnover of personnel on the John McClain..  Then there also may be something to the pacification of our military turning them into powder puff soldiers as Obama and many liberals are so good at doing.  Putting more emphasis on sex changes than combat awareness.   At least a new chief is in control but it's going to take a while for his way of life to filter down and replace the old Sherrif.

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