Does the Pentagon Come Clean About Military Disasters?

Freeo | 06/19/2017 | Charles O'Connell

[CharlesOConnell]

Is honest accounting about military mistakes the rule, or the exception. The disaster of the USS Fitzgerald's collision with another naval vessel, to the loss of 7 servicemen's lives, is being proclaimed "a mystery". Is the mystery only in the Navy's obstruction about the real news, or do the military services and the Pentagon customarily exercise transparency in accounting for their actions to the taxpayers who foot the bill?

[pepsionice]

Typically, on a daily basis....things like this don’t occur. So when they do...there is a necessity to fly in a team which look at all data, interview people as to what they were doing, and establish a minute-by-minute report. It’ll be at least ten days before you start to hear what transpired.

Somewhere on that bridge...someone who was supposed to be paying attention to various conditions, simply screwed up or some massive system failure occurred. It’s going to be hard to blame the captain because he was in his bunk and one of the folks actually injured. He may end taking the fall for this for incompetent people running the ship, or for a system failure which was already known.

[Flintlock]

Get real.

This was NO ‘collision’.

This was a deliberate RAMMING. Now, take it from there........

[treetopsandroofs]

FWIW, CharlesO did call the other ship a “naval” vessel....

[silverleaf]

Let the Japanese Coast Guard and the USN do their jobs
Looking at the marine track data and the damage pictures,
Theres at least a plausible case that the Cargo Ship pulled an erratic course change and ran down the Navy Ship by overtaking her and steering into her starboard side
No one has heard peep from the cargo ship owners and crew
This scenario still,leaves the USN culpable for not maintaining situational awareness, not maintaining adequate watch and not taking evasive actions to avoid the collision

[Chgogal]

Please ping me when you find out. It may be months from now.

[libertylover]

Can modern radar see through thick fog, or does it just bounce back?
In the clear I don’t see how you could fail to see a target the size of a navy ship much less a container ship.

[LS]

Don’t jump to conclusions. A Navy ship had another collision w a Japanese fishing boat about 6 weeks ago.

Something wrong with radars/watch.

[PJBankard]

Sadly, the captain, regardless of where he was when the incident occurred or how much actual fault is his for the incident, is responsible for the ship and in the end will be relieved of duty.

[bgill]

No, they don’t.

[LS]

I asked Team Trump to look into this and previous collision w Japanese vessel. Bannon a former Navy guy.

[UCANSEE2]

No one (officially) has even yet attempted to explain why a huge container ship would make 2 Crazy Ivans, then do a U-TURN just to run into the Navy ship. Normally, the owner of the container ship would fire a captain who wasted time and fuel taking that crazy path.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

I read report this morning that the time of collision has been changed to 1:30am vs the 2:30am as originally reported.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

The collision happened at around 1:30 a.m. but it was not until 2:25 a.m. that the container ship informed the Japanese coastguard of the accident, said coastguard spokesman Takeshi Aikawa told Reuters.

[deport]

Image isn't downsized in order to give better info on timing, etc.

[SJSAMPLE]

They almost always fall back on “command climate” in order to nail the captain.

[StormPrepper]

Typically, on a daily basis....things like this don’t occur.

Not to be rude, but this is a very clueless statement. I actually did a triple take...

Accidents happen all time in the military. All the time. You only hear about the ones that will make for good ratings.

When I was on the John F. Kennedy we missed a collision by 3 feet one. I watched four sailors get washed overboard from a giant wave. Three guys cut in half when an arresting gear wire broke. My division officer was killed when he flew into the ocean at 400 knots in an F14.

I was personally was blown off the flight deck of the Kennedy.

Guys sucked down jet intakes and run over by jets. We were averaging about 1 death every month. And serious injuries daily.

I was on the USS Independence when it caught fire in '83. I'm the one that reported the fire. It burned up a third of the ship and we ended up in dry dock for 6 months.

Oh, and I personally watched a helicopter lose tail rotation in the north Atlantic and take the whole crew into the ocean not a half a mile from the bow of the carrier.

My last duty assignment was an aide to the Commanding Office of Naval Operations Base, Norfolk. Part of my job was to pick up the secret and eyes only communications that all base CO's around the world get every day. These include all the threats and issues that happening around the world. I used to read them because I had clearance.

The incident reports were nearly an inch thick every day. Stuff that you will never hear about in the news. Ships hitting mines, etc...

LOL! This stuff happens every day.

The reason you were allowed to know about this is because it involved a foreign ship and there was the possibility of a foreign news service reporting it first. The Navy department obviously wanted to get out in front of the story.

[Conan the Librarian]

The radar on my sailboat does.

If the stuff they have on board doesn’t, then we are all in trouble.

[SmokinGun]

There is a great need to learn from past mistakes. Seamanship is what NAVY means. There is also the fact that 7 (Seven) lives were lost. This not combat, it was a transit to Home Port. Near misses and Hits can not be played off as insignificant, and if as in this case, Sailors lives are lost then something needs to be changed. The sooner then the better. My theory is Manning levels on these newer USN ships is so low that personnel are EXPECTED to fill in all the spaces without adq training, or sleep. Look at the pumping stations, where are all the fire teams ? I love those new destroyers but I they were developed with the idea that less manning is the way of the future. I also believe that equipment failure may have played a part. This may have explained the lag time before reporting the inicident. If for any reason, either of these things are the reason for these deaths, then action needs to be taken. The Navy should not be in business of excusing careless behavior. If its bad ships, fix them, not enough manning? recruit more, bad equipment replace it. Lethality of a war instrument is about the damage inflicted on the enemy not itself I just hope that people who write into these posts remember that there 7 families affected by this incident.

[Mr.Unique]

What obstruction have you noted?