many years ago, when I was Cheng on a 2250 class tin can.
Before the old man would qualify you as an OOD you one of the seamanship drills he watched you perform was to con the ship for an hour using only engine speed on both propellers, no rudder. During the drill he would give you several course changes to execute. We also had to handle the ship with a crew using the hand wheels in the steering gear spaces, simulating a hydraulic failure to the steering gears. Challenging but doable.
With the variable speed props on the Burke, should have been able to do that without much problem. Don’t know if their steering engines have a manual mode.
the more puzzling question in both collisions: the nav systems and AIS all provide a lot of led time on collision. so what happened? i would imagine the collision alarms are impossible to silence or ignore, to the helm had to know they were on a collision course. did the other ship alter course? if they were struck on the port side it would appear they likely had right of way, but how could a combat ship with five minutes at least of warning fail to avoid?
the only thing i can think of is a murky chain of command and inability of those directly on deck to take action quickly.
Good info on maneuvering a Navy ship. Too bad the media doesn’t bother telling us anything. I guess they’re busy hyping click bait stories.