Maybe someone is hacking, spoofing, or otherwise screwing with electronic systems — this is way too much to seem like coincidence, all these recent naval accidents in East Asian waters!!
Red China????
Although I would think that if they had this capability they would save it for an actual battle situation, rather than demonstrate it now and let us work on counter-measures..... but something is waaaaay off about these repeated accidents.
It should be noted that although the vessel has no Chinese connections, China was protesting it and other vessels routes as recently as eight days ago.
I think they have to play with their electronic toys. I have seen things that made me think my ship was being played with electronically going back to the 70’s and on.
Malacca Straits is no place to let your guard down, or have social engineering as your forte. Some of the highest traffic in the world are in those narrow confines.
Our gyro pilot went out in the Malacca Straits once when I was on watch. I noticed as it happened and had the helmsman switch to hand steering by magnetic compass. Gyro came back on as soon as we came back on course Don’t know if someone targeted us or if it was a one time rare event.
They put these things on ships nowadays called windows. You can see right through them. Even a stealth ship can be spotted using them. /s.
I’m going out on a limb here but I’m betting that both the Fitz and the McCain knew the other ship was there. Nothing gets within 70 miles on these ships that doesn’t show up on sensors. The problem is making a decision to do something when the risk of collision becomes apparent, or forgetting that the other ship - a loss of situational awareness - is there when you begin to maneuver. It is a huge collecrove brain fart, what the maritime safety folks would call a failure of bridge resource management.
It is first and foremost a failure of command to train and lead their crews. In combat these folks would be swimming on day one. If they can’t avoid a 20 knot tanker, how are they going to evade a sea skimming anti ship missile and a couple torpedos?