Posted on 08/23/2017 4:29:32 PM PDT by Jagermonster
The unusual spate of collisions, two of them fatal, has called into question the US Navy’s level of preparedness, analysts say, and point to potential problems with training, maintenance, or sailors’ workload.
WASHINGTON—A recent spate of collisions involving US Navy ships from the Seventh Fleet, two of them fatal, has led the Navy to relieve that fleet’s commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, reportedly after his superiors lost confidence in his leadership.
The latest collision, Monday off the coast of Singapore, was between the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain and a Liberian-flagged tanker. Ten sailors were reported missing, and the Navy says divers have located the remains of some of those missing in flooded compartments of the destroyer.
The mishap follows a similar tragedy in June, in which seven sailors died when the USS Fitzgerald collided with a merchant vessel south of Japan. That followed two less serious but nonetheless unusual incidents involving ships of the Pacific-based Seventh Fleet in January and May. According to analysts, the collisions call into question the Navy’s level of military preparedness and point to potential problems with training, maintenance, and the workload endured by sailors. What is going on? It could all be down to coincidence – Monday’s collision, for example, occurred in a heavily traveled shipping lane – and any final conclusions on their cause will have to await the results of multiple investigations. Nevertheless, many analysts agree there may be some systemic problems at work here.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
An interesting take on that in Accidental Superpower.
The USS Jacksonville submarine collided with a fishing boat in the Strait of Hormuz a couple years back. Fortunately it just broke off the sub’s periscope. Navy needs to fix their problems.
Obama had DoD focused on transvestites?!
If it turns that up nobody will ever hear a word of it from any official source. I love my Navy, but it's the truth. It's too soon to draw any broad conclusions but every minute spent concentrating on social issues in training is a minute wasted to combat effectiveness. There are only so many minutes, after all. The duty of management is to prioritize and it doesn't help when anything at all other than efficiency gets priority in training and in the placement of personnel in critical positions. And it has. And if 17 sailors are now dead because of that a whole lot of heads should roll.
I can, without a doubt, say that ‘Chinese hacking’ had nothing to do with 4 Navy ships performing basic seamanship. There is no hack that makes a 8 story above the waterline tanker disappear. There is no hack that makes it invisible to the watch. There’s no hack that turns off passive sonar tracks nor any which can cloak it on navigational radar, much less the powerful radar arrays which can handle battle between a thousand ships and tracks for 48,000.
Arrogance, however, is a very common problem within the navy at the moment. You can look at shipper forums who constantly complain about US navy ships ordering other ships to change course when they are on a constant course. Get your massive cargo ship or tanker out of our path, we’re US Navy!
Yep, you’re US Navy with ships which can pop a rooster tail off the fantail and spin up past 25 knots, turn in less than a mile while at flank speed, and spin circles around every single cargo hauler in the Pacific. This event, like the others, are the equivalent of wrapping sports cars around trees.
But hey, the trees were hacked by the Russians/Chinese/PRNK/etc to stand in the way...
To be sure, there are undoubtedly other forces at play as well. And, as you note, any leader - military especially but even in business - must know the breaking point of a group and materials, and how close you can come (if you have to) to that point. If leadership simply goes beyond the breaking point over and over again, eventually it catches up.
BS, any able bodied seaman could have avoided the collision. Basic seamanship, the entire article is BS.
My nephew-in-law to be (niece’s fiance) was carrying an M240 around some of the finer neighborhoods of Afghanistan about 4 years ago. His comments on women in the military here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3415429/posts?page=24#24
He doesn’t have much use for all the stuff you IDed, either.
Even if there was hacking, the lookouts should have seen the lights of the ships from five to ten miles away and given proper bearings to the office of the deck.
Fewer ships, less money, greater workload equals worn out men and machines. Accidents are an entirely predictable result.
I won't get specific, but you would be surprised what maintenance can and should be deferred in the right situation. Particularly if you are in the vicinity of the other side, there are times when you accept your systems as is and keep the crew either rested or manning the operational equipment (and on a submarine quiet).
They need to answer to the families of those who have been needlessly been left to die in these accidents without a doubt. It goes to the basic moral character of those in command beyond whether they can make certain maneuvers under stress or not.
That’s why you have watch standers on the bridge! The actually are supposed to watch out for other vessels.
If they find it social engineering is involved in any of this they’re going to ignore it at all costs.
At least, that is the way it was under Obama. Now that Trump is in charge, maybe things will change.
It takes chutzpah to blame a failure of basic seamanship on the need for more taxpayer dollars. Sounds right out of the military-industrial complex lobbying playbook. Maybe we should spend more on the Navy. But before we blame these collisions on that, why not first look at the leadership aboard these two ships. Was Sanchez the right man for captain or could the Navy have chosen someone better? How was he selected and did diversity play a role?
Tailhook had fallout, even outside aviation. It wasted a lot of time on diversity/sensitivity training, which meant the men had less time for useful training, maintenance, and rest. I don't believe the training affected behavior among submariners at all, whether aboard our (then) all-female subs or when my men were ashore.
The threat of career-ending prosecutions had an effect - men avoiding all interactions with Navy women when possible, or walking on eggshells around women when interaction was necessary. That helped some women to avoid the rude/crude behaviors that had been common, but it also meant at times it was harder for them to hear what they needed to hear expressed as clearly as the men heard it. There were a few women so hypersensitive that I avoided them, but very few.
Note: I on occasion stopped the gratuitous abuse in shore commands. I also often ignored it, even when it was extremely gross. My standard was that if someone (that particular individual or the typical person in that position) would say the same thing to a man, I was okay with it around a woman, or stopped it whether the target was a man or a woman. If women were being singled out in the workplace, I stopped it.
He and others are asking the same question. They are so fed up of the crap he said.
And...Twidgets in the boiler room.
Gad !
Saw a video of a US Navy ship saying to a massive tanker they had to change course, and the tanker was telling him he would take a long time to change course and that the war ship had to. Eventually the war ship did , but it was an arrogant part of the Navy
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