USS Fitzgerald collides with ACX Crystal off coast of Japan

For the benefit of those from the peanut gallery, myself included.

El Faro.

ELTON C. "JEFF” OBYRNE

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DANG!! Click bait is in Webster!? Anyways, I have no issue with your journalistic nor you Naval expertise. I’m just grow weary from early speculation of any news story. I think on many of your points in you article you will be proved correct. I was a US Navy Submariner for 20 years, our motto is “if it’s gray, sink it”? (not our own of course!)
Jeff

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+1 Even if “The Terrorists” hijacked the Crystal and used it to wage a sneak attack on the Fitzgerald, I still want to know how it came to pass that the Fitzgerald couldn’t manage to get out of the way. I’d be more than a little embarrassed to talk about this if I was the US Navy.

They probably are. Will we ever get the full and unedited truth, or some smoke and mirror explanation from that quarter?

Well since it’s the same organization that brought us SUBSAFE, you should not by default expect smoke and mirrors.

Brushing it off by stating all were incompetent on the bridge of one vessel will only hinder people who want to learn just what caused the collision so they can take steps to reduce the likelihood that it occurs again. There have been numerous collisions between vessels, naval and civilian. And they still occur in this modern age with well-designed tools at our disposal. The tragedy here is that seven people perished. While competence should be looked at when investigating, I would hazard a guess that many of those involved were well educated and motivated to do a good job. When the investigation results are publicized, we can use that knowledge to either make radical changes or to reinforce good practices already known by many at sea.

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. Perhaps the combination of President Trump and shale oil will lead to abrogation of the Jones Act and a resurgence of the American Merchant Marine. We surely hope so

Not cool, not cool at all. Come up to the Lakes and see if you still hold that view. Lots of jobs supported by the Jones Act here.

John McCain, is that you ?

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I have no idea what you are intending by that.

Lot’s of talk about the differences between merchant and navy navigation style mostly focusing on experience and background of the personnel (in this thread). It should be noted, and in my opinion the biggest difference, is the method and not the people. Military ships have large bridge teams and the manpower to mechanically calculate and execute each maneuver. Military ships make formulaic calculations which guarantee the safe execution of every maneuver. Merchant ships don’t have the personnel, and the navigation method is more intuitive. More of a look out the window and drive approach. I won’t debate which is better, but I believe this is more relevant than any individuals training or background.

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Here’s an eye opening article from a Naval officer on The need to use AIS and attend stcw training:

Anyone see this article from USNI https://news.usni.org/2017/06/21/investigators-believe-uss-fitzgerald-crew-fought-flooding-for-an-hour-before-distress-call-reached-help

This article seems pretty misleading. While it has some good information about the valiant DC efforts, it essentially argues the merchant ship watch standers were sleeping while the ship was in auto-pilot and smashed into the innocent naval ship. I find the article misleading saying that the merchant failed to contact the coast guard while the warship was unable too. Reports are out that in fact say the Japanese coast guard did contact the warship after the ACX reported it. VHF on the bridge HAD to have been working right?

Sorry, I missed that. Anyhow, I had to look up the main engine type 2 SA 8 CY a trifle bit more specific.

Thanks for the link. Much appreciated. I will add the pdf to my library.

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If Navy wants other vessels to “see and maneuver to avoid them”, then they do need to transmit AiS. It has just become the basic standard tool in use - you not transmitting you pretty much invisible today.

Navy’s prior posture was that navy wanted to be the one to maneuver, and they did not really need or even want other ships to do so. But that of course assumes they can keep a competent watch and situational awareness (which they ‘should’ be able to do, but seem to have trouble in actual practice).

ARPA, screw that, that’s generation old tech, they need (seriously I mean this) AI that tracks the targets. It would be dead easy tech to build, and not go asleep or lose concentration. Building colregs into ai would be child’s play . . . . airforce ai can now beat the very best human top gun pilot in dogfights 99% of the time.

I totally agree that this is more about a fundamental process problem than individual’s training or background. When a dozen people with the most modern surveillance equipment and high agility/maneuverability in clear and calm conditions can’t stay out of the way of a container ship on autopilot (e.g. Steering a completely predictable course, transmitting ais, with a huge radar profile), combined with the porter and other lessor incidents . . . IMHO there is a much more fundamental problem at work - the process is broken

Just another wannabe and pretender who probably had no intention other than to post something he thought would make him part of the group.

There seems to be a growing number of them lately.

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The US Navy are regular visitors in Trondheimsfjorden, where testing of autonomous ships is about to begin. That may confuse them no end, since such a vessel will do things “by the book” initially.
If that fail it will be controlled by AI, which will still be under “education” in the test phase and may do unexpected things.

Actually, scale model boats are already being tested)
How will Naval officers react to a small vessel heading for them, or “acting suspiciously” and not reacting to calls and treats? (“This is a US warship, stay away or we will blow you out of the water”)
Hopefully the programmers have foreseen the “Navy factor”.

Here is a supposedly “true” recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDJ66QPBUL8

The conspiracy theorists are hard at work. Here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eANUtcpxL04
How many more of these are the on the internet??

You bring up a good point that there are significant differences between vessel types although the fact that we are discussing what we are in this forum is at odds with the statement “guarantee the safe execution of every maneuver.” It would be interesting to hear from those who have experience in the merchant marine and navy to confirm what I’ve heard, that the surface navigation equipment (as opposed to equipment focusing on warfighting), while good, is a bit behind compared to the fact that many merchant vessels have integrated bridges. I’m not sure what you mean by “intuitive” as the lack of bodies on civilian vessels has caused that industry to develop equipment and procedures that allow two people (one of them primarily manning the helm) to safely (most of the time) navigate large or small vessels in a wide set of circumstances, including high traffic areas. While one of the best things any officer can do is to “look out the window” early and often, the navigation process, that includes collision avoidance, is just the top of the iceberg. Perhaps it looks intuitive due to the experience of the officers you think of when you make that statement.