USS Fitzgerald Editorial - gCaptain has stirred the hornets nest

That is a point that has been made several times here already.

Gee I don’t know in what spot to start today. No look, really. Some of you may think all these comments are actually helping others sort through the good comments from bad, but they are not. I for one would truly appreciate bickering to find a different forum.

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I’m talking to you as well. I’ve yet to even have my second cup of coffee for the morning.

This is why we can’t have nice things. Al Gore should have never given us the internets.

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@Jim_B Not sure where this is all ultimately headed or your position on the troll vs naive matrix - but I offer the below as unsolicited yes, but with best intentions (which we all know where that leads).

First I would suggest read this gcaptain FAQ

Then I would suggest you read below and your original post again.
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING G.CAPTAIN FORUMS
(Please read the “you” as a generic person not you specifically, unless the shoe fits of course.)

  1. Have an honest understanding of your own competency, experience AND its limitations before contemplating posting something. Do you believe you are so special and so authoritative and so full of insight that you cannot accept others may be equally or more experienced? See point 5 below.

  2. Read the forums for many, many, many months. Explore as an ethnographer would to gain an understanding of the community - before you post something.

  3. Have a point. Make a point. An actual point. Not a sweepingly broad generality or ridiculously irrelevant statement(s) likely to unnecessarily offend at least one of the many sub-groups of this maritime industry of ours or offend logic or appear pompous in the process.

  4. Back up your point. Avoid the various logical fallacies in making and backing up your point. In particular the overuse of anecdotal information, the strawman, appeals to authority, the false cause among others. Facts are valued. Emotions and perceptions have a place but most readers will not accept them as facts. See point 6 below.

  5. Reconsider if presenting your resume is really central to your point. A captain and I were having a conversation with an “experienced” but poorly performing cook one time who told us he had 20 years experience cooking as if that fact made the food taste better. The captain said he (the captain) and the chief here have been eating food for our entire lives and that he felt equally qualified based on that experience to judge the performance of the cook. Others have made the point when one starts spraying out “qualifications” in terms of years whether one really has 20 years of experience or 1 year of experience 20 times. Still if you just cannot resist - there is a time and place and way of wording these little biographical details to help make your point without raising red “pompous a-hole” flags to the readers. But be aware for better or worse, your “years of experience” will no doubt shine through from the nature and quality of your posts.

  6. Be ready to defend your point in the face of criticism. Constructive or otherwise. Don’t be surprised to be taken to task for sloppy thinking, writing, perceived arrogance, etc. By the way, observing all these points will not prevent other members from violating them in taking you to task for your generally poor content or your own violations. The usual thin-skinned warnings are valid.

  7. Use the search features to see if there have been previous discussions of similar nature where your question may have been already answered or your brilliant points already made.

  8. Don’t post stupid stuff.

What was your point? The USN can learn from the OSV industry because you work so hard? You have so few crew members? Get in line. Everyone works hard. Everyone is undermanned. I don’t know squat about the US Navy but I’d be surprised if they are looking to the OSV industry as a prime source of continuous improvement ideas. And this is not a knock on that segment, just how poorly you have represented your case.

Of all the reasons to offer comments on this serious and fatal event and all the ways you could have analyzed/commented on the manning / duties of a USN bridge even based on your own experiences I think you missed the mark. I’m sorry it just seemed gratuitous more to call attention to yourself than advance the discussion. I’d be surprised if you really are surprised at this reaction. Surely you must have heard these types of responses in your own messroom.

Good luck to you and yours.

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Thank you Chief… good advice but let’s move this to another thread: gCaptain Guidelines - Advice From The Chief

To everyone else… remember it only takes me 10 seconds to delete a post you’ve been working on for hours. To increase the chance of you’re hard work surviving please start a new post (you can always link back to the original post if necessary for continuity purposes).

If someone’s resume or apparent irrelevance bothers you then - don’t start an argument - instead click the little flag icon below his post and ask us to moderate it.

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Has anyone brought up the fact that these Arleigh Burke class Destoyers are coated in RADAR absorbing material and are designed with no flat or 90 degree angles for the very purpose of avoiding a reflected RADAR return? (I don’t have time to read all of these posts) They should, in peace time and heavy sea lanes fly some sort of reflector from a yard arm halyard to improve the RADAR cross section. And, of course, turn up the volume of the ARPA CPA Minimum violation alarm.

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It’s not surprising this article" stirred up a hornets nest".
The article is pure speculation based on almost no “facts”. Expert opinion? Most of the “facts” are pure
speculation and some are apparently flat out wrong. Expert guessing.
If you are going to pontificate. At least get the facts right. If you don’t know anything about USN watch keeping routine Standard Operating Procedure. Don’t write about it as if you do. Having done so and gotten it wrong. Not only upsets former US Navy Officers. It doesn’t help your credibility.
Unfortunately having read the article. I would now question most if not all articles written by Capt Konrad. This might be an unfair assumption on my part. Some of his other articles may be a lot better. Unfortunately this article is the one I read.
Fortunately Capt Konrad is not investigating this incident. Some advice I was given a long time ago " Never send the Guy who knows what happened, to investigate an accident".
There will no doubt be a lot of lessons to be learned from this incident. Some of which may well fundamentally change the Standard Operating Procedure. On the Bridge of a US Navy Ship. And on the Bridge of a container ship.
The Training required may change.
This incident may well form part of future training.
One thing I am fairly sure of, Blaming one ship or other or both is not going to change a “God damn thing”.

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In general I haven’t found a CO who allows use of the RADAR CPA alarm system. It is useful, but COs mostly don’t like the feature BC they think JOs will rely on it too much.

As far as PCMS (passive counter measure system) or the tiles stuck on to the hull that reduce our RCS, it doesn’t work that great you can see us just fine on radar we just may look slightly smaller than the 500 ft vessel we are. It makes for harder contact for a missile to lock on to, but you as a merchant vessel are going to have no trouble hooking us on ARPA and tracking our course and speed.

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That has always been my experience.

Unless the Fitzgerald was jamming the container ship’s radar all along there’s no reasonable excuse for them not to have been able to detect a destroyer, determine if a risk of collision existed, monitor the situation and then take appropriate action if and when necessary.

What was stopping them? This one just screams improper lookout :eyes: on both vessels, no matter how you cut it.

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I brought this up at an early stage of the discussion, but not in such details as you did.
I also mentioned the fact that if the Crystal was overtaking and approaching the Fitz from abaft the beam (112.5 degr. relative) he would be seeing only the stern lantern of the Fitz.

Somebody also mentioned that US Navy vessels have two sets of navigation lights (or two settings) one being the regulation strength per SOLAS requirement, the other a dimmed version for operations where they wanted to be inconspicuous, but not “running dark”.
Somebody also mentioned that warships shows very few if any lights, other than nav lights at night.

So with a low radar profile, low lighting, + that there were no AIS to identify any weak blip on the radar screen, or a single white light in a field of lights from other ships, from fishing boats and even from close by shoreline, There were also a moon rising at the time, which could also make it hard to see a gray warship, designed and operated with the aim to be as invisible as possible and making no efforts to improve that in a busy shipping lane by at least transmitting AIS signature.

With all that in mind it is entirely possible that the OOW on the Crystal could have missed the existence of the Fitz until very close, especially if she was overtaking the Fitz, thus being obliged to avoid the overtaken vessel.

At the same time, the OOD on the Fitz could have assumed that the Crystal would alter course to safely overtake according to the COLREGS, being blissfully unaware of his own invisibility to others.

It still does not explain why the Fitz didn’t take last minute actions to avoid a collision, also per COLREGS. With the maneuverability of a Destroyer, I can see no reason, or excuse, for NOT doing so.

The moral of the story??: If you are making effort to hide your identity, existence and operational activity, you should take action to stay clear of all other traffic, or make yourself visible to others and follow the COLREGS

And therein lies the rub … we know that no matter what the findings are, or the real story is, not a “God damn thing” is going to change in the way the Navy operates or thinks.

As many others have stated, the Navy can run away from the minutes leading to the deaths of those young sailors but it cannot forever hide the story behind those minutes. Witnesses will talk, they will share their experience. Much of what upsets former US Navy officers may well turn out to be another verification of how accurate “crowd sourcing” can be when analyzing events like this.

There is no dim NAV light setting on a destroyer. Just on and off. And while the angles and radar absorbent materials reduce the radar cross section of a destroyer it just ends up looking smaller than 500 feet it is in NO way shape or form hard to see on RADAR. A merchant vessel will have ZERO problem picking it up and tracking its course and speed. When we do formation steaming or DIVTACS as we call them I make out the other destroyers just fine on the extra civilian radar we have in the pilothouse.

What is the purpose of spending millions of taxpayers money on making warships stealthy if they " in NO way shape or form are hard to see on RADAR"??

In close formation and knowing where the other ships are, or are supposed to be, I believe there is no problem to identify the weak blips on the radar screen, but when you have no other indication or reason to know that there is a warship lurking in the vicinity, it may not be as easy as you say, especially if there are some seas running, or rain showers around, requiring use of clutter to mask weak signal from stronger signals of vessels and land contours.

You made no comments to my last: [quote]The moral of the story??: If you are making effort to hide your identity, existence and operational activity, you should take action to stay clear of all other traffic, or make yourself visible to others and follow the COLREGS[/quote]

Or this one from Mark Caprio: [quote]They should, in peace time and heavy sea lanes fly some sort of reflector from a yard arm halyard to improve the RADAR cross section. And, of course, turn up the volume of the ARPA CPA Minimum violation alarm.[/quote]

It is indeed as easy as I say. I have sailed close or far away from destroyers in good weather and bad and NEVER had an issue. Im just trying to let you know this didnt play a part that’s all. The point is to reduce the RCS not to make it invisible to radar. And its just not as effective as we’d like. It really isnt any harder to hook and track than any other ship.

I didn’t address the last quote because the only thing we do that you listed is not transmit AIS all the time. And there’s a sound reason for that which has been discussed ad nauseum here.

I addressed what Mark Caprio said already above but I’ll repost it for you:

"In general I haven’t found a CO who allows use of the RADAR CPA alarm system. It is useful, but COs mostly don’t like the feature BC they think JOs will rely on it too much.

As far as PCMS (passive counter measure system) or the tiles stuck on to the hull that reduce our RCS, it doesn’t work that great you can see us just fine on radar we just may look slightly smaller than the 500 ft vessel we are. It makes for harder contact for a missile to lock on to, but you as a merchant vessel are going to have no trouble hooking us on ARPA and tracking our course and speed."

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Defense contractors need to feed their children too, you know. They also need to keep funneling our tax money to the politicians who make sure they get contracts for crap that doesn’t work or isn’t needed or even wanted by the military.

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The point? Seriously?

One reasonable assumption would be standard, run-of-the-mill defense contractor fraud. Historically, plenty of things are sold to the public as state-of-the-art when in fact they won’t work as advertised, or possibly at all. Politicians in the contractors district, or sitting on the appropriations committee, get bought off in one way or another. Rinse, repeat.

And sometimes things are honestly done with the best of intentions but the technology just doesn’t work, or ultimately works but much less effectively than was initially hoped/thought to be the case.

There is a tendency to have blind or excessive faith in fancy new dazzle-dazzle tech stuff, but the reality is often that it doesn’t live up to expectations.

If the passive anti-radar coating improves their odds even a little as an anti-ship middle is homing in on them who am I to say it’s wrong? Survival is all about doing everything you can to tip the odds in your favor.

Again, I’ve never had a problem with picking up naval vessels, and often aircraft, on marine radar units. Even the under-powered kinda crappy ones that many tugs are equipped with.

It can’t be ruled out yet, but I’m presently disinclined to give the Crystal a pass because the Fitz may or may not have presented a less-than-ideal radar target. Even if the technology substantially worked and effectively reduced their radar signature by, say, 50-60% we’re still talking about a 500 ft. steel-hulled destroyer here, not a fiberglass sailboat in driving rain and rough seas.

I’m looking elsewhere for primary factors.

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An old trick I learned from a crusty old Dock Reporter who told me to always pay attention when the Navy announces it’s testing new systems equipment because the test is guaranteed to be an expensive failure… and readers will eat the story up.

Expensive failures are just what happens when you push the envelope on technology… and we do want the navy to push the envelope because if they don’t someone else will and a failure in testing is MUCH better than a failure at sea during combat.

P.S. Yes, newspapers use to have Dock Reporters… reporters assigned to the docks… people who knew how to speak our language… sadly these old times have been replaced by young generalists who are good at research but have no industry contacts or expertise)

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Ok I guess you guys have your wooden spoon out and are doing some more stirring of the hornets nest.
fine and dandy.

A Quote from an editorial.

“You do not lash out, and you do not become defensive. You stand tall, accept the facts and drive on. So much protesting from the Navy, and maybe from the Merchant Marine, indicates people and organizations realize they have not been holding up the standards of their profession. They know this horrible accident occurred due to human error…a combination of an autopilot with no one on the bridge, or Navy deck officers not really knowing or being able to stand a confident deck watch. Maybe a culture these days where there is too much emphasis on process and not results”

Based on precisely what?

No investigative authority has given out any statement to suport any of this BS.
There is no reason to suspect the US Navy is not conducting a full and complete investigation into this and taking a serious look at its own procedures.

If anything Gcaptain posting a link to the Bridge audio from an incident in 2012 would suggest the we can expect the US Navy to be quite forthcoming after they have completed their inquiry.

PS I am not ex Navy. Or a Pilipino seaman.

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Shipmate, dolphins and wings are not the same thing and I can’t imagine a skimmer having dolphins (skimmer is the derogatory term we use to refer to surface sailors). Dolphins are what I have. Also known as “Qualified in Submarines”. It is required for all submariners to meet this standard. You have up to 12 months to earn silver dolphins, from the time you report to your first submarine. If you fail, you risk being sent to the surface fleet. It took me about ten months. You have to learn all major systems on the boat, including the basics of the scientific principles behind their operation, and you have to learn all emergency operations. You have to qualify one at-sea watch, outside of your rating (in other words if you are a radio ET, learning a watch in radio doesn’t count) and one in-port watch.

Enlisted are held to exactly the same standard in terms of knowledge about the systems and emergency operations as officers. The main difference is that one of the watches an officer has to qualify for to become Qualified in Submarines is Officer of the Deck.

For both officer and enlisted, you must pass a Board of three people: one nuclear reactor trained officer, one nuclear reactor trained enlisted person (usually of high enlisted rank), and one non-nuclear reactor trained enlisted person. They can ask you literally anything they want about the boat and you have to know the answer. They’ll ask things like, what type of fuel is used in the nuclear reactor, what are its modes of operation (normal modes and failure modes), when would you want to use Emergency Blow, describe the steps in fighting fires aboard, when you would you want to pressurize a compartment in the process of fighting a fire, how would you do this, draw a schematic diagram of the Trim and Drain system, what is the typical fluid pressure in pipe X, how does a pressure reducer work, etc.

So, indeed, dolphins are definitely not handed out like candy. It is an intellectually rigorous process. Even officers with BS degrees in physics (in fact all the officers are required to have STEM degrees except the Supply Officer) find it difficult. :slight_smile:

I agree with Mr. BK05 that people seem to get a lot of ribbons and medals these days. :open_mouth: I only had three: defense service medal (9/11), good conduct, Battle E.