What a joke.
They appear to have classified this article NOFORN. At least I get a message that says; “not available in your location”.
Are they collecting all smart phones in the area too??
Or only those that are assembled in China? (which doesn’t leave much to choose from)
His camera captured the warship “chicken incident” when two Navy ships looked like they would collide. Bahrami says his webcam was shut off Tuesday, one day before the Navy released its report on the incident.
Next will be some kind of “anti-embarrassment” law that criminalizes speech that makes the government or military look stupid. I wish it were merely amusing that we are rapidly adapting the old Soviet (and recently modern Russian) style of controlling public information.
Maybe the San Diego PD cameras will catch them! San Diego Police proposes installing 500 Smart Streetlights | cbs8.com
What a damned joke.
This camera is mentioned in the article about the near miss collision in the other thread.
I bet that’s why the navy said it had to go. They don’t want it to record a gray on gray collision.
This might be the next camera to go offline. another feather in the cap for the LCS program.
[
Homie616](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgd16gRZoVdmZlZGeYLk5Ug)
I work on these ships and seen the damage, I think you’d be amazed lol 3 bent frames 10 bent longitudinal, bent deck, 2ft hole or crack, bent sideshell for steel section 2 parts, for aluminum section 1 part, damaged ballistic material on inside, I heard the tug is in drydock now cuz of the whole back end bent down and cracked and was leaking, millions of dollars in damage, cause was miscommunication by marinette marine and tug boats and a guy that launches boat had a itchy trigger finger
And we wonder why USA built ships cost 3-5x those built in Korea? We’ve lost our way…can’t even do a simple ship launch–a task that’s been done for over 150 years?!?
I thought they stopped the LCS program because it was a complete waste. Why are the ships still getting built?
And ‘complicated’ vessels like large LNG Carriers are ready to go in 18 months tops.
This webcam news is VERY alarming for 2 reasons. While our navy has been making truly embarrassing mistakes and failures on a regular basis for a while now (Jet fuel in potwater tanks, suicides, a ship catching fire and burning for 5 days, and even before we finish discussing the cameras, we have a new incident before a ship even sets sail), there is something different here.
First the part that’s the same: Our Navy’s failure to learn from its mistakes or improve.
In 2017 the Navy had FOUR incidents related to “poor seamanship”. (FYI There were many more incidents before and after 2017 as well.)
- USS Lake Champlain hit a fishing boat
- USS Antietam ran aground causing an oil spill
- USS John S. McCain hit a tanker causing 10 USN personnel deaths
- Probable cause as per NTSB: “The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the collision between the destroyer John S McCain and the tanker Alnic MC was a lack of effective operational oversight of the destroyer by the US Navy, which resulted in insufficient training and inadequate bridge operating procedures. Contributing to the accident were the John S McCain bridge team’s loss of situation awareness and failure to follow loss of steering emergency procedures, which included the requirement to inform nearby traffic of their perceived loss of steering. Also contributing to the accident was the operation of the steering system in backup manual mode, which allowed for an unintentional, unilateral transfer of steering control.”
- USS Fitzgerald hit a container ship causing 7 USN personnel deaths
- Probable cause as per NTSB: “The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the collision between US Navy Destroyer Fitzgerald and container ship ACX Crystal was the Fitzgerald’s bridge team’s failure to take early and substantial action to avoid collision as the give-way vessel in a crossing situation.”
All of these incidents were the Navy’s fault as per the lawsuits involved, the NTSB reports, and even the Navy’s own investigations. All were during peacetime. All were preventable.
That was 6 years ago. Just to give some context that’s enough time for all Navy navigational officers to have obtained both a 3rd A/E and a 3/M license and degree through a maritime academy. Not that that’s what the Navy’s response should have been, but it’s clear they had more than enough time to fix the problems.
I don’t know what the solution should have been but whatever they did has not worked. The failures of the bridge team on these vessels sound awfully similar to those in 2017 (and all the other years there are accidents). We know that mariners who have USCG credentials tend to not have accidents at this rate.
… so what should they have done to fix the problems? Look at their own MSC and decide USCG licensed mariners seem to know something about how to safely manage ships? (I only say “something” because remember it was MSC that botched tendering ops from the hospital ship). But at least they can navigate safely.
Maybe they should have learned their lesson from one of the other armed forces like the Army? The Army has more boats than the Navy by the way. Oh and it uses the USCGs standards for their officers. Thats right - graduates from the Army’s Transportation School receive USCG licenses with STCW:
https://transportation.army.mil/MITD/index.html
Now, the second reason we should be alarmed (particularly alarmed) is that amongst the lack of progress, there is now a clear intent to hide information (which by the way- and this is a crucial point here -isn’t classified information). This can have serious consequences. This shows that the Navy is more interested in hiding its weaknesses than addressing them.
When things go wrong, criticizing/pointing out problems is the best way to start solving problems. We can’t improve anything without first identifying what needs improvement. Blocking a camera that films public information is a sad step backward. The public and more importantly congress needs to know about the Navy’s shortcomings so that is can address it.
Ship-driving training has “basically tripled” for SWOs during their career since 2017, according to Cary Russell, director of the Government Accountability Office’s Defense Capabilities and Management Team.
Although a 2019 GAO report found that SWO proficiency still needed work, test scores for ship-driving officers have been “trending upward” since then, according to Capt. James Harney, assistant chief of staff for training and readiness for Commander, Naval Surface Force.
From here:
Three times almost nothing is still almost nothing.
Back in the mid 2000s, I was a second mate on MSC’s San Diego duty oiler.
Pretty close to midnight one night, we were just patrolling our little box, marking time until we could do UNREPs the next day. I heard someone get on channel 16, and chew-out a Navy ship for almost running them over. Someone with a very smug and snide tone came onto the radio, addressing the vessel as a pleasure craft, and saying that their Navy ship had had the right of way, according to the rules of the road. The boat came back, and said “At least you could turn some running lights on!”
I could not believe that! If the Navy ship was running in deception mode, and chugging along without running lights, this always made them what we used to call the give-way vessel.
This was the state of Navy ship handling at the time.
It is very obvious there wasn’t 3 times as much learning. Maybe they just spent more time telling sea stories.