That’s quite a change from when I went in the Navy in '70. They field-stripped an M1 in front of us one time, and we each shot five rounds of .22LR from a kid’s Marlin rifle. I’m not sure we even got the scores. And that was I T it!
Okay…and that’s relevant how? I said the fore-grip is pointless being mounted so far back on that specific rifle and pretty sure we were speaking of full auto not semi-auto, although I’ve been bruised by 7.62 as well, but that was hours at the range with a new bolt action I was learning and poor placement.
Anyway, The point regarding caliber was due to the partial stock shouldering as shown in the photo, which I said wasn’t a real big deal with 5.56. That’s because of the naturally low recoil and a buffer tube, probably a heavier buffer spring as well than your typical civilian AR.
The magazine is farther back than that fore grip and the M4 fires a much weaker round.
What makes you think he was firing full auto?
In the light of that evidence, I can see the problem.
Again, the navy’s response is to blame the ship’s crew (that’s easier) rather than the shore authorities.
Here’s the quick remedy. Captains should refuse to sail unless their ship is seaworthy and battle ready. You tell the admiral this has to be fixed before I depart. The good admiral fixes it. The bad admiral orders the ship to sea and plots how to destroy that captain’s career, whilst also denying funds for the experts to sail with the ship.
How many of you would put to sea without fully operational steering? Are you allowed to under any rules? What would happen to you if you sailed with known defective steering?
I doubt statements like this. “The August command investigation found that McCain crewmembers made a variety of mistakes, including failing to follow loss-of-steering procedures or communicating sufficiently between controlling stations.”
Any ship that has had that many problems with steering would have done steering gear breakdown drills and in reality so many times that it would be faultless.
I have no idea of the extent of the technical issues, but if this system is commonly fitted to lots of ships the expertise to fix it should be everywhere. Was it simply that there was no proper time allowed to fix it?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc and WYSIATI - “What You See Is All There Is” bias.
What You See is All There Is (WYSIATI ) is a cognitive bias described by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow . WYSIATI says that when presented with evidence, especially those that confirm your mental model, you do not question what evidence might be missing
So…nothing about the overdone steak?
Yes, but that still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a really dumb spot. (If you wanted a foregrip mounted at all), of course experts such as yourself can hip fire an AK and stay on target, I applaud you sir.
But that’s not me.
If I was wanting to control muzzle rise I would want it further forward.
I simply said there’s not much advantage to having it so far back as shown.
Did I ever say such? No, I was replying to;
In FA Muzzle rise and recoil would be even more prevalent and having it further forward would be even more important if he were. I can’t see his selector switch so I have no idea.
BUT having said that, I see two ejected very close casings in one photo, so either he’s rapid firing or he is in FA. Which doesn’t matter because he’s just dumping into the ocean anyway and has a backwards mounted optic…
That would be considered gross negligence I would wager…
33 CFR § 164.25
46 CFR § 131.620 (B)
46 CFR § 5.29
What would happen would be all depending on if there was a casualty caused by the Captains negligence or if someone notified the CG.
I think we have all seen boats sail when they should not have and nothing happened, but if you roll the dice enough?
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It sounds like the higher ups ignored a steering issue. This put the CO in the position of either refusing to get underway (he still gets relieved) or go to sea and hope for the best, which did not happen and he was relieved anyway.
I can’t imagine the stress of being alongside an oiler knowing you have steering issues and then having your rudder get stuck. Luckily the ships did not collide.
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The CFRs are for us lowly merchant mariners, the navy seems to do what it wants.
If they fired every sailor who got served an overcooked steak there’d be no mariners left at MSC (I think that’s the real reason they didn’t let us engineers take small arms training)
Unreps are slow-moving exercises in tedium with very high consequence in the event of a screw-up. 10+minutes of adding oil into an online steering HPU as fast as it’s leaking out seems waaaaay to long to not initiate a controlled breakaway. The damage potential is pretty high, not to mention chance of injury on the Oiler.
Minutes passed. The watch team decided to switch over to the alternate HPUs, but then the system glitched. Control was stuck with the unit “gushing” hydraulic oil, as a crewmember reported. Engineers tried refilling the HPU, but it ran out of oil and shut down. Still, the alternate HPU failed to take over.
Isn’t USS McCain the same ship that crashed due to lack of training on (and a f-ed up user interface in) a touch screen steering control system? Pretty sure they retrofitted back to manual controls, so curious why they still couldn’t change over steering HPUs. Bit by training again?
It was a deteriorating situation for approximately 10 minutes until the steering shut down. Then it was an emergency. He was relieved for waiting until it was an emergency.
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“Lost confidence.” Did they lose in any confidence in the Marine(s) who posted the photo publicly?
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Nah, that’s why they have Marines on board to protect the navy 
The most likely case is that someone presented the challenge, if we put the scope on backwards, and then had a target shooting challenge. People play these games on the time. The armed forces especially, because of the boredom that goes with the occupation.
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I had a similar experience to dbeierl in the AF in the 1980’s. While I had Expert medals for both rifle and pistol, they were awarded based on the accuracy of my shooting alone. In no way did the minimal instruction I received make me an “expert” on those weapons.
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