Here’s the irony, when they do turn it on, the icon says “US Gov’t Vessel” , like thats suppose to be an even better way of hiding yourself??
Here’s a thought …why doesn’t the navy just create a random obscure AIS name for every ship, invent something out of the blue! Call your own vessel the M/V Fred Flintstone and input a bunch of fake descriptive data that nobody would think twice of. hell, you cold even change it up every now and then. As long ast the course and speed data input was correct, thats all the other guy needs to know.
For the Pentagon brain trust, this really seems to be an overwhelming challenge. And therein lies the reason why we keep having these accidents.
Regarding choices:
In ISPS and SSP there is a rule for merchantman.
IF there is a conflict between ship security and ship safety rules then safety prevails.
Navy ships may have different priorities and I think justyfied on high value military assets.
The bad actors are everywhere. Can be on innocent looking cargo ship at anchor and me with joystick & and remote guiding unmanned surface or undersurface device loaded with TNT or other powerfull explosive. Or sitting in a truck filled with 20 Mt of explosives and waiting for the carrier to pass the waterfront of Ismaila to press the pedal to the metal to hurl myself with the truck for the promise of 72 or may be more virgins the Allah or Xi or Putin has promised me for disabling your precious asset.
They - the military must think about unthinkable because:
If many will write, “AIS is not intended to be used as an anti-collision device” then what DOES it do? That is all I ever use it for, to see who is around and what they are doing and let them see me. Inland you can see around corners and offshore you can see 20-50-60 miles maybe.
of course we all know that once you get close it isn’t near fast enough for real time last second maneuvers, so there is that.
some mentioned rule 2) - general and " shall apply to all vessels upon the high seas and in all waters connected therewith navigable by seagoing vessels. "
Someone mentioned 17, Dr.Sal mentioned 15 in some of his videos. - these belong to SECTION II CONDUCT OF VESSELS IN SIGHT OF ONE ANOTHER .
Having said that : is there anybody here who can check and/or verify/confirm what was the state of visibility prior and during the time of the collision?
The bridge team has a variety of tools available to maintain situational awareness (SA), including visual observation, radar, AIS, a compass. Each tool has specific attributes that make it more or less suitable for different aspects of the task. The usefulness of each tool varies depending on the situation.
In this case the AIS may or may not have been useful. Can’t judge without knowing more details.
You’d think one of the 30 people up there involved would have noticed something. I’m sure there’s no VDR on there but it sure would be interesting to be a fly on the wall.
Yes. but it depends on the situation, here’s the rule in context: every vessel shall use all available means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions to determine if risk of collision exists.
For example for a vessel in or nearing the point of extremis likely the AIS is not the appropriate tool.
Agreed, however I wonder if the argument could be made that prior to an extremis situation, where risk of collision exists, it was not prudent to keep the AIS in silent mode?
Edit: not prudent is obvious, I guess the more correct wording could be that it was negligent to not have AIS transmitting when risk of collision was deemed to exist
I also would argue that AIS, in a busy (or any) anchorage would a means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions prior to the extremis situation.
My issue is in a war sneaky enemies that don’t follow COLREGS are TRYING to damage your ship. If you can’t keep from getting hit by slow and obvious adversaries that are more or less the equivalent of an old arthritic water buffalo trying to hunt a young and fast cheetah, how can you possibly survive in a war?
From the point of view of the bulker, in order of priority:
Visual
Radar / ARPA
AIS
One of the main issues when underway in any busy anchorage at night is which ships are moving and which are not. In this situation the most appropriate back-up to visual is the ARPA with target trails on.
If for some reason the MV Besiktas-M failed to properly use visual / radar to identify risk of collision with the CVN then the AIS might become a factor.
Been there many times, typically the AIS is only useful for finding the ship which is ahead of own ship when forming up the convoy.
My argument wasn’t from the bulkers point of view or what the order of operations are in terms of which collision avoidance system to use.
My argument is when this goes to court/arbitration/whatever, the argument could be made that the Aircraft carrier not transmitting AIS in a busy anchorage was negligent due to the prevailing circumstances and conditions.
