Red Over Red, the Failure of U.S. Navy Leadership
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The watch schedules and setup for sailors is just ridiculous -
https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain...
You wouldn't let a civilian heavy equipment operator or truck driver work under that level of sleep deprivation.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.h...
From the medical professionals I know, handoff problems are partly because of missing/difficult to find/ignored information in charts and in healthcare IT systems. Improving on that front might be a way to allow a switch to more sensible schedules that don't invite bleary-eyed mistakes from doctors/residents.
Every medical professional I've ever managed to get talking about healthcare IT gave me the impression that it gets in the way more than helps.
The ... lets call it ergonomics of record keeping are vitally important in medicine and plenty of other disciplines. Computers have been used as a way to enforce and expand bureaucratic rules, not as a tool to make record keeping more expressive and powerful.
Unfortunately, I can't find it now, but there was also a study that part of the handoff problem is that the "new" doctor feels the need to put his "stamp" on the treatment and consequently causes action even when there doesn't need to be any change.
Similar to how the competition between the CIA/FBI and the two-decade-too-late lack of connection between information systems prevented them from being able to detect 9/11 despite having multiple (disconnected) early indicators.
I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know the American Navy (and Airforce) are completely disconnected from the reality of modern warfare by still being obsessed with billion dollar aircraft carriers and expensive 'stealth' jets from a bygone era (3-4 decades ago) which would be the lowest hanging fruit in any modern war. Basically billion dollar machines that will be predictably destroyed within the early hours of any combat by a barrage of low cost missiles and highly mobile small attack boats by today's well known adversaries.
Although those are the disconnects from the highly complex real-world situations their stated mandates would put them in...whereas crashing into a commercial boats in high-traffic sea lanes seems like something that no sophisticated Navy should suffering from twice in a few months...let alone having multiple fatalities from each. So I'm not sure how to react to this honestly.
Other than having zero surprise that it's happening to one of the bigger modern governments where disfunction is the status quo and cronyism outranks tangible progress.
[1] https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a...
The War Nerd is stimulating and entertaining, but the author, John Dolan, is a sometime English professor with no military expertise or experience. Per Wikipedia, his "PhD thesis on the literary works of the Marquis de Sade." Apparently, he did geek out on military hardware books when he was young, so there's that.
On the other hand, as I said, it's a fun, stimulating read. If you like Dolan, I recommend his old publication (where the War Nerd originally appeared, AFAIK), The Exile, if you can find it. I've never read anything like it.
For example, if Richard Feynman had published a paper claiming to have invented a prototype anti-gravity machine, his claim would have been taken much more seriously than if an uneducated TV repairman from eastern Omaha had claimed the same thing. Perhaps that's an ad hominem against the repairman, but in the real world, it's also a useful heuristic. Our time and attention are constrained quantities - doubly so in the age of the Internet where anyone can claim anything.
You make a comparison to science, but I do think it's slightly different. A military is by its nature a strongly hierarchical organization, and there's something in such organizations that makes them hard to turn around when circumstances change. A scientist, OTOH, if he manages to upend the status quo, fame and fortune (eh, maybe lets forget that fortune part, but still) awaits him. So maybe military leaders would be well advised to consider outside opinions in order to not be led astray by institutional inertia?
I would further argue that someone being wholly ignorant whereof they speak would make it very easy to dismantle their position. I've seen it happen pretty often on the internet.
I think the burden is on the author - any author - to establish that their arguments are worth responding to, rather than on me to prove that they are not. There are far too many authors and arguments to give them all credence by default. Readership is not a good signal - plenty of absolute nonsense has far more readership than the War Nerd.
> you will not even attempt
Even if Dolan's arguments are worth addressing, it's not my job to personally address every argument. I think I added something valuable to the discussion; other people can contribute too.
> Going ad hominem just gives credence to his unspoken assertion that the US military is an old-boys club clinging to their preconceived notions
That assumes that I'm representing that old boys' club, and I'm certainly not a member. They wouldn't let me into the foyer unless I was delivering dinner, nor do I desire to join. I could get into Dolan's club, however, if I wanted to.
> in the absence of an actual war to fight
The U.S. military is fighting wars and has been continuously for almost 16 years, the longest such period in the nation's history, I think. The wars have transformed their approach so much that there is a major concern that all they know how to do is fight counter-insurgencies and not high-end near-peers (e.g., China and Russia). As they shift back to the latter, everything is being re-examined in light of AI and the wide availability of precision munitions (e.g., rockets accurate enough to reliably hit a ship) along with the accompanying sensor networks, which used to be a U.S. monopoly.
Appalling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22...
Cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 Cough
(Wars in the Caribbean don't count. Talking about Grenada would sort of prove my point...)
It was entirely successful, and the troops withdrew.
It involved leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq until the entirely different and disastrous Gulf War 2.
(If they had, they would have been brought up on charges, in which their saving the vessel would have been a consideration, but not an excuse for their action)
I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article.
Especially if it travels through ice in northern nations like here in Canada, ice is like reinforced concrete. A certain amount of ice not icebreaker level but even an icebreaker rides up onto ice and breaks it with the ship's own weight.
I'm not aware of any American combat ships outfitted to that standard. In fact, when it comes to ice-hardened ships in general the US has shockingly few, perhaps only two depending on maintenance cycles: https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/icebreakers-and-u-s-power-...
An icebreaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker) is meant to go charging through and in some cases even over ice. They're tough as hell compared to most ships.
The reason the bow is stronger isn't because of ice, it's because of the pressure exerted on the bulbous bow. It's a spherical protrusion that will have to be tougher or it'll collapse.
There seems to be confusion in that sentence, an icebreaker "goes through ice" meaning it works in a region with ice not literally plowing through the ice. Although if the ice is loose and floating yes but an icebreaker is designed with a sloped bow that rides up onto ice and then the ship's weight pushes down breaking the ice. No ship pushes through ice it would be like trying to push on two ends of an egg.
My dad worked for the Canadian Coast Guard for 33 years. He said for really thick ice (several meters) they'd sometimes have to use the ship's crane with a large cement block and pound at the ice at the sides of the ship. The crane is normally used for buoys. Sea ice, pack ice is like concrete great in compression but fails when a multi 100 ton ship in sitting on top (to a limit).
This was the ship my dad served on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_Earl_Grey
There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...
I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a
billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength
than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a
fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions
asked in the article.
1. The Arleigh Burke class destroyers aren't big ships; the cargo ship was over 3x the size. 9,000 tons for the USS Fitzgerald compared to 30,000 tons for the cargo ship: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/pa...
2. I am not sure that any ship ever designed by humankind has been built to withstand a 20-knot broadside collision with a vessel of its own size without taking any damage, much less one with three times as much mass. As I said above I'm no naval expert; please take me to school if I'm spectacularly wrong here.
3. While it would certainly be possible to build such a ship, the weight of the ship would need to be increased by an incredible amount. It would be a very slow ship. Or it could be fitted with a much more powerful propulsion system, at a tremendous cost - more weight, more fuel consumption, more $$$.
3a. Modern (the last 100+ years or so) ship collision survivability design principles basically revolve around bulkheads. It's impractical to make the entire hull thick enough to survive any conceivable disaster (because the boat still needs to float - you can't just add ridiculous amounts of armor everywhere) so the general principle here is to contain hull breaches, not to make sure that no hull breach ever occurs.
4. Generally, modern naval battles are not fought by ships ramming each other.
5. So we can understand why the Navy didn't optimize for that possibility, and at some point decided on a "please try not to let other ships ram you broadside" doctrine. Which made a tremendous amount of sense for a very long time, until our ships' crews decided to start tossing themselves about into the paths of oncoming vessels.
6. Seriously though: building ships to withstand this kind of thing without a scratch is crazy for basically the same reasons why building planes to withstand midair collisions with bigger planes (or, really, anything bigger than a seagull) is crazy.
All things considered, hats off to the designers of the Arleigh Burke class and the Fitzgerald's and John McCain's damage control crews. Considering the amounts of force involved here and differences in mass it's actually quite admirable that the god damn ships didn't snap in half or sink instantly.
It's possibly a naive statement. I think it's a trap.
Fundamentally, the ship isn't designed to be hit at all. it's supposed to be fast and nimble. The walls could be paper thin (aside from getting shot at), because it's not supposed to be rammed in the first place. It creates a nifty dilemma. Either the whole class is poorly constructed, or those in command were complete failures. An expert would have a hard time saying the whole class is poorly constructed.
Less important but still relevant, an inquiry maybe should explain the bow vs side issue in ship strength. It'll dissuade obvious misunderstandings from lawyers, legislators and the general public - non experts.
The author of the article is not exactly inexperienced in these matters.
As WWII taught us, any surface vessel is essentially a sitting duck when it comes to air power in the form of planes, missiles, or missiles launched from planes. That is even truer today, as surface-to-surface and air-to-surface munitions have become that much more powerful and accurate. Designing a ship to withstand that kind of punishment is just impractical. The Arleigh Burke class can deliver some real destructive power but as always, air superiority is a must.
(This is where I reiterate that I am not particularly knowledgable on this topic; please somebody correct me if needed)
Perhaps it's similar to the way that football pads don't stop bullets and yet bulletproof kevlar vests don't protect you from 300-pound football players?
Regardless, I know that the Arleigh Burke class has a number of antimissile countermeasures.
But the bottom line is: I really don't know of any vehicle (air, surface, underwater, ground, space, whatever) designed to survive supersonic missiles.
I mean, even massive WWII-era battleships were helpless against smaller munitions like 500-pound bombs dropped from planes. Air superiority: either you have it, or your ships are screwed.
Most modern defenses are active intercept. More and more weapons are such that practical armor doesn't buy you much protection.
Its got defense against that, too. Though the first stage of that defense is detection by sensors ranging from the Mk I eyeball to fancy radar, etc.
Destroyers are not designed to be hit by missiles, they are designed to intercept and destroy missiles with Aegis or CIWS before the missiles hit them or the carrier they're protecting.
There is no amount of armor in the world that can protect you from a missile, because they are very easy to scale, all the way up to nuclear warheads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_or_nothing_(armor)
(I don't know about the Arleigh Burke class in particular, but I'd be shocked if this wasn't the case)
As I understand there must be an OOD, and there may also be a Conning Officer (usually the Jr. OOD) delegated under him and a Command Duty Officer above him, all with authority over shiphandling.
> I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions asked in the article.
As I understand, that's expected; warships are lighter, designed for speed and agility, and never double hulled (because that compromises speed and agility.)
A destroyer has more than enough maneuverability to avoid almost any collision. Here's a Burke-class making a hard 180 degree turn.[2] Those ships have 108,000 horsepower gas turbines, huge dual props, and large dual rudders. If the OOD calls for an emergency maneuver, a direction change happens fast. This isn't some underpowered, heavily loaded freighter.
Why isn't the Navy disclosing more about this? Are they hiding something? Eventually it's going to come out.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/richard.nikoley/posts/4734883396502... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vih4tGmqjs
Is this actually the case? They saw the collision coming but were forbidden to do anything? Or are you just engaging in conjecture?
Because if that is actually the case then it reminds me of NASA and Challenger.
Nonetheless, this is little more than daydreaming. The US Navy is in a very hard place to be. The US Navy is about the size of every navy in the world combined. It is the second largest air force in the world. It operates concurrently in every maritime zone on the planet. It is supposed to be able to provide humanitarian relief as well as the fire of god at a moments notice to almost any location. Accidents happen regardless of training. I think the author is dead on in terms of institutionalizing bad habits, but at the same time we do not know the whole story.
2. Too much money. Warships costing billions, war plans costing $100m. A ship is sunk? Let's just throw more money at the Navy.
3. A superiority complex. "We're the best, biggest, strongest, richest, and morally superior to all other nations. We can't possibly be wrong."
What confuses me the most is someone with NVGs should a seen the thing and raised hell. Either they didn't, or did and didn't get a response in time. The human factor of having sailors should always be part of the failsafes to prevent exactly this kind of complacence, if that's what it is.
For what its worth, I am speaking outside of my expertise, being from the men's department of the Navy.
So it's not GPS spoofing that caused this collision. If the ship ran aground, sure, I could believe they followed their GPS onto the ground.
What? You don't think a massive midships collision would disrupt of power distribution? I'm amazed the ship had power at all. If you want an example of brittle power distribution look at the 2011 outage of all San Diego county: one maintenance worker at the Arizona border did that. Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city.
> did the damage control efforts result in a reduced situational awareness after the collision?
Yes. Definitely. Being that it was dark out didn't help. Fog of war.
> What design and construction tradeoffs were made that resulted in a the hull of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership
None. If you drive a semi into the side of an F-1 race car, that race car is going to be hella worse for the wear. Anyone who has ever played American football understands the actor with more kinetic energy is going to come out on top in a collision.
Konrad's shriller lines, as above, make it difficult for me to focus on the rest of the topic. He raises some good points.
Unfortunately, he also lambasts Richardson for looking into "operational tempo, trends in personnel, material, maintenance and equipment." Well, actually, those were exactly the things I would think should be looked into.
Konrad has some decent points, but tread lightly while reading. Unless you know something about ships, it'll be hard to pick out what makes sense.
My criticism come not from a lack of respect but from the knowledge that even the best run organizations have things they need to improve… and, for the US Navy, avoiding collisions with civilian ships in congested waters certainly needs improvement. [0]
He wasn't wrong!
[0] http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-an...
That's not exactly what happened.
I was skeptical that a Naval ship's generator could be quickly and safely connected to the power grid during a short term (~12 hour) power outage, so I looked it up:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/in...
Officials also thanked the U.S. Navy for powering up generators aboard its many ships in port, freeing up the utility to restore power sooner to other customers.
So it sounds like the Naval ships switched from shore power to their own onboard generators, which meant that the utility didn't need to restore power to them, and that as the restored power, the considerable electrical load from large vessels didn't need to be restored immediately.
I'd be surprised if a modern carrier even had a feasible way to get the power from the main generator off-board and into a common electrical grid.
Basically refit the USS Enterprise as a floating, mobile, disaster relief platform. Plenty of storage for food and supplies and disaster relief workers, desalniation for water and a nuclear reactor to supply power all wrapped into one 33 knot package.
http://web.archive.org/web/20170621182811/http://sendtheente...
Is a fascinating idea
It absolutely should not in 2017. That is a lesson that the Royal Navy learned in 1982, along with separated armoured trunks for fire-fighting water.
Otherwise one bomb, or one Exocet-class weapon, is all that is required to mission-kill one ship.
Wind the clock back to 1945 and there are examples of destroyers remaining semi-operational after Kamikaze strikes; that's a ton of explosives going off. The Fletcher-class USS Newcomb stayed afloat after five Kamikaze strikes and kept manouevring and firing!
Unfortunately there is an increasing naval acceptance of lesser mercantile standards in shipbuilding.
Huh? They do that? I'd always assumed that space and weight would be at such a premium that they would pump fire-fighting water from the sea instead of storing it onboard..
> Wind the clock back to 1945 and there are examples of destroyers remaining semi-operational after Kamikaze strikes; that's a ton of explosives going off. The Fletcher-class USS Newcomb stayed afloat after five Kamikaze strikes and kept manouevring and firing!
Given the general level of carnage in WWII, I'd guess you'll be bound to find outliers like the USS Newcomb you mention. As well as outliers in the other direction, such as capital ships exploding after a single large caliber hit (HMS Hood).