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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

One issue the article goes into is that the sailors were distracted by their high tech bridge computers and so failed to notice the ship they were in the process of ramming. I have trouble understanding how this works - what is your high tech bridge gear showing you if not the surrounding area? Someone should be checking where the ship is going and whether they check with their mark one eyeballs or their high tech ship scanner doesn't seem to matter.

In other words, I don't buy that the high tech gear getting in the way is the issue. The issue is that nobody was watching where they were going by means high or low tech, and thus they ran into something they shouldn't have.

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Furthermore, as modern surface warships, with all their technology, are having trouble avoiding lumbering merchant ships, what does that imply about their ability in a hostile environment? Is it that modern threats are so fast, stealthy, autonomous and long-range that ship-handling would be largely irrelevant in combat?

Modern surface warfare involves firing cruise missiles from over 100 miles away. Ship handling is involved to the extent that you need to turn to bring your point defense systems to bear but you don't expect there to be obstacles anywhere nearby.

A huge part of the problem is that the crew lets down their guard in friendly waters making these collisions possible.

In a combat environment no unidentified ship would been able to get nearly as close without getting some holes put in it.

I’m not a sailor, but I was struck when touring various mueseum ships, including ships in service into the late 70s. They were pretty barebones in terms of equipment, comfort and distraction.

With the light distraction of screens, reliance on automated systems, reduced crew levels, and leadership focused on things other than sailing ships, it seems to be an argument that has some merit to me.

It was also a few minutes after a shift change too.

This in itself is a red flag: you should not be changing the watch during transit of a heavy traffic area. You do that well before you get into the heavy traffic area, and you put your highest skilled watchstanders on the bridge, so they have both the experience to handle heavy traffic and the time to build proper situational awareness before the heavy traffic builds up.

This - my time as control room crew on a sub, we knew we were in for as long a maneuvering watch as we had to stand, to get from open water to a pier or vice versa.

Only in very unusual circumstances did the watchstanders rotate, with the exception of the helmsman and his relief.

Especially not Sonar, Fire Control, Radar and the Quaartermaster.

If that discipline has broken down, ah, crap, may as well leave em pierside, or you're just pushing around REALLY expensive bumper cars.

Surface nuclear ops here. Served in the engine room of a nuclear destoyer in the 70s and early 80's. We did not relieve the watch leaving port until we cleared into open water. Same with proceding to dock. You stayed until done. When docking the crew that would have relieved the engine room assisted in pulling shore power cables then went to relieve the watch and shut down the reactors and engine room.

I'm just speculating here, but I don't think the Norwegian navy actually operates as if it could potentially be in combat situation at any time.

Not sure if what I'm saying is clear (and I don't have the correct terms, especially in English) but on French navy ships and I guess on US ships as well, the general ambiance is that the situation is always serious and whatever operation is done as if it was in the context of combat. I have been on a few ships of "less relevant" navies (no offense but the Australian or South African navies just see less action) and there the whole crew was usually more relaxed and would behave more casually with regards to unforeseen events.

This is not criticism, but I think frequent action does help with keeping discipline, while infrequent action makes it easy to slip into more comfortable routine.

This is an epically uninformed comment.

It's just my observation from my time aboard ships of the French, Australian and South African navies in the South Indian Ocean.

I didn't work as closely with the men aboard the South African and Australian ships, so maybe I got a wrong idea there.

A few years ago in Tromso I had the pleasure of talking with a Norwegian infantry soldier. Having served in Israeli infantry it was very interesting to both of us to share what we could. Note that this was 2013, before Russia invaded Ukraine.

From what I gathered, the Norwegian army (don't know about navy) is on constant alert for a Russian attack. Norway is very oil rich, and sits right at Russia's border. Russia outguns and outnumbers Norway, and they have experience in similar climates. From what I gathered, the Norwegian military is about as vigilant as I felt the Israeli military is. They may not be attacked constantly as we are, but they know that a single attack could end their way of life in minutes.

> constant alert for a Russian attack. Norway is very oil rich

Ridiculous scaremongering. Implying that Russia would invade Norway for it's oil, when Russia has 13 times more proven oil reserves than Norway [1]

Rather than highjacking a thread about Norwegian naval accident, in order to disparage Russia, perhaps you'd simply like to claim that Russians hacked Helge Ingstad ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oi...

> Served in the engine room of a nuclear destoyer in the 70s and early 80's.

Which ship, if you don't mind saying? I know we have nuclear carriers, and had nuclear cruisers (I think all of them are decommissioned now, but I worked on a couple when I was at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in the early 1990s), but I didn't think we had any nuclear destroyers.

The DLGNs were reclassified as CGNs in the 70s. As you say, they were decommed after the Gulf War (after spending all that money on NTU).

> The DLGNs were reclassified as CGNs in the 70s.

Ah, ok.

This. The watch in that situation would be the A-team, and wouldn't get relieved until the ship is in a lower-traffic area. That watch team would also brief the entire transit for expected hazards, i.e. "watch for tankers leaving the terminal." But also, a sub on the surface puts the conning officer on the bridge, which provides insanely good situational awareness compared to just having a periscope.

The light distraction thing has been taken into account on all ships I've been on, including warships. Everything that can be dimmed is dimmed, normally to the point where it's not really usable without a hood or turning up the brightness when you need it.

Everything that can't be dimmed gets a curtain made up for it.

Interesting. What wouldn't be usually dimmable?

Normally equipment that's still in development or is bought off the shelf[1]. Power LEDs on a laptop charger for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf

> Power LEDs on a laptop charger for example.

...Oh, right. The things under the electrical tape patch on my laptop :D

Yeah, probably a bad example. A screen on a laptop that nobody has admin rights on to properly dim might be a better case.

Light distraction is real. It's like trying to drive with your headlights off, while a bright lcd panel is glaring into your eyes. Your vision is going to be seriously compromised.

Another good reason for relatively barebones or simple equipment is the old Murphy's law that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Both electric and mechanical systems will routinely break, and things that can be repaired with a duct tape, hammer or screwdriver will be much less of a hassle than a fancy digital doodad.

I toured a Norwegian coast guard vessel once. The bridge really wasn’t any more equipment filled than a merchant ship, in fact the place the pilot sat had the modern joystick/bow thruster arrangement like modern aircraft have. It looked like good UX to me. I really wonder what happened here

I think there will be much difference in tech equipment between Frigate and Coast Guard ship. The Frigate will have more advanced technical equipment than Coast Guard ship.

Perhaps not. Frigates take a long time to plan and execute, a Coast Guard ship is comparatively more agile. It's not unfeasible that the bridge on a ship going in to service today would have been designed 10 years ago.

I agree, the problem is not the high tech equipment but faulty watchstanding practice. Whoever is driving the ship should not be looking at the high tech gear, they should be looking where the ship is going. Other watchstanders can feed that person information from the high tech gear if needed.

If they actually looked at their high tech gear, they'd seen the AIS marker of the tanker on their course.

The sacking of the US Pacific commander says a lot about the discipline and practice of military crewmen in modern armies nowadays, in a world of 50 years and more of enduring peace.

It may be a case of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, or more recently the Vista security alerts. People tune out warnings, or even disable them, if they are constant.

They were warned by radio too. "Helge Ingstad, Turn right." "We will do that, but can't now" "You have to take starboard, you are closing in rapidly. TURN!! There's gonna be a collition here then..."

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2018/helge-ingstad-ulykken/

So insanely arrogant.

Maybe the displays were displaying an unskippable ad?

They do not use uBlock Origin???

> I have trouble understanding how this works - what is your high tech bridge gear showing you if not the surrounding area?

Candy Crush?

In piloting aircraft, too, it pays to look out the window now and then.

It does. And then in aircraft there are actually controllers to help us and a little box shouting "traffic, traffic" about 40 seconds before things go wrong. Followed by automated resolution advice if things are really going wrong.

Thinking about it, isn't it strange that ships don't have a TCAS-like system to warn for predicted collisions?

The radars I used almost 30 years ago on merchant ships certainly had collision alerts! But I was also trained that there had to be at least one person on the watch whose sole job was to look out for other ships.

There's no substitute for looking out the window ("Iceberg, right ahead!"). The automated systems are fine as backups because people make misteaks.

>the sailors were distracted who was the captain? was a special crew?

High tech bridge computers = smartphones? :D

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