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Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

> Invariably people get fired, and whatever happens becomes a lesson learned that the Navy trains on in the future.

In the debates surrounding some of the most recent incidents (see, e.g., https://www.propublica.org/series/navy-accidents-pacific-7th...) I remember reading claims to the effect that submarine captains are the last ones in the Navy who actually know how to pilot a boat. I know that claim is hyperbolic rhetoric but those Pro Publica pieces really make me think it's not far from the truth, and that while submariner training may still be exceptionally rigorous and responsive to newly identified risks, that's not necessarily true in the case of surface ships.

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My first CO believed that submarines should be stealthy all the time. He didn't put out the radar ball (a retro-reflector to account for the low observability of the sail relative to a submarine's size) or turn on any of the running lights.

We operated that way even when steaming on the surface in the shipping lanes shared with the Port of New York.

So it isn't always a matter of "actually knowing how to pilot a boat". Sometimes its just plain recklessness.

My Battalion Commander in Afghanistan made us run livefire training ranges for the ANA in an area that had multiple recent IED strikes and had clear overwatch from the ridgeline from miles away, as a way to basically brag to the TF commander that he was "getting the ANA out into the shit" - despite the fact that these people were just utterly and completely incompetent. Just a total psychopath, so in some ways it makes me feel better (worse?) that those personalities are not unique to the US Army.

Kind of off topic but those ProPublic articles on the state of the USN are incredible, and worth the time to read closely. Just re-read the one about the USS John McCain and it's such a fascinating article that hits all my interests (tech challenges with defense procurement, UI/UX problems, my love of Naval warships despite being an Army vet).

Edit: this one

https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-crash/navy-i...

Possibly? There are far fewer officers on a submarine, so there's more opportunity for training.

But submarines don't spend a heck of a lot of time on the surface where piloting skill matters. They stay submerged through the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Hormuz, a lot of the Red Sea, etc. Submarines are slow on the surface and appear much smaller than they really are, so it's generally best for everyone if they go underneath or around chokepoints.

> it's generally best for everyone if they go underneath or around chokepoints.

Theoretically yeah, but radar is pretty great for resolving ambiguity.

How much of a radar signal will this generate?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/USS_Los_...

Exactly, it’s a tiny radar signature, particularly compared to its actual size.

Sorry, I missed your comment.

To answer your first question, a significant amount of RCS for a capable commercial radar, not least of all because it is rounded for hydrodynamics, which is a terrible shape for minimizing RCS.

Second, I should have been clearer: the submarine stands to gain by operating their own radar rather than working from sonar alone.

Finally, submerged transits are mostly advantageous for security concerns.

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