Navy failures destroyed the Bonhomme Richard
gcaptain.com
gcaptain.com
The fire response read like a clownshow, and this article doesn't even highlight the worst of it. There was a Sailor who saw the smoke and walked by it, thinking nothing of it!
Another officer thought the smoke might have been coming from the diesel generator. Why tf would the diesel generator be running???
It's hard for me to think of the software equivalent of these fundamental errors. Maybe something like finding a spike in network traffic and assuming it's load testing on prod, when you're actually getting pwned?
(Based on a quick search of that report for "DCA"...let me politely suggest that you do NOT read the report. Ever.)
Rationally, it's absurd to ignore a fire. But I've seen organizations and situations where I would expect it.
Also, isn't fire on a submarine far more critical than fire on a surface ship in port?
There have basically been no naval conflicts between fairly matched forces since WWII and the story goes that no one knows how to run a navy anymore. I say running a navy in such a conflict is mostly irrelevant because the weapons which may destroy ships (particularly large ones) are so much more effective now that your fleet would be quickly destroyed.
Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction. Even here the accidents seem to mount lately though as these wandering souls of the doomsday device have seemingly nothing to do
The us navy is in the midst of an identity crisis fuelled by octogenarian politicians that have pedalled the institution into treading cold-war era water with no real direction.
Carriers don't go anywhere alone, and they never stop moving except when in port. They are part of a carrier strike group which includes extensive anti-missile capabilities, both from escorting ships and patrol aircraft (LAMPS.)
> Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction.
Submarines are not only for launching nuclear ballistic missiles, as indicated by the relatively large number of submarines that are not designed to carry them. They're used for patrol, surveillance, special ops, escort, etc.
That sounds very nice but I think whatever is on the land side can store more missile than anti-missile missile on ships.
The reality is that the protection of the ship came from the desire to not have a full out war with the US. Once that is out of the picture, and given the adversary is not a punching bag like Iraq, all of them have the potential to rapidly sink on a massive attack. Though if it comes to that, the survivability of the fleet isn't the very first concern...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victoria_(1887)#Camperdown...
Can’t say I’m super surprised it’s reached this point though, we’ve been running our military like schizophrenic kids on adderall for the last 20+ years.
Maybe. The reports are very clear that most of the problems are lessons learned but not implemented from the Miami in 2012.
> It’s certainly better than pinning this entire event on whatever E-3 started the fire.
Does this ever happen? I've never seen it.
> we’ve been running our military like schizophrenic kids on adderall for the last 20+ years.
Can you explain?
It does. In this specific case, even. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/1022514854/sailor-charged-ars...
“The U.S. Navy charged a sailor Thursday with starting a fire last year that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego, marking the maritime branch's worst warship blaze outside of combat in recent memory.”
I was once interrogated by NIS for 3 days and in the end I almost signed a false statement to get it over with.
NCIS is not a believable policing agency. They use very questionable methods for getting confessions.
In my case they provided a false statement from my roommate and then when I asked for representation they escorted me to a Flag Officer who told me I should tell them everything I know.
Turns out the flag officer was a prosecuting not defense lawyer. One agent was kind enough to mention that. With that information I ran out of NIS headquarters never to hear from them again.
They are not to be trusted.
Now I work in a shipyard and my simple question is: How did MARMAC allow a ship to not have fire stands in a shipyard.
Utter failure on thier part. They are the US Navy contract representatives.
That makes them a very believable policing agency, since that's basically an universal trait of such agencies.
But an example of a police department in one city run by one corrupt political party is not proof of the claim that any agency that does such a thing is a "believable policing agency"? Nor of the claim that this is "basically an universal trait of such agencies"?
I know there are policing agencies that behave poorly, the poster in this thread talking about NCIS gave another anecdote of it happening. That's not what I was questioning.
Persuasive interrogation like this is widely used across the United States to elicit confessions or convince people to accept plea bargains, even in cases where they are innocent, because our justice system does not actually have the capacity to provide everyone an actual trial. The risk of carrying a case to trial, even if you're innocent, can be significantly higher than entering a guilty plea and accepting a bargain.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2018/07/31/are-inno...
An infinitesimal amount of cases actually go to trial in America: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...
I realize you are just trying to help here, so thanks anyway. Let's wait for the original poster to reply.
Charged with arson, so without more details it’s hard to say if they’re just a patsy.
Probably incompetent throughout.
It sure used to. Iowa turret explosion?
In absolute terms, they are very well funded of course. But what I read over and over is that there isn't time for training, because the demand we put on them - the world is a very large place - is much higher. They are told to cut training and deploy. After the collisions, they decided that officers (at least some positions) were too overworked and discussed (maybe implemented) limiting their workweeks to 100 hours.
Think of any organization; when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter, even at the obvious long-term cost. The pressure and immediate demand are too great. If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training, that actually seems like a valid choice - they need to function.
Look at the US Navy: ~400,000 active duty personnel operating ~400 ships (~250 combat, ~150 aux).
Compare to the Chinese PLAN: ~250,000 active duty personnel operating ~750 ships (~500 combat, ~250 aux).
A huge portion of that difference is due to aircraft carriers (11 USN, 2 PLAN), average tonnage per ship, and specifically the USN's lack of frigates.
This arrangement optimizes for the USN's mission of international power projection, where logistics requirements are like an iceberg, with the deployed forces being the above water volume.
However, it does leave a problem of training and experience. If no numerous smaller vessels exist for SWOs and crew to come up through, how do we expect them to have a deep reservoir of experience by the time they're commanding and crewing a destroyer+?
The retirement of the Perry class, subsequent botching of the LCS program (and finally recent selection of a Constellation class design, to be built) left the current USN with ~50 less commands for officers and crew to cut their teeth on.
The Zumwalt class are 610 feet long, with 130 crew. Similarly sized WWII cruisers had over a thousand.
If you think it's bad now, wait until there's a war.
The military needs to be able to operate under conditions of overwhelming workload and lack of resources, because that's what it will be like if it ever actually has to fight.
> If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training
Then someone has the wrong definition of "training". Training is properly done as part of actual operations. You don't "train" to do something and then do it. You train by doing it, while others more senior to you are watching you while they're doing their part of the operations. For example, the officers who made the bad decisions that caused the collisions you refer to should have been training on ship handling and navigation as part of transiting the ship from place to place, routinely. You shouldn't have to set aside special "training" time for those things.
Firefighting is actually an exception to the above rule, for obvious reasons, so there is a good reason to have special training time for that. But you can do that while other things are going on as well.
> when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter
Your use of the word "managers" suggests to me the root cause of the problem: our military doesn't need "managers", it needs leaders. You don't "manage" a military organization; you lead it. And the collisions several years ago and this fire point to a lack of leadership in our military.
Funny, that's exactly what I said 40-plus years ago when I got out. (Naïve youth that I was, I even wrote a letter to Admiral Rickover about it; IIRC, the response was a bland thank-you letter from some functionary — but Rickover was famous for having said about certain managers, there but for the grace of God goes God.)
I saw many of the same problems when I was in the Navy 30-ish years ago. But some seem to have gotten worse; from the report to Congress that was linked to upthread, what jumped out at me was the increasing micromanagement from flag officers and the lack of teaching basic ship handling and warfighting skills.
I have a hard time understanding that. We all know that enormous amounts (maybe most) training is done outside actual operations, both in the military and otherwise. Obviously you are aware of that, so do you mean this in a specific context? Is the US Navy somehow different (and are you in the USN)?
The fact that this happens to be the case now does not mean it's right, or that it was always done this way.
> Is the US Navy somehow different
I would imagine that all branches of the US military have similar issues, but the article that prompted this thread only discusses the Navy.
> (and are you in the USN)?
I was, years ago, but I'm not now.
This ship was not at sea. It was docked, and partially disassembled for maintenance. Only 118 of the normal crew of 1000 were on board. On the other hand, they had assistance from the shipyard, other ships nearby, and civilian fire departments. Despite that, the ship burned for days and had to be scrapped.
[1] https://news.usni.org/2021/10/19/long-chain-of-failures-left...
Here: Exemption 6 protects information about individuals in "personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. https://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foia_guide09/exemption6....
There's some interesting parallels with the HMS Stark, which burned after being hit by an Exocet missile in the Falklands War. Their electronic communications and radar systems weren't working properly, they couldn't fight the fire, and the captain was recently assigned from subs. So it was more of an overal systemic failure like the BR than specific to a missile attack - the Exocet was an ignition source, but the failures afterward were leadership-related.
You can watch YT videos on the Forrestall carrier fire, started by electrical faults in Zuni missiles on John McCain's airplane. The Navy supposedly raised fire-fighting skills as a priority after that, but I guess not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire
During WW2, the Franklin carrier burned and when around 100 sailors got blocked off by smoke and flames, they jumped overboard to save their lives. Sadly the captain blacklisted them, and they were interned as deserters in Hawaii.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Franklin_(CV-13)
2) No lives, but multiple billions of dollars, lost.
3) There's a scenario that China could occupy Australia with 10,000 soldiers using their existing troop carriers. The US actually needed the ship that burned.
NTD Media - How China Might Win a War with the US (Dr. Robert D. Eldridge) @4:41
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oxE5mCOBio
4) My understanding is the fire involved a love triangle. If so, wokeism set back the US military, as expected. I've also heard recently that in time of war, many female personnel are expected to "accidently" get pregnant before deployment, affecting readiness. I bring this up because our current military leadership seemingly can't.
Source: I study WW2, and to a lesser extent, other wars.
I've not heard much good about the USN on this front.
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/HotTopics/BHR%2...
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/HotTopics/BHR%2...
https://news.usni.org/2021/10/19/long-chain-of-failures-left...
And a juicy (and damning) tidbit from the parent's second link - the San Diego (local civilian) Fire Dept, arriving at the ship's pier 30 minutes after FedFire, and at least 45 minutes after the ship's crew knew of the fire, and knowing nothing of the ship's layout or systems, and having to (in effect) ask passing sailors for directions - was the first organization to actually get a hose to the fire, and start doing something useful - before the fire grew out of control.
jwithington's comment about the whole fire response (presumably outside of the municipal crews) being a "clownshow" is profoundly understated.
Is crew retention decreasing? It is hard to imagine people putting up with conditions in the Navy while there are so many stories like this going around.
The leadership problems in the USN have been endemic since Tailhook.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_Crys...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_(DDG-56)#20...
Now the leadership that created the circumstances and conditions for this mismanagement to flourish, rushes to fix a problem they allowed to create?