The silver non-radioactive lining here is that there does appear to be some institutional accountability - at least on the front line. Would be great if that accountability bled into the civilian world.
(Edit: someone downthread had explained to me that the marines are a sister organization to the us navy, and are both under a department. It makes more sense to criticize the branch based on what a sister branch did.)
Hum, or maybe their bosses were just lying to them all of this time to support a theater of competence?...
The 7th is staggering around the Pacific like a drunken Irishman right now. These incidents are obviously not intentional and many are textbook cases of incompetence.
Yes. My experience is with the British Army. It's a collection of multiple tribes with distinct and powerful local loyalties and rivalries. There may be shared trust, especially when the different parts have trained together or been on ops with each other.
[Edit]. Before I started working with them, I thought that 'uniform' meant 'something that is the same everywhere'. Boy was I wrong. There is a phenomenal variation in the regalia, badges, belt buckles, head dress, etc, etc. And the arcane career development paths, rank structures, e.g. depending on whether your ancestors were foot, cavalry, guns, etc.
[Edit] And these historical variations and beliefs translate into substantial procedural variations. E.g. is an armoured vehicle driver a glorified bus driver or a hardened warfighter? Infantry and armoured units could have very different perceptions of this role, and this would translate into variations in training, career development, prestige, etc.
Drone strikes killing civilians does not imply incompetence though. It's complicated ... - https://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/...
When your mission is to kill any military aged male that looks suspicious and collateral damage is acceptable then its incredibly easy to be competent.
It's very possible that this results in a slightly different management structure compared to the army.
Army Colonial says go over there and draw fire. You go over there and draw fire.
Navy Captain says go over there and draw fire. You and the Captain go over there and draw fire.
Another difference: Your boat is all by itself a strategic asset that can literally alter the outcome of an entire world war. Every submarine fits this description (even fast attack subs can carry fairly long range nuclear weapons if needed).
So the mission is important, and the people who carry it out treat it that way.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Military people are usually strong leaders who understand and perform in a large organization very well. That said, there’s literally millions of soldiers, and they are in a normal curve like any other large population.
You might be a stellar naval officer, but if the navy makes a policy decision to not train seamen to navigate ships, stuff will happen in spite of your abilities. But the culture of the naval service is such that the captain has absolute authority and absolute accountability. That’s often unfair and creates other problems, but that’s how it goes.
As Afghanistan and Iraq show blind obedience can result in a multi decade fiasco.
The military just fights them as they should.
The people pick the wars (well, their elected leaders do), the soldiers and sailors fight them. And believe me, you don't want blind obedience at any level in the military. Blind obedience is a very, very bad thing and it will lose wars. You want loyalty, which sometimes requires disobedience (e.g. tell the captain no when he wants to turn into an undersea mountain) to work.
My own experiences working with military leadership has also not corroborated any sense that they were competent or caring. Indeed, the impression I got was that they were universally just trying to wind out the clock to early retirement and use their relationships to get a cushy job while pulling down their pension at a major defense connector.
But in case of any other kind of crisis those companies tend to do quite well.
Responsibility for outcome is different from responsibility derived from intent and capability.
South China Sea is hard to navigate. It's not completely mapped, seafloor mapping must be even less complete. When submarine travels using only passive sonars it's effectively blind. The collision could be due to error or just captain taking risk to fulfill the mission. There is always some regulation that they break.
I am skipper on a small yacht, not a captain of a nuclear sub, but the reality is basically the same.
In the end it is my job to make sure we don't do something that might endanger the ship and the crew. And it is my job to make sure the boat is safe for travel. And while underway I have sole discretion to make any decisions including heading back to nearest port or calling for help if I don't feel safe to continue and I am responsible for whatever happens even if I delegate the task to the crew. It is my responsibility to make sure the crew is trained and able to execute the task safely.
Not sure if I hit rocks at night? Nobody cares. It is my responsibility to judge if I have enough skill and if the boat is equipped well enough to navigate in present conditions.
I understand navy captains are trained differently, and navy has concept of an acceptable risk (and captains and admirals have been fired from the job for not taking enough risk).
But there is a difference between acceptable risk that is taken for some much higher payoff in a military action and an unnecessary risk that is taken without any particular need or payoff or that could have been easily prevented or mitigated.
But that this doesn't mean there couldn't be precautions. I expect there is some procedure to use when running in those conditions. Knowing Navy, they have a procedure for everything. They can't be mapping ocean bottom by crashing nuclear subs into it until they have enough data points to build an accurate map.
One of the axed people is a sonar guy. This suggests to me (keeping in mind I have no knowledge of submarine operations) that people responsible for the sonar were probably not doing what they should be doing. So maybe there is a procedure to use sonar to help them avoid obstacles. I don't know how this exactly works in an enemy territory.
> Currently, less than ten percent of the global ocean is mapped using modern sonar technology. For the ocean and coastal waters of the United States, only about 35 percent has been mapped with modern methods.
There is global effort to map all oceans by 2030
To your point, the heading of the accountability culture is in fact bleeding into the civilian world, just likely not as you may want it to. The submarine services are a severely lagging, not leading indicator, the antipode of the canary. Expect more of these kinds of events, because the pillars that uphold and scales that measure health of any system can only be fudged and messed around with for so long before reality will no longer be refused its pound.
The reason why the submarine services have been the one of the far outliers that cause them to be extreme lagging indicators, is that the consequences in both life, treasure, and consequences is so immense that there was always not only a zero failure policy, but a multiple redundancy zero failure policy. That is also why these sailors were held accountable, because as in all the other recent events, multiple redundant system nodes were undermined to produce the failures.
I suspect that the Navy would dump a cautious sub captain - who ran on the surface, or slowly, or using his sonar to (loudly) look for uncharted seamounts in his path in such circumstances - extremely fast.
I would not call it institutional accountability when people are ordered to run through a minefield, and then the ones who get unlucky are punished.
Because I wondered the same but I know at least my thoughts are not based on any intuition or knowledge of how the Navy operates, whatsoever.
Doubtful: this CO will be swapped out, first likely by his boss, then by someone else in the CO pipeline. This CO will go to a shore-based job and will undoubtedly keep his pension. You could argue that this relieved CO is the one getting a good deal, but that is to deny the significance of professional pride (the significance of which is supported by the rarity of these events.)
The rest of this comment feels like speculation by someone with no insight into the process for billeting major submarine commands.