US Destroyer T-boned - Again

[Smitty-48]

Maybe their ultimate objective end state is to be the Global Hegemon someday, distant aspiration, but their immediate objective is to supplant the United States as the regional Hegemon in the western Pacific, but by immediate I mean, over the next couple decades or three, they are patient, they're not expecting this to all happen overnight.

[heydaralon]

Maybe their ultimate objective end state is to be the Global Hegemon someday, distant aspiration, but their immediate objective is to supplant the United States as the regional Hegemon in the western Pacific.

If we wanted to put a stop to that, what would be best long term strategy?

[Smitty-48]

Maybe their ultimate objective end state is to be the Global Hegemon someday, distant aspiration, but their immediate objective is to supplant the United States as the regional Hegemon in the western Pacific.

If we wanted to put a stop to that, what would be best long term strategy?

Strengthen your bonds with all your western Pacific allies and clients, preventing the region from slipping into China's sphere of influence by default.

A Trans-Pacific trading block which cuts the Chinese out of the deal and a Rim o' the Pacific NATO, basically.

[C-Mag]

4 Strikes and you're out

The U.S. Navy said that it plans to relieve Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin of his command on Wednesday.

This comes after the Pacific Fleet suffered its fourth collision since January.

Aucoin, who is a three-star commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, was expected to retire in the next few weeks.

https://www.circa.com/story/2017/08/21/ ... rs-missing

[Hastur]

my bet is on some kind of equipment malfunction. They must have been relying on some kind of anti collision system that failed. The two ships that T -boned the Destroyers are huge. They don't turn or change speed suddenly. For a modern computer they should be about as predictable when it comes to future position as a lighthouse.

Who takes responsibility when a system fails like this? Can the manufacturer be sued or do they get some immunity?

MV ACX Crystal


Alnic MC

[Smitty-48]

my bet is on some kind of equipment malfunction.

No, warships don't steam on autopilot, they're literally ready to manuever in battle at all times, the officer standing watch directs the helmsman, there is a officer on watch, and a helmsman on the wheel, continously, it's never unmanned, so it was human error, they're consulting the radar, GPS, AIS and whanot, but the computers are not steering a destroyer, because a warship is ready for war, at any moment.

Never mind the redundancy, there is no one peice of equipment they rely on, the watchstander can go to the analogue, and in fact they are doing analogue calculations as a backup to the electronic equipment as they go, even just to verify that the equipment is working right, there is no equipment failure which would prevent them from navigating.

Even you did put a DDG-51 on autopilot and let is sail itself, there are so many redundant layers of independent cross referencing sensors and navigation systems that equipment failure still wouldn't cause it to just cut in front of another ship out of the blue.

Redundant automated systems don't make mistakes like this, this would have to be a case of garbage in garbage out.

[Hastur]

my bet is on some kind of equipment malfunction.

No, warships don't steam on autopilot, they're literally ready to manuever in battle at all times, the officer standing watch directs the helmsman, there is a officer on watch, and a helmsman on the wheel, continously, it's never unmanned, so it was human error, they're consulting the radar, GPS, AIS and whanot, but the computers are not steering a destroyer, because a warship is ready for war, at any moment.

Never mind the redundancy, there is no one peice of equipment they rely on, the watchstander can go to the analogue, and in fact they are doing analogue calculations as a backup to the electronic equipment as they go, even just to verify that the equipment is working right, there is no equipment failure which would prevent them from navigating.

Even you did put a DDG-51 on autopilot and let is sail itself, there are so many redundant layers of independent cross referencing sensors and navigation systems that equipment failure still wouldn't cause it to just cut in front of another ship out of the blue.

Redundant automated systems don't make mistakes like this, this would have to be a case of garbage in garbage out.

Cowboys then.

[Smitty-48]

If I had to guess, they were steaming with this merchant in traffic, on their portside, the OOW decided to go to port in front of it, but they didn't check the speed of the merchant, and he had sped up since their last check, so when they made their turn to port, he clipped them as they came broadside to him.

Bear in mind, this is Straits of Malacca off Singapore, it's a traffic jam, they're all at tight quarters out there, so its kind of hard to make a move without cutting somebody off, it's just a question of clearance, and they miscalculated, again, probably because the merchant suddenly sped up, and they didn't double check before they made their turn to port.

Maybe the merchant was just ready to go to sea, he doesn't think they're going to turn out of the blue, so in between checks, he throttled up towards the open ocean, and suddenly they just turned into him. I doubt the merchant would have tried to cut them off, but because they are a US Navy destroyer, he might have figured that they were very aware of him and what he was doing, so throttling up and passing them wouldn't be a problem, because he's expecting them to be all seeing and all knowing and totally on top of things.

No doubt he was like "WTF are they doing?!" when they made their turn, but by then it was too late, these ships don't stop nor steer on a dime. For the destroyer, they probably realized it was going to be real tight as soon as they came around to port, but by then it's too late to turn back, so they just tried to make it past, keep going to get clear, but just fell short, because he did clip them near the stern in the end, so they almost made it, they we're just a few dozen yards from dodging the bullet.

Like, if look at the McCain, the damage is not that bad, I mean, there's compartments all over the ship, so if you punch a hole like that sailors will be crushed and/or cast into the sea, but in terms of the hull, it's just a hole, so it's not like they got t-boned at ramming speed, more like they just got clipped and then shoved out of the way, as they cut in front.

[SuburbanFarmer]

If I had to guess, they were steaming with this merchant in traffic, on their portside, the OOW decided to go to port in front of it, but they didn't check the speed of the merchant, and he had sped up since their last check, so when they made their turn to port, he clipped them as they came broadside to him.

I dunno about that. From the picture, there's no sideways scraping, just a straight punch to the side. That indicates that it was more like a perpendicular course from the outset that was misjudged.

Also, without knowing the exact relative size of the ships, that lower punch is well above the waterline, which indicates that either the freighter's bow was high, or the navy port side was low, which would indicate a hard turn to starboard at the moment of impact.

[Smitty-48]

Well, the merchants bow was probably high, because the nature of the hole, from below basically, which would indicate that they got hit by the bulb, but a hard turn to starboard would drop the portside not raise it, so if hard a starboard, the impact would have been higher up on the hull. Ships don't bank like airplanes, opposite of that. Low on the portside indicates portside turn, not starboard.