Sony releasing updated PlayStation VR in Japan this month
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-02-sony-releasing-updated-playstation-vr-in-japan-this-month
Western release to follow, introduces stereo headphone cable support and new Processor Unit with HDR pass through
Female Samurai Warriors Immortalized in 19th Century Japanese Photos
▻http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/female-samurai-warriors-immortalized-in-19th-century-japanese-photos.ht
And yet, it turns out, “such women did exist.” Known as onna bugeisha, these fighters “find their earliest precursor in Empress Jingū, who in 200 A.D. led an invasion of Korea after her husband Emperor Chūai, the fourteenth emperor of Japan, perished in battle.” Empress Jingū’s example endured. In 1881, she became the first woman on Japanese currency.
http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/26232323/Bugeisha-1-659x1024.jpg 
http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/26232345/Bugeisha-2.jpg 
http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/26232421/Bugeisha-3.jpg 
http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/27000852/women-samurai-2-578x1024.jpg 
http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/26232436/Bugeisha-4.jpg 
U.S. Navy Pacific commander misses promotion, retiring after collisions
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-asia/u-s-navy-pacific-commander-misses-promotion-retiring-after-collisions-idUSK
U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Scott Swift said he plans to retire after being passed over for promotion to the chief of all military forces in the region in the wake of two deadly collisions involving U.S. warships.
Swift was in the running to replace Admiral Harry Harris as the Commander, U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM). Whoever the Pentagon chooses to replace Harris will be taking over at a time when North Korea poses a rising threat and China is flexing its military muscle.
[…]
Under Swift’s command the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet, which normally operates east of the international date line in the Pacific has taken a command role in Asia alongside the Seventh Fleet, which is headquartered in Japan.
The move aimed to bolster U.S. forces in the region as a counterweight to China’s growing military might.
Swift did not refer to the spate naval collisions in the Pacific in recent months when announcing his retirement on Monday in the United States.
But, he is the most senior naval officer to step down after collisions in June and August in which a total of 17 U.S. sailors were killed.
Nuclear Apocalypse Now? | by Ariel Dorfman | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
▻http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/09/22/nuclear-apocalypse-now
But there was another, more telling aspect of Trump’s UN speech. This most thoughtless and impetuous of American presidents also called the possibility of nuclear conflict “unthinkable.” On the contrary, we must think about it. And crucial to any understanding of the moral import of the possible use of nuclear weapons is to go back to the foundational moment of this nuclear age and ask again: Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes?
We have no way of knowing what the people of North Korea would make of that question, any more than we know what their views are about their leader’s avowed willingness to order a nuclear first strike. After all, the citizens of the so-called Democratic Republic are closeted in a “dense fog” created by Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, “to prevent our enemies from learning anything about us.”
We do, on the other hand, know something about what Americans think. Two years ago, a Pew Research poll found that 56 percent of American respondents regarded the bombing of Hiroshima as justified, a clear majority, though significantly down from the 85 percent who felt that way in 1945.
There is still much controversy around the issue. The traditional justification for the attack was that it was the only way to force the Japanese High Command to surrender immediately, and to avoid a long and costly invasion of island after island that would have led to countless American and Allied casualties. But subsequent historical research has revealed that Japan capitulated out of fear that the Soviet Union would land forces on the Japanese mainland and occupy half the country. The findings of historians Gar Alperovitz, Murray Sayle, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, among others, refute the conventional wisdom that the first nuclear attack in history was an absolute necessity.
Yet the myth persists. The question is: To what extent does Americans’ belief in the rightness of President Truman’s fateful decision in 1945 provide moral support for the brimstone rhetoric of nuclear conflagration that President Trump is deploying today?
The Killing of History
▻https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/21/the-killing-of-history
I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings.”
The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.
There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans – it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences. In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans.
“We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying. How very post-modern.
All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the Twentieth Century: from “The Green Berets” and “The Deer Hunter” to “Rambo” and, in so doing, has legitimized subsequent wars of aggression. The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy.” Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?”
What ‘Decency’ and ‘Good Faith’?
To the north, in Quang Tri province, more bombs were dropped than in all of Germany during the Second World War. Since 1975, unexploded ordnance has caused more than 40,000 deaths in mostly “South Vietnam,” the country America claimed to “save” and, with France, conceived as a singularly imperial ruse.
The “meaning” of the Vietnam War is no different from the meaning of the genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, the colonial massacres in the Philippines, the atomic bombings of Japan, the leveling of every city in North Korea. The aim was described by Colonel Edward Lansdale, the famous CIA man on whom Graham Greene based his central character in The Quiet American.
Quoting Robert Taber’s The War of the Flea, Lansdale said, “There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert.”
Nothing has changed. When Donald Trump addressed the United Nations on Sept. 19 – a body established to spare humanity the “scourge of war” – he declared he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people. His audience gasped, but Trump’s language was not unusual. His rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, had boasted she was prepared to “totally obliterate” Iran, a nation of more than 80 million people. This is the American Way; only the euphemisms are missing now.
Returning to the U.S., I am struck by the silence and the absence of an opposition – on the streets, in journalism and the arts, as if dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground.
▻https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-fabrique-de-lhistoire/guerre-du-vietnam-34-les-images-de-la-guerre
#Guerre_des_images et imaginaires de guerre dans le cinéma de science-fiction nord-américain
Depuis la #guerre_du_Viêt-nam, le cinéma de Science-fiction Nord Américain, avec notamment des cinéastes comme John Carpenter, John McTiernan ou James Cameron et Paul Verhoeven, s’est fait l’écho de l’histoire sociale, politique ou belliqueuse du pays, à travers des systèmes d’échos, d’échanges et d’influences entre l’imaginaire et l’histoire d’une part, et entre le cinéma et la télévision d’autre part. Ces auteurs augurent moins des dérives à venir qu’ils n’énoncent des problématiques contemporaines, leurs imaginaires du futur, en se nourrissant de ces histoires inventées, nous parlent d’une histoire « en train de se faire », tout en s’inscrivant au cœur d’un questionnement sur la place de l’image dans les représentations historiques, mais aussi son rôle passé, présent et à venir dans l’évolution des sociétés modernes.
▻http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=517
❝We had to be extremely careful because we had limited amounts of film that had been distributed to us by our paper. For us, one photo was like a bullet ❝
Nguyen Dinh UU
Arte aurait donc diffusé le même reportage : ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/631910
@Kassem
Je crois que les américains ont droit à 18h de documentaire, effectivement il s’agit du même.
Ken Burns Says the Vietnam War Was “Begun in Good Faith.” So Was Every Other Lousy War.
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/09/24/ken-burns-vietnam-war-decent-people-good-faith-afghanistan-soviets
Except that actually wasn’t a U.S. State Department cable about Vietnam and Nguyen Van Thieu. It was a December 27, 1979 missive from the Soviet Foreign Ministry about the new Afghan president Babrak Karmal, who had been installed by the Soviet troops who had just entered Afghanistan. All that was changed from the original Soviet cable is a substitution of references to Vietnam with Afghanistan and mentions of the U.S. with the Soviet Union. (As Thieu’s predecessor Ngô Dình Diem had dissatisfied the U.S. and somehow ended up dead, so too with the Soviets and Karmal’s predecessor.)
So what does this Soviet cable — filled with sincere moral fervor about helping Afghanistan — demonstrate? That all catastrophic wars are started by people who believe they’re the good guys.
So Burns and Novick aren’t wrong, exactly, about the good faith of the decent Americans who devastated Vietnam. But what truly matters is, what difference does it make? Saying that these U.S. officials wanted to do the right thing is the same as explaining, “America’s involvement in Vietnam was begun by human beings, who breathed air, ate food, and used their legs to walk around.”
There Is No Rehabilitating the Vietnam War | By Robert Freeman | Common Dreams
▻https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/24/there-no-rehabilitating-vietnam-war
There is enormous pressure and a lot of money working to rehabilitate Vietnam, to put the guilt and the shame of it behind us. But it was precisely the guilt of the people, their shame at what was being done in their name, and their courage to denounce it that made it impossible for their government to carry out the savagery any longer.
“It’s important to remember that neither Vietnam, nor Laos, nor Cambodia for that matter, ever attacked the United States. They never wanted to attack. They never tried to attack. They never had the capacity to attack. They had simply wanted their own way of life.”
Those are not the words of a leftist pundit or a scribbling anti-American. They are the words of H.R. McMaster, the sitting National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.
VIETNAM FULL DISCLOSURE
▻http://vietnamfulldisclosure.org
On May 25, 2012, in announcing a 13-year long commemoration of the war in Viet Nam funded by Congress at $65 million, President Obama proclaimed: “As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away… They pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.”[i]
Commemorations are acts of choosing what to remember about something presumably of significance. There are two parts to this:
creating a memory which is inevitably a direction to remember some things rather than others; a memory with a purpose; ostensibly to honor and thereby define honor for some future purpose;
defining some event as significant: making a major contribution to our world, a turning point.
So I will try to make an argument for the significance of the war and point at what I think ought to be remembered which will diverge from hyperbolic salutations of soldierly valor – though valor there was — to something more substantive. It will end up at cross purposes to Obama’s, I fear.
So let me develop an argument at three levels:
the war’s impact on the U.S.;
its impact on Vietnamese;
its impact on the world.
THE KEN BURNS VIETNAM WAR DOCUMENTARY GLOSSES OVER DEVASTATING CIVILIAN TOLL
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/the-ken-burns-vietnam-war-documentary-glosses-over-devastating-civilia
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdTx6zLY0Zk
Vietnam War: The Face of the Enemy (Vietnamese Perspective)
Why Americans still can’t move past Vietnam
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/10/why-americans-still-cant-move-past-vietnam/?tid=sm_tw
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle outsells all non-Nintendo Switch games
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-09-22-mario-rabbids-kingdom-battle-outsells-all-non-nintendo-swi
Ubisoft crossover dominates within just a month of its release, Nintendo #Publishing in Japan and South Korea
No, We Cannot Shoot Down North Korea’s #Missiles - Defense One
▻http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/09/no-we-cannot-shoot-down-north-koreas-missiles/141070
The number one reason we don’t shoot down North Korea’s missiles is that we cannot.
Officials like to reassure their publics about our defense to these missiles. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told his nation after last week’s test, “We didn’t intercept it because no damage to Japanese territory was expected.”
That is half true. The missile did not pose a serious threat. It flew over the Japanese island of Hokkaido, landing 3700 km (2300 miles) from its launch point near North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang.
The key word here is “over.” Like way over. Like 770 kilometers (475 miles) over Japan at the apogee of its flight path. Neither Japan nor the United States could have intercepted the missile. None of the theater ballistic missile defense weapons in existence can reach that high. It is hundreds of kilometers too high for the Aegis interceptors deployed on Navy ships off Japan. Even higher for the THAAD systems in South Korea and Guam. Way too high for the Patriot systems in Japan, which engage largely within the atmosphere.
British wind farm first to secure MHI Vestas’ record 9.5 MW turbines
▻https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-windpower/british-wind-farm-first-to-secure-mhi-vestas-record-9-5-mw-turbines-idUK
A consortium planning to build Britain’s #Triton_Knoll offshore wind park will buy 90 giant turbines from MHI Vestas, it said on Monday, in what the maker said was the first announced deal for its record 9.5 megawatt (MW) capacity product.
A final investment decision for the wind park, in Britain’s North Sea, is likely in 2018 with full onshore construction starting shortly after, and offshore construction starting in 2020, it added.
The 9.5 MW turbine, made by a joint venture between Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Denmark’s Vestas, has the world’s largest capacity, designed to challenge an 8.0 megawatt turbine by Siemens Gamesa, the market leader in the growing offshore market.
vaste programme d’#archéologie_préventive pour la tranchée terrestre du cable de raccordement
Allen Archaeology Wins Triton Knoll Contract | Offshore Wind
▻http://www.offshorewind.biz/2017/06/13/allen-archaeology-wins-triton-knoll-contract
The contract, worth around GBP 500,000, will see Allen Archaeology carry out an approximate five months schedule of archaeological trial trenching works along the entire route of the project’s onshore cable corridor, starting later this month, including at the landfall location, the onshore substation and the Intermediate Electrical Compound sites.
Improbable Research #IgNobel 2017
▻http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2017
PHYSICS PRIZE [FRANCE, SINGAPORE, USA] — Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question “Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?”
REFERENCE: “On the Rheology of Cats,” Marc-Antoine Fardin,
▻http://www.rheology.org/sor/publications/rheology_b/RB2014Jul.pdf
PEACE PRIZE [SWITZERLAND, CANADA, THE NETHERLANDS, USA] — Milo Puhan, Alex Suarez, Christian Lo Cascio, Alfred Zahn, Markus Heitz, and Otto Braendli, for demonstrating that regular playing of a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea and snoring.
REFERENCE: “Didgeridoo Playing as Alternative Treatment for Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome: Randomised Controlled Trial,” ▻http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7536/266
ECONOMICS PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, USA] — Matthew Rockloff and Nancy Greer, for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person’s willingness to gamble.
REFERENCE: “Never Smile at a Crocodile: Betting on Electronic Gaming Machines is Intensified by Reptile-Induced Arousal,”
▻https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10899-009-9174-4
ANATOMY PRIZE [UK] — James Heathcote, for his medical research study “Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?”
REFERENCE: “Why Do Old Men Have Big Ears?”
▻http://www.bmj.com/content/311/7021/1668.short
BIOLOGY PRIZE [JAPAN, BRAZIL, SWITZERLAND] — Kazunori Yoshizawa, Rodrigo Ferreira, Yoshitaka Kamimura, and Charles Lienhard, for their discovery of a female penis, and a male vagina, in a cave insect.
REFERENCE: “Female Penis, Male Vagina and Their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect,”
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003145
FLUID DYNAMICS PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Jiwon Han, for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks backwards while carrying a cup of coffee. REFERENCE: “A Study on the Coffee Spilling Phenomena in the Low Impulse Regime,”
▻http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2078152015300377
NUTRITION PRIZE [BRAZIL, CANADA, SPAIN] — Fernanda Ito, Enrico Bernard, and Rodrigo Torres, for the first scientific report of human blood in the diet of the hairy-legged vampire bat
REFERENCE: “What is for Dinner? First Report of Human Blood in the Diet of the Hairy-Legged Vampire Bat Diphylla ecaudata,”
▻http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3161/15081109ACC2016.18.2.017
MEDICINE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK] — Jean-Pierre Royet, David Meunier, Nicolas Torquet, Anne-Marie Mouly and Tao Jiang, for using advanced brain-scanning technology to measure the extent to which some people are disgusted by cheese.
REFERENCE: “The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study,”
▻https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5065955
COGNITION PRIZE [ITALY, SPAIN, UK] — Matteo Martini, Ilaria Bufalari, Maria Antonietta Stazi, and Salvatore Maria Aglioti, for demonstrating that many identical twins cannot tell themselves apart visually.
REFERENCE: “Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins,”
▻http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120900
OBSTETRICS PRIZE — [SPAIN] — Marisa López-Teijón, Álex García-Faura, Alberto Prats-Galino, and Luis Pallarés Aniorte, for showing that a developing human fetus responds more strongly to music that is played electromechanically inside the mother’s vagina than to music that is played electromechanically on the mother’s belly.
REFERENCE: “Fetal Facial Expression in Response to Intravaginal Music Emission,”
▻http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742271x15609367
REFERENCE: “Fetal Acoustic Stimulation Device,” patent ES2546919B1, granted September 29, 2015 to Luis y Pallarés Aniorte and Maria Luisa López-Teijón Pérez.
▻https://patents.google.com/patent/ES2546919B1/en
le tampon pour partager ses goûts musicaux avec son enfant avait déjà été cité ici :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/447514
Compilation d’article sur la #sexualité animale et humaine :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/686795
Over a Third of U.S. Navy Ships in Pacific Lack Training Certification -Watchdog – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/over-a-third-of-u-s-navy-ships-in-pacific-lack-training-certification-watc
Speaking before a House of Representatives Armed Services Committee hearing, John Pendleton, from the U.S. #Government_Accountability_Office (#GAO), said that a report had found that 37 percent of U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers based out of Japan had expired warfare certifications as of June 2017. That was a five-fold increase from the number in May 2015.
The certification is a measurement of whether a ship and its crew are well trained and ready for operations.
The GAO report also found that a reduction in crew sizes was contributing to safety risks, with some sailors working over 100 hours a week and there was limited training because of an increased demand for operations.
“The Navy has made plans to revise operational schedules to provide dedicated training time for overseas-based ships, but this schedule has not yet been implemented,” the report said.
#USS_John_S_McCain #USS_Fitzgerald
Ah ouais !
note : on est plus près de 40% que du tiers…
On est encore en dessous de cela : 8 sur 11 navires (72,7% !) n’ont pas la qualification « navigation » en juin 2017…
Readiness of U.S. Ships in Japan Focus of USS John S. McCain, USS Fitzgerald Collision Hearing - USNI News
▻https://news.usni.org/2017/09/07/readiness-u-s-ships-japan-focus-uss-john-s-mccain-uss-fitzgerald-collisio
“I have had made the assumption for many, many years that our forward deployed forces in Japan were the most proficient, well-trained, most experienced force we have because they were operating all the time,” [Navy’s second in command, VCNO Adm.] Moran told a Thursday joint hearing before the House Armed Services readiness and seapower and projection forces subcommittees.
“It was the wrong assumption.”
[…]
As of June 2017, 37 percent of the warfare certifications for cruiser and destroyer crews homeported in Japan had expired, and over two-thirds of the expired certifications—including mobility-seamanship and air warfare—had been expired for five months or more
“There were specific areas that were higher than 37 percent and one of those was seamanship. Eight of the 11 ships had expired certification for seamanship,” he told the panel
“This represents more than a fivefold increase in the percentage of expired warfare certifications for these ships since our May 2015 report.”
Both the Fitzgerald and McCain had expired certifications, but Pendleton wouldn’t detail the precise certifications that were out of date.
Faut-il s’en étonner quand on voit la programmation du temps consacré aux différentes activités ?
Donc, si on lit le graphique, en 2015 le GAO constate sereinement (?) que pour la flotte déployée au Japon, sur un cycle de 2 ans, il n’y aucune séquence consacrée à l’entrainement ou la formation…
On rappelle par ailleurs que depuis 2003, il n’y a plus non plus de séquence de formation initiale des futurs officiers à la navigation qu’elle soit théorique (uniquement sur CD ou DVD) ou pratique (sur le tas pendant les prochains embarquements)…
Arf ! 3 jours après, CNN se réveille. Mais c’est Exclusive !
Exclusive : US Navy ships in deadly collisions had dismal training records - CNNPolitics
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/11/politics/navy-ships-training-expired/index.html
The two US Navy destroyers involved in deadly collisions in the Pacific this summer both had lengthy records of failure to fulfill key training requirements, according to Government Accountability Office data provided to Congress and obtained by CNN.
The USS Fitzgerald had expired training certification for 10 out of 10 key warfare mission areas in June, and the USS John S. McCain had let its certifications lapse in six out of the 10 mission areas, the data show.
The dismal training record for the two ships sheds new light on one factor that may have contributed to the two collisions with commercial ships in June and August, which killed 17 sailors.
[…]
A Navy official contested the GAO’s training certification data, arguing that the GAO was focused on higher-level warfighting certifications and not the nuts-and-bolts certifications for operating ships where the Pacific fleet’s destroyers and cruisers have a better record. There are 22 certifications required for each ship and the GAO only reported on half, the official noted, though they declined to provide the full training records for the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain, citing the ongoing investigations into the collisions.
Mais, apparemment, il ne s’agit pas des compétences de navigation.
The GAO examined training records in June for all of the Japan-based destroyers and cruisers, focusing on 10 key warfare training areas. They included air warfare, ballistic missile defense, electronic warfare, fire support, cruise missiles and more.
The USS Fitzgerald had let its training certifications expire for all of them, according to the GAO data.
The Navy’s preliminary findings in its Fitzgerald investigation found the crew failed to understand and acknowledge the cargo ship was approaching and failed to take any action necessary to avoid the collision.
(sur ce dernier point, c’était dans le rapport préliminaire de l’US Navy il y a un peu plus de 3 semaines ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/607667#message623706 )
Cyber Probes to be Part of All Future Navy Mishap Investigations After USS John S. McCain Collision - USNI News
▻https://news.usni.org/2017/09/14/cyber-probes-part-future-navy-mishap-investigations-uss-john-s-mccain-col
Probing potential cyber tampering and cyber intrusion will now be a standard part of U.S. Navy accident investigation following the Aug. 21 collision of guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) with a chemical tanker, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told Congress last week.
As part of the investigation into McCain’s collision, a team from the Navy’s U.S. 10th Fleet cyber arm traveled to Singapore to see if a reported steering failure of the destroyer was a result of cyber tampering, USNI News reported last month.
[…]
“I would also offer to you that just about every three letter agency in Washington, D.C. has looked to see if there were indications of an intent or a potential acknowledgement of a cyber attack. We have seen — I have personally not seen any evidence of that. But we’re not stopping there. The team is in place in Singapore today, has been for several days capturing all of the computer and network information to see if they can find any abnormalities or disruptions.” [Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran said]
The effort, called Operation #Orion’s_Hammer, focused on the reported failure of the aft steering mechanism that early reports say helped cause the collision between McCain and a chemical tanker off the coast of Singapore on Aug. 21 resulting in the death of 10 sailors, several Navy officials have told USNI News.
On aurait donc bien confirmation d’une avarie de barre.
Sen. John S McCain III (R-AZ) dont le grand-père est l’éponyme du USS John S McCain à propos des collisions. Quelles que soient les conclusions des enquêtes, il est facile d’utiliser ces événements pour réclamer une augmentation du budget de la Navy
#send_more_money …
McCain Laments ’Accident After Accident’ After Military Cuts - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-17/mccain-laments-accident-after-accident-after-military-cuts
Following a series of deadly accidents, Senator John McCain on Sunday renewed his calls to address what he described as a U.S. failure during the past eight years to ensure that the military is prepared, equipped and trained.
“Whenever you cut defense capabilities, the first thing that goes is the training and the readiness, because that’s easy enough to cancel,” the Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
McCain, a Vietnam War veteran from a military family, has been a longtime critic of the automatic cuts in U.S. spending — including reductions in U.S. defense — known as sequestration that began in 2013 under an earlier deal to raise the country’s debt limit.
[…]
“When you really look at how much time they have at actual training and readiness, it’s continued to shrink,” McCain said. “We have accident after accident after accident. We are killing more Americans in uniform in training than we are in engagement with the enemy. That’s not acceptable.”
Homeless in Japan Part 1: Why they’re Different from North America’s
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK--oCVP18A
Homeless in Japan Part 2: Who They Are
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9RgkZebW1s
Nintendo Switch sales hit 1.5m in Japan in 26 weeks
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-09-04-nintendo-switch-sales-hit-1-5m-in-japan-in-26-weeks
PS4 hit the same milestone in 69 weeks
Is Japanese Culture Traumatized By Centuries of Natural Disaster? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/-is-japanese-culture-traumatized-by-centuries-of-natural-disaster
The effects of centuries of natural disaster may be most obvious in Japanese culture.“Nichiren Calming the Storm,” a 19th century painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi / Hulton Fine Art Collection / Getty ImagesAyumi Endo remembers the 2011 earthquake and tsunami with exquisite detail. She ran downstairs to screaming coworkers. The phones in Tokyo had stopped working, and the trains outside stopped running. To kill time, she went to a pub, and saw a tsunami chase a car on TV. The drama was seared into Ayumi’s memory. “We all knew how terrible this was,” she said. “It was like a movie scene.” Years later, 3/11, as it is informally known, has left deep grooves in Japan’s collective psyche. The disaster caused an increase in suicides, PTSD, and stress-related physical ailments like cardiovascular (...)
A King’s Orders To The U.S. Navy – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/kings-orders-u-s-navy-avoid-excess-detail-orders-instructions
In the wake of the USS John S. McCain incident. “Every Captain in the whole military industrial complex received multiple emails demanding better ship handling from every officer.” said one pilot.” The USNS xxx’s Master said he got over 20 of them… forwarded and cc’d around the globe, covering everyone’s butt.” Another pilot said “I’ve seen these emails. Some are broad but many contain detailed lists of actions that should be taken by crews. None contain anything that will prevent the next collision at sea.”
Most mariners will shake their heads in disgust at this #C.Y.A. mentality but few will flag them as dangerous. Which they most certainly are.
In the short term, C.Y.A. messages send the clear message that mistakes will not be tolerated. The authors of these emails often believe they are doing good by keeping the men on their toes and focused on the problems at hand. They are partly correct, C.Y.A. messages do narrow a crew’s focus. These signals focus the mind on problems – not solutions – they also induce stress and fear and repress original thought. A watchstander needs to approach heavy traffic with plenty of rest, a clear mind and the ability to engage the problems ahead intuitively… not worried about his career and the possibility of being hit by another ship.
[…]
#Intrusive_leadership becomes especially dangerous when dictated by leaders who lack training and experience at the helm of a ship. The Secretary of the Navy is a USMC Aviator. Chief Of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, is a submarine commander. Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran, is an aviator. Adm. Scott Swift, the commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet and the man selected to fix the problems, is an aviator.
In the wake of the USS Fitzgerald incident the small handful of senior U.S. Navy leaders with shipboard experience, like Adm. Michelle Howard, were not dispatched to Japan – where her indomitable leadership might have found solutions – but to ribbon cutting ceremonies in Europe.
Joseph Konrad éditeur de gCaptain reste en pointe…
Il appelle à la rescousse les grands anciens (directive du 21/01/1941)…
#cover_your_ass
And that person is a man with significant watchstanding experience aboard ships, Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, Commander in Chief of Naval forces in WWII.
7. The corollaries of paragraph 6 are:
(a) adopt the premise that the echelon commanders are competent in their several command echelons unless and until they themselves prove otherwise;
(b) teach them that they are not only expected to be competent for their several command echelons but that it is required of them that they be competent;
(c) train them — by guidance and supervision — to exercise foresight, to think, to judge, to decide and to act for themselves;
(d) stop ‘nursing’ them;
(e) finally, train ourselves to be satisfied with ‘acceptable solutions’ even though they are not “staff solutions or other particular solutions that we ourselves prefer.”
Dans une US Navy qu’il décrit comme étant commandée essentiellement par des aviateurs – et un sous-marinier, des hommes, blancs, Joseph Konrad déplore le non recours à l’expérience maritime (de navigation et de commandement à la mer) d’une amirale, femme, afro-américaine qu’on préfère employer à inaugurer les chrysanthèmes en Europe…
Michelle Howard — Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Howard
Michelle Janine Howard, née le 30 avril 1960 sur la March Air Reserve Base (Californie), est une amirale américaine. Elle est la première femme afro-américaine à commander un navire militaire (1999), première femme à devenir amiral quatre étoiles, à devenir femme vice-chef des Opérations navales (2014-2016), à diriger l’United States Naval Forces Europe (depuis 2016) puis l’Allied Joint Force Command Naples (depuis 2016).
Mêmes conclusions ici. Avec extension à la dépendance globale de la société aux technologies…
USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain Mishaps Reveal Vulnerability | Observer
▻http://observer.com/2017/08/navy-uss-john-s-mccain-collision
First, neither the Naval Academy nor OCS produces naval officers qualified to fill seagoing billets without further training. The Surface Officer Warfare School that conducted this preparation was eliminated and ensigns were sent to sea in large numbers. Commanding officers and distance learning means were put in place to conduct this training. That did not work.
Technology is also a culprit. The bridge of a modern warship is loaded with super technology. Radars and sonars have been augmented with infrared sensors and night vision devices. Computers navigate by GPS (global positioning system) and alert watch standers of potential dangers of collision or when in restricted waters. Seaman’s eye and good seamanship have been partially replaced by technology. As a result, traditional mariners’ skills have atrophied.
Each of the services faces potential similar problems mandated by judgments at the time that made sense given the pressures and demands. These institutional decisions have vulnerabilities of their own. For example, American military forces are entirely dependent today on the network and GPS that provide the life’s blood of C3I (command, control and intelligence) to logistics and from firing precision ordinance against the enemy to supplying cheeseburgers and smart phones to forward operation bases.
Similarly, society at large is dependent on the Internet, cell phones and electronic everything from depositing money in banks to paying bills and having intimate conversations with friends. Cyber attacks and hacking are the most well known disrupters that exploit these vulnerabilities.
The Pentagon is well aware of many of these vulnerabilities. Naval officers are oiling ancient sextants to navigate by the sun and stars. Soldiers and marines are reading maps instead of iPads. And “distributed operations” that assume the “net” no longer works are being practiced.
Given that the other services may face issues similar to the Navy’s, the Pentagon would be well advised to conduct a major review of these potential vulnerabilities created by institutional choices. Two topics are less visible although possibly more important. The first has to do with preparing flag and general officer for higher command and geopolitical and strategic issues. The second has to do with civilian control of the military.
Maybe today’s Navy is just not very good at driving ships
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis
In the wake of two fatal collisions of Navy warships with commercial vessels, current and former senior surface warfare officers are speaking out, saying today’s Navy suffers from a disturbing problem: The SWO community is just not very good at driving ships.
The two collisions — and a total of 17 sailors lost at sea this summer — have raised concerns about whether this generation of surface fleet officers lack the basic core competency of their trade.
The problem is years in the making. Now, the current generation of officers rising into command-level billets lacks the skills, training, education and experience needed to operate effectively and safely at sea, according to current and former officers interviewed by Navy Times.
[…]
For nearly 30 years, all new surface warfare officers spent their first six months in uniform at the Surface Warfare Officer’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, learning the theory behind driving ships and leading sailors as division officers.
But that changed in 2003. The Navy decided to eliminate the “SWOS Basic” school and simply send surface fleet officers out to sea to learn on the job. The Navy did that mainly to save money, and the fleet has suffered severely for it, said retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold.
“The Navy has cut training as a budgetary device and they have done it at the expense of our ability to operate safely at sea,” said Lippold, who commanded the destroyer Cole in 2000 when it was attacked by terrorists in Yemen.
After 2003, each young officer was issued a set of 21 CD-ROMs for computer-based training — jokingly called “SWOS in a Box” — to take with them to sea and learn. Young officers were required to complete this instructor-less course in between earning their shipboard qualifications, management of their divisions and collateral duties.
“The elimination of SWOS Basic was the death knell of professional SWO culture in the United States Navy,” Hoffman said. “I’m not suggesting that … the entire surface warfare community is completely barren of professionalism. I’m telling you that there are systemic problems, particularly at the department head level, where they are timid, where they lack resolve and they don’t have the sea time we expect.”
“There is a growing suspicion among a small circle of current and former COs that chickens may be coming home to roost,” retired Capt. Kevin Eyer, who commanded three Aegis cruisers, wrote in Proceedings Magazine online after the McCain collision.
’The chickens come home to roost’ - the meaning and origin of this phrase
▻http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chickens-come-home-to-roost.html
The notion of bad deeds, specifically curses, coming back to haunt their originator is long established in the English language and was expressed in print as early as 1390, when Geoffrey Chaucer used it in The Parson’s Tale:
And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest.
The allusion that was usually made was to a bird returning to its nest at nightfall, which would have been a familiar one to a medieval audience. Other allusions to unwelcome returns were also made, as in the Elizabethan play The lamentable and true tragedie of Arden of Feversham, 1592:
For curses are like arrowes shot upright, Which falling down light on the suters [shooter’s] head.
Chickens didn’t enter the scene until the 19th century when a fuller version of the phrase was used as a motto on the title page of Robert Southey’s poem The Curse of Kehama, 1810:
“Curses are like young chicken: they always come home to roost.”
This extended version is still in use, notably in the USA.
The notion of the evil that men create returns to their own door also exists in other cultures. Buddhists are familiar with the idea that one is punished by one’s bad deeds, not because of them. Samuel Taylor Coleridge revived the imagery of a bird returning to punish a bad deed in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798. In the poem the eponymous mariner kills an albatross, which was regarded as an omen of good luck, and is punished by his shipmates by having the bird hung around his neck:
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
North Korea missile triggers Japan warning alarms
How close are we to nuclear conflict between North Korea and the US? Mark Urban looks at the facts.
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-41078766/north-korea-missile-triggers-japan-warning-alarms?ocid=socialflow_twitter
HAL Laboratory launches #Mobile brand
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-25-hal-laboratory-launches-mobile-brand
Kirby developers will release first mobile game in Japan this fall under HAL Egg label
The World Eyes Yet Another Unconventional Source of Fossil Fuels | Peak Oil News and Message Boards
▻http://peakoil.com/production/the-world-eyes-yet-another-unconventional-source-of-fossil-fuels
Vast quantities of methane hydrates — frozen deposits of natural gas on the sea floor — exist worldwide. But as experimental drilling moves forward, many experts question the wisdom of exploiting a costly, environmentally risky trove of fossil fuels that will accelerate global warming.
In May of this year, China claimed a breakthrough in tapping an obscure fossil fuel resource: Researchers there managed to suck a steady flow of methane gas out of frozen mud on the seafloor. That same month, Japan did the same. And in the United States, researchers pulled a core of muddy, methane-soaked ice from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
The idea of exploiting this quirky fuel source would have been considered madness a couple of decades ago — both wildly expensive and dangerous. Until recently, methane-soaked ice was considered explosively unstable. In the Gulf of Mexico, traditional oil rigs have been tiptoeing around these icy deposits for years, trying to avoid them.
“These deposits have been a pain in the neck for oil exploration,” says Scott Dallimore with the Geological Survey of Canada. Accidentally melting deposits overlying traditional oil and gas fields could cause drilling infrastructure to collapse, or pipes to clog up with ice. After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, for example, water and methane formed an icy plug that scuppered one attempt to halt the oil spill.
The World Eyes Yet Another Unconventional Source of Fossil Fuels
▻http://e360.yale.edu/features/the-world-eyes-yet-another-unconventional-source-of-fossil-fuels-methane-
Après les sables bitumineux et le gaz de schiste, les #hydrates_de_méthane seront probablement les prochains hydrocarbures non conventionnels à être commercialement exploités.
Now the tide has started to turn, as studies of the frozen gas have quelled some of the bigger fears. “We always used to think of these as explosive and dangerous — they’re not,” says Dallimore, who is involved with Canada’s explorations of these deposits. These reassuring findings, combined with rising energy demands, have spurred some countries — especially fossil fuel-poor nations like India and Japan — to think seriously about commercial extraction.
But there are still concerns about the wisdom of mining this unexplored corner of the fossil fuel landscape, including the possibility of triggering underwater landslides, unleashing tsunamis, disturbing ocean ecosystems, and — most important of all — more than doubling the planet’s natural gas supplies and the planet-warming emissions that go along with them. So is drilling for methane hydrates really a good idea?
The secret to North Korea’s ICBM success
Kim Jong-un celebrates ICBM success
By Michael Elleman, Senior Fellow for Missile Defence
North Korea’s missile programme has made astounding strides over the past two years. An arsenal that had been based on short- and medium-range missiles along with an intermediate-range Musudan that repeatedly failed flight tests, has suddenly been supplemented by two new missiles: the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 and the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Hwasong-14. No other country has transitioned from a medium-range capability to an ICBM in such a short time. What explains this rapid progression? The answer is simple. North Korea has acquired a high-performance liquid-propellant engine (LPE) from a foreign source.
Available evidence clearly indicates that the LPE is based on the Soviet RD-250 family of engines, and has been modified to operate as the boosting force for the Hwasong-12 and -14. An unknown number of these engines were probably acquired though illicit channels operating in Russia and/or Ukraine. North Korea’s need for an alternative to the failing Musudan and the recent appearance of the RD-250 engine along with other evidence, suggests the transfers occurred within the past two years.
Tests reveal recent technical gains
North Korea ground tested a large LPE in September 2016, which it claimed could generate 80 tonnes’ thrust. The same LPE was again ground tested in March 2017. This test included four smaller, steering engines. On 14 May 2017, with Kim Jong-un overseeing test preparations, North Korea launched a new intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Hwasong-12. The single-stage missile flew on a very steep trajectory, reaching a peak altitude of over 2,000km. If the Hwasong-12 had used a normal flight path, it would have travelled between 4,000 and 4,500km, placing Guam, just 3,400km away, within range.
The success of the Hwasong-12 flight in May gave North Korean engineers the confidence needed to pursue a more ambitious goal: the initial flight testing of a two-stage missile capable of reaching the continental United States. Less than two months after the Hwasong-12 test, the two-stage Hwasong-14 was launched on 4 July. A second Hwasong-14 was tested on 28 July. The Hwasong-14 launches flew on very steep flight paths, with the first shot reaching an apogee of 2,700km. The second test peaked at about 3,800km.
North Korea’s announced results were independently confirmed by the Republic of Korea, Japan and US. In both tests, the mock warheads plummeted towards the East Sea, 900–1,000km from the launch point. If flown on a trajectory that maximises range instead of peak altitude, the two missiles would have reached about 7,000km and 9,000km respectively, well exceeding the 5,500km minimum distance for a system to be categorised as an ICBM.
The dimensions and visible features of the Hwasong-12 indicate an overall mass of between 24,000 and 25,000kg. The Hwasong-12’s acceleration at lift-off, as determined by the launch video aired by KCNA, is about 8.5 to 9.0m/s2. Assuming North Korea did not manipulate the launch video, the thrust generated by the Hwasong-12’s complete engine assembly is between 45 and 47 tonnes’ thrust; the main engine contributes between 39 to 41 tonnes’ force, and the auxiliary engines about 6 tonnes’ force. The Hwasong-14 has an estimated mass of 33,000–34,000kg, and an initial acceleration rate of about 4–4.5m/s2, resulting in a total thrust of 46–48 tonnes’ force.
Identifying the new LPE and its origins
The origins of the new engine (see Figures 1 and 2) are difficult to determine with certainty. However, a process of elimination sharply narrows the possibilities.
There is no evidence to suggest that North Korea successfully designed and developed the LPE indigenously. Even if, after importing Scud and Nodong engines, North Korea had mastered the production of clones, which remains debateable, this does not mean that it could design, develop and manufacture a large LPE from scratch, especially one that uses higher-performance propellants and generates 40 tonnes’ thrust.
liquid-propellant engine of Hwasong-12
Figure 1: The liquid-propellant engines ground tested in September 2016 and March 2017 appear to be the same, though only the second ground test and the Hwasong-12 flight test operate with four auxiliary or vernier engines, which steer the missile. See larger version.
Claims that the LPE is a North Korean product would be more believable if the country’s experts had in the recent past developed and tested a series of smaller, less powerful engines, but there are no reports of such activities. Indeed, prior to the Hwasong-12 and -14 flights, every liquid-fuelled missile launched by North Korea – all of the Scuds and Nodongs, even the Musudan – was powered by an engine developed and originally produced by the Russian enterprise named for A.M. Isayev; the Scud, Nodong and R-27 (from which the Musudan is derived) missiles were designed and originally produced by the Russian concern named after V.P. Makeyev. It is, therefore, far more likely that the Hwasong-12 and -14 are powered by an LPE imported from an established missile power.
If this engine was imported, most potential sources can be eliminated because the external features, propellant combination and performance profile of the LPE in question are unique. The engine tested by North Korea does not physically resemble any LPE manufactured by the US, France, China, Japan, India or Iran. Nor do any of these countries produce an engine that uses storable propellants and generates the thrust delivered by the Hwasong-12 and -14 LPE. This leaves the former Soviet Union as the most likely source.
Hwasong-12 and Hwasong-14 engines
Figure 2: The three missiles tested by North Korea are powered by the same engine complex, with one main engine and four steering engines. See larger version.
Given North Korea’s reliance to date on technologies originating with the Isayev and Makeyev enterprises, one might suspect one or both as the probable supplier. However, neither enterprise has been associated with an engine that matches the performance of LPE used by Hwasong-12 and -14.
An exhaustive search of engines produced by other manufacturers in the former Soviet Union yields a couple of possibilities, all of which are associated with the Russian enterprise named after V.P. Glushko, now known as Energomash. The RD-217, RD-225 and RD-250 engine families use high-energy, storable-liquid propellants similar to those employed by engines tested by North Korea. Neither the RD-217 nor RD-225 have external features matching those of North Korea’s new engine. The RD-250 is the only match.
Glushko RD-250 engine
Figure 3: The RD-250 engine consists of a pair of combustion chambers fed by a single turbopump. Each chamber produces about 394k Newtons of thrust, or about 40 tonnes’ force, when relying on UDMH as the fuel, and N2O4 as the oxidiser. The RD-250’s nozzle also features a cooling tube and a compliance ring that resemble those found on the engines tested by North Korea. The small engine with its nozzle pointed upward and displayed in the foreground is not associated with the RD-250 engine. See larger version.
The RD-250 engine is normally configured as a pair of combustion chambers, which receive propellant from a single turbopump, as shown in Figure 3. When operated in tandem, the two chambers generate roughly 78–80 tonnes’ thrust. This level of thrust is similar to the claims North Korea made when the first ground test was conducted and publicised in September 2016.
It gradually became clear, however, that the Hwasong-12 and -14 used single-chamber engines. Note, for example, that Pyongyang claimed that a new pump design was used for the September ground test. This makes sense, because operating the RD-250 as a single chamber LPE would necessitate a new or modified turbopump. Having no demonstrated experience modifying or developing large LPE turbopumps, Pyongyang’s engineers would have been hard pressed to make the modifications themselves. Rather, the technical skills needed to modify the existing RD-250 turbopump, or fashioning a new one capable of feeding propellant to a single chamber would reside with experts with a rich history of working with the RD-250. Such expertise is available at Russia’s Energomash concern and Ukraine’s KB Yuzhnoye. One has to conclude that the modified engines were made in those factories.
The alternative hypothesis, that Russian/Ukraine engineers were employed in North Korea is less likely, given the absence of any known production facility in North Korea for such engines. In addition, Western experts who visited KB Yuzhnoye Ukraine within the past year told the author that a single-chamber version was on display at a nearby university and that a local engineer boasted about producing it.
Why single-chamber engines were transferred rather than the more powerful double-chamber original versions is unclear. One possible hypothesis is that the exporters, for whatever reason, exercised restraint in what they were willing to transfer to North Korea. Combined with a second stage, however, the single-chamber RD-250 engine is powerful enough to send an ICBM to cities on the American West Coast at least.
The RD-250 was originally designed by the Glushko enterprise of Russia, and produced and incorporated into the first stage of the R-36 (SS-9) ICBM and the Tsiklon-2 satellite launcher by KB Yuzhnoye of Ukraine. The Tsiklon-2 carrier rocket lofted its first satellite into orbit in 1969, with the last of 106 launches occurring in 2006. While Yuzhnoye was responsible for producing the Tsiklon-2 rocket, Russian entities launched the satellite. The relationship survived the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 primarily because of long-standing institutional linkages, and the commercial interests of both enterprises and countries. However, despite the Tsiklon-2’s unsurpassed reliability record, Russia stopped purchasing the Yuzhnoye rocket in 2006 in favour of an indigenous system. Yuzhnoye’s repeated attempts to market the rocket and related technologies to other potential customers, including Boeing and Brazil, yielded little. The once vaunted KB Yuzhnoye has been near financial collapse since roughly 2015.
The total number of RD-250 engines fabricated in Russia and Ukraine is not known. However, there are almost certainly hundreds, if not more, of spares stored at KB Yuzhnoye’s facilities and at warehouses in Russia where the Tsiklon-2 was used. Spares may also exist at one or more of Energomash’s many facilities spread across Russia. Because the RD-250 is no longer employed by operational missiles or launchers, facilities warehousing the obsolete LPEs are probably loosely guarded. A small team of disgruntled employees or underpaid guards at any one of the storage sites, and with access to the LPEs, could be enticed to steal a few dozen engines by one of the many illicit arms dealers, criminal networks, or transnational smugglers operating in the former Soviet Union. The engines (less than two metres tall and one metre wide) can be flown or, more likely, transported by train through Russia to North Korea.
Pyongyang has many connections in Russia, including with the illicit network that funnelled Scud, Nodong and R-27 (Musudan) hardware to North Korea in the 1980s and 1990s. United Nations sanctions imposed on Pyongyang have likely strengthened the Kim regime’s ties to these criminal networks. North Korean agents seeking missile technology are also known to operate in Ukraine. In 2012, for example, two North Korean nationals were arrested and convicted by Ukrainian authorities for attempting to procure missile hardware from Yuzhnoye. Today, Yuzhnoye’s facilities lie close to the front lines of the Russian-controlled secessionist territory. Clearly, there is no shortage of potential routes through which North Korea might have acquired the few dozen RD-250 engines that would be needed for an ICBM programme.
How did North Korea acquire the RD-250 engine?
When and from where RD-250 engines may have been shipped to North Korea is difficult to determine. It is possible the transfers occurred in the 1990s, when North Korea was actively procuring Scud- and Nodong-related hardware, as well as R-27 technology and its Isayev 4D10 engine. But this seems unlikely for three reasons.
Firstly, the network North Korea relied on in the 1990s focused on products originating from Russia’s Makeyev and Isayev enterprises. Energomash and Yuzhnoye had limited connections to Makeyev or Isayev; indeed, they were rival enterprises competing for contracts as the Soviet Union crumbled. It is, therefore, a stretch to assume the illicit channels Pyongyang was using in the 1990s had access to products manufactured or used at either Yuzhnoye or Energomash two decades ago.
Secondly, until recently, North Korea appeared to focus on exploiting R-27 hardware for its long-range missile ambitions. Pyongyang’s first intermediate-range missile, the Musudan, which was first displayed in a 2010 parade, is derived from the R-27 technology acquired in the 1990s. Moreover, until the Hwasong-12 launch in March 2017, Pyongyang’s design concepts for a prospective ICBM featured a first stage powered by a cluster of two Isayev 4D10 LPEs. Photographs taken while Kim Jong-un toured a missile plant in March 2016 captured the back end of an ICBM prototype that appeared to house a pair of 4D10 engines, not a single RD-250 LPE. A month later, Kim attended the ground test featuring a cluster of two 4D10 engines operating in tandem, a clear indication that North Korea’s future ICBM would rely on this configuration. There is no evidence during this period to suggest that North Korea was developing a missile based on the RD-250 engine.
Thirdly, the Isayev 4D10 engine, which relies on staged combustion, is a complicated closed-cycle system that is integrated within the missile’s fuel tank. If the open-cycle, externally mounted RD-250 engine had been available in 2015, engineers would have likely preferred to use it to power a new long-range missile, as it shares many features with the engines North Korea has worked with for decades.
However, when North Korean specialists began flight testing the Musudan in 2016, the missile repeatedly failed soon after ignition. Only one flight test is believed to have been successful. The cause of the string of failures cannot be determined from media reports. That many failed very early in flight suggests that problems with either the engine itself, or the unique ‘submerged’ configuration of the engine, were responsible. If this was the case, North Korea’s engineers may have recognised that they could not easily overcome the challenges. This might explain why the Musudan has not been tested since 2016.
The maiden appearance of the modified RD-250 in September 2016 roughly coincides with North Korea’s decision to halt Musudan testing. It is reasonable to speculate that Kim’s engineers knew the Musudan presented grim or insurmountable technical challenges, which prompted a search for an alternative. If North Korea began its quest to identify and procure a new LPE in 2016, the start of the search would have occurred in the same year Yuzhnoye was experiencing the full impact of its financial shortfalls. This is not to suggest that the Ukrainian government was involved, and not necessarily Yuzhnoye executives. Workers at Yuzhnoye facilities in Dnipropetrovsk and Pavlograd were likely the first ones to suffer the consequences of the economic misfortunes, leaving them susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous traders, arms dealers and transnational criminals operating in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
North Korea’s ICBM still a work in progress
Acquisition of the modified RD-250 engine enabled North Korea to bypass the failing Musudan development effort and begin work on creating an ICBM sooner than previously expected. The Hwasong-14, however, is not yet an operationally viable system. Additional flight tests are needed to assess the missile’s navigation and guidance capabilities, overall performance under operational conditions and its reliability. Empirical data derived from tests to validate the efficacy of warhead re-entry technologies is also needed. Pyongyang could elect to deploy the Hwasong-14 as early as 2018, after only a handful of additional test launches, but at the risk of fielding a missile with marginal reliability. The risks could be reduced over time by continuing flight trials after the missile is assigned to combat units.
Further, the Hwasong-14 employs an underpowered second stage, which could limit Kim Jong-un to threatening only those American cities situated along the Pacific Coast. Arguably, Pyongyang will want a more powerful ICBM, one that can target the entire US mainland. The modified RD-250 engine can be clustered to provide a basis for an improved ICBM, but development of a new missile will require time.
It is not too late for the US and its allies, along with China and perhaps Russia, to negotiate an agreement that bans future missile testing, and effectively prevents North Korea from perfecting its capacity to terrorise America with nuclear weapons. But the window of opportunity will soon close, so diplomatic action must be taken immediately.
#Ioujnoïe Bureau d’Études du Sud (de l’Ukraine)
en russe transcrit à l’anglosaxonne KB #Yuzhnoye (ou DKB Yuzhnoye, pour les ukrainiens)
en ukrainien, DKB Pivdenne Mikhaïl Yangel (tjs du Sud)
et WP[fr] l’associe essentiellement à PA #Ioujmach (#Yuzhmash, à l’anglosaxonne)
(pas facile de s’y retrouver…)
cf. ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/622905
et WP
[fr] ►https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_d'études_Ioujnoïe
[en] ▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzhnoye_Design_Office
[uk] ▻https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Державне_конструкторське_бюро_«Південне»_імені_М._К._Янгеля
[ru] ▻https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Южное_(КБ)
Ten sailors missing after U.S. warship, tanker collide near Singapore
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-crash-idUSKCN1B100C
ça devient une habitude…
mais cette fois à babord, donc, a priori, c’est lui qui a priorité…
Ten sailors are missing after a U.S. warship collided with an oil tanker east of Singapore before dawn on Monday, tearing a hole beneath the waterline and flooding compartments that include a crew sleeping area, the U.S. Navy said.
The collision between the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain and the tanker Alnic MC was the second involving U.S. Navy destroyers and merchant vessels in Asian waters in little more than two months.
The ships collided while the U.S. warship was heading to Singapore for a routine port call, the Navy said in a statement.
La trajectoire du Alnic MC (il y a 10 minutes, il était à l’arrêt à l’entrée du port - le point rouge à l’extrémité de la trajectoire)
(il faut dire, il y a beaucoup de monde devant Singapour et dans le détroit…)
Il revenait juste d’avoir fait le kéké, pardon fait respecter les principes de liberté de navigation, sur les Spratleys,…
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/621711
Ici, il est hors de question d’imaginer une quelconque défaillance de la veille sur l’un ou l’autre navire : ça doit être l’endroit où le trafic est le plus dense au monde et on est aux abords immédiats du port…
En revanche, le communiqué de la Navy laisse songeur. Le John McCain est abordé à babord (à l’arrière de sa seconde cheminée), vraisemblablement à l’endroit où s’achève la dernière ligne droite de la trajectoire) alors que le pétrolier vient de l’est et se dirige vers le terminal pétrolier (dans l’axe de cette ligne droite). Difficile à imaginer si le John McCain entrait au port ; normalement, il présentait son flanc tribord…
Au vu des photos, et de l’enfoncement des tôles, il semblerait que le pétrolier venait de l’arrière.
Stricken destroyer John S. McCain arrives in Singapore, 10 crew still missing
▻http://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/20/navy-destroyer-john-s-mccain-collides-with-merchant-vessel
Mounting questions
The details of how the collisions occurred remain unkown, But incidents such as those with the McCain and Fitzgerald incidents are troubling, said Jan van Tol, a retired commander of three war ships who now serves as an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“Navy destroyers are remarkably nimble and responsive, including rapid acceleration ability, thus should certainly be able to get out of the way of almost anything approaching ‘too close,’” van Tol said in an email.
“Such close quarters situations should NEVER be allowed to develop without various watchstanders and watchteams being well aware that they are developing,” he said.
It is unknown whether McCain had suffered any kind of casualty to its engineering or steering systems ahead of the collision that would have contributed to the disaster.
The collision was the fourth significant safety incident of 2017 involving a U.S. 7th Fleet ship. In January, the cruiser Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay and in May, the cruiser Lake Champlain collided with a Korean fishing boat in the Sea of Japan.
(outre le Fitzgerald)
Complètement dingue !
La collision a eu lieu nettement plus à l’est, juste à l’entrée du dispositif de séparation de trafic. Dans les derniers instants, on voit l’Alnic NC abattre en grand sur la gauche en ralentissant fortement, indice évident d’une manœuvre en catastrophe, qui ne peut se justifier (on est dans le rail, bon sang !) que par une tentative d’évitement désespérée…
Mille sabords !, que fabriquait cet amiral de bateau-lavoir de USS John S. McCain à cet endroit là ?
(NB : le père et le grand-père du sénateur, John S. McCain III, ont tous les deux terminé leur carrière comme amiral et, pour faire simple portaient également le même middle name, Sidney. On fait dans la dynastie ou pas…)
Comment a-t-il pu couper la route d’un bateau dont la route est absolument rectiligne et prévisible (il est dans le rail) ? Peut-être le McCain n’y était-il pas et a-t-il manœuvré brutalement pour s’y placer ?
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlrA36GzHNs
EDIT (24/08)
pour gCaptain, l’abattée à gauche est le résultat de la collision, ce qui parait tout à fait crédible et explique bien la forme de l’enfoncement sur l’arrière de l’ouverture. Le McCain devait filer vite pour dévier à ce point la trajectore.
Du coup, on peut élaborer un scénario où le McCain coupe, pour des raisons qu’il reste à préciser, le rail « conformément aux règles internationales » : perpendiculairement et le plus vite possible. Et dans ce cas, il est responsable à 100%…
Comment, elle a dit déjà l’amirauté ? ah oui, #poor_seamanship …
▻http://gcaptain.com/uss-john-s-mccain-collision-ais-animation-shows-tankers-track-during-colli
Une embarcation fait le tour du John McCain au mouillage
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn8T_9JkTp0
(dans les spots télé, les séquences vidéo sont essentiellement des images d’archive ; c’est flagrant sur les (longues) images d’accostage, où le navire est dans ses lignes d’eaux, ce qui n’est plus le cas après l’abordage…)
The Latest: US Navy vessel arrives to help damaged destroyer - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-latest-us-warship-sailing-on-own-power-after-collision/2017/08/20/9c7ae012-860e-11e7-96a7-d178cf3524eb_story.html
5:00 p.m.
The oil tanker involved in a collision with the USS John S. McCain destroyer in busy Southeast Asian waters had four deficiencies including navigation safety violations in its last port inspection.
An official database for ports in Asia shows the Alnic MC was inspected in the Chinese port of Dongying on July 29 and had one document deficiency, one fire safety deficiency and two safety of navigation problems.
The database doesn’t go into details and the problems were apparently not serious enough for the Liberian-flagged and Greek-owned vessel to be detained by the port authority.
[…]
4:10 p.m.
The chief of Malaysia’s Maritime Enforcement Agency says the collision between an oil tanker and the USS John S. McCain guided missile destroyer early Monday occurred at the start of a designated sea lane for ships sailing into the Singapore Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Zulkifli Abu Bakar said the incident occurred 4.5 nautical miles (8.3 kilometers) from Malaysia’s coast. He said a Malaysian warship was in the area monitoring the cleanup of an oil spill from an unrelated collision of two merchant ships and was contacted by the McCain.
Both Malaysia and Singapore say the accident happened in their waters, likely reflecting a dispute about ownership of some rocky outcrops in the area.
“It happened in Malaysian territorial waters, specifically in Teluk Ramunia waters,” Zulkifli said. “For this moment, we shouldn’t argue about whose waters. Most important thing is we focus on the search and rescue.”
Frontière entre la Malaisie et Singapour — Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontière_entre_la_Malaisie_et_Singapour
La délimitation de cette frontière maritime a fait l’objet d’un recours devant la Cour internationale de justice, effectué conjointement le 24 juillet 2003 par la Malaisie et Singapour. Le différend portait sur l’île de Pedra Branca, les Middle Rocks (deux rochers inhabités) et South Ledge, un haut-fond découvrant. Par un arrêt du 23 mai 2008, la Cour a attribué Pedra Blanca à Singapour, les Middle Rocks à la Malaisie, et South Ledge à l’État dans les eaux territoriales duquel il se trouve (la Cour n’ayant pas reçu mandat des parties pour délimiter leurs eaux territoriales respectives).
L’arrêt de la CIJ
Affaire relative à la souveraineté sur Pedra Blanca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks et South Ledge –(Malaisie/Singapour)
Arrêt du 23 mai 2008
▻http://www.icj-cij.org/files/case-related/130/130-20080523-JUD-01-00-FR.pdf
(il me semblait avoir vu passer ce contentieux ici)
Situation relative du rail et des îlots
(le phare Horsburgh Light est construit sur Pedra Blanca)
Serrage de boulons généralisé…
Admiral to order operational pause in Navy after warship, merchant ship collide - CNN
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/20/asia/us-navy-destroyer-collision-singapore/index.html
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson is expected to order a one-day pause in operations “to ensure we are taking all appropriate immediate measures to enhance the Navy’s safe and effective operation around the world,” according to a US Defense official and an advanced copy of Richardson’s statement obtained by CNN.
The stand-down will take place over the next couple of weeks, at the discretion of individual commands, the defense official said.
The order comes after a US Navy guided-missile destroyer collided early Monday with an oil tanker east of Singapore, the fourth accident this year involving a US warship in Asian waters.
“This is the second major collision in the last three months, and is the latest in a series of major incidents, particularly in the Pacific theater. This trend demands more forceful action,” Richardson’s statement says.
C’est le moment de ressortir la vanne éculée du phare et du porte-avions états-unien… #lighthouse_vs_US_Navy
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_urban_legend
US Navy also considering ’cyber intrusion or sabotage’ as possible causes for USS John McCain collision
▻http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-navy-also-considering-cyber-intrusion-sabotage-possible-causes-uss-joh
A steering failure, or maybe even hacked systems – the US Navy is considering all possible reasons after launching a broad investigation into the collision of the US guided-missile destroyer USS John McCain with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore on Monday (21 August).
Plusieurs médias reprennent l’hypothèse, apparemment émise par l’US Navy, de panne de l’appareil à gouverner (#avarie_de_barre, un des entrainements les plus fréquents en passerelle dans mon souvenir, presqu’autant que #un_homme_à_la_mer à babord/tribord suivie du Boutakov règlementaire…) Je ne trouve pas le communiqué original. Pas plus que, l’évocation officielle d’une #cyber-attaque qui aurait déjà été plus ou moins éliminée par la marine.
Apparemment, la source initiale est CNN
Ships, aircraft search for crashed US destroyer’s 10 missing crew - CNNPolitics
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/uss-john-s-mccain-collision/index.html?sr=twCNN082217uss-john-s-mccain-collision0958AMVODtop
What caused the accident?
The warship suffered a steering failure as the warship was beginning its approach into the Strait of Malacca, causing it to collide with a commercial tanker Monday, a US Navy official told CNN.
The official said it was unclear why the crew couldn’t utilize the ship’s backup steering systems to maintain control of ship.
Earlier, another US Navy official told CNN there were indications the destroyer experienced a loss of steering right before the collision, but steering had been regained after the collision.
Évidemment, l’option #hacker circule pas mal (déjà pour l’USS Fitzgerald), Popular Mechanics explique de son côté que ça ne peut pas être du #GPS_spoofing, etc.
No, the USS McCain Wasn’t a Victim of GPS Spoofing
▻http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/news/a27854/uss-mccain-collision-gps
Ah, ben Les Échos relaient le complotisme, bravo…
(oubliant au passage l’hypothèse de l’avarie de barre, mise en avant par l’amiral Richardson (CNO : Chief of naval operations)
Après la collision d’un destroyer américain, des experts agitent la piste de la cyberattaque
▻https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/010189757977-apres-la-collision-dun-destroyer-americain-des-experts-agitent
L’amiral n’a pas exclu que la collision ait pu être provoquée par un facteur extérieur ou une cyberattaque. Cet accident n’est pas le premier (voir encadré) et intrigue certains spécialistes de la Défense.
« Il y a quelque chose de plus que la simple erreur humaine car sinon cela impliquerait énormément de gens », avance par exemple Jeff Stutzman interrogé par le site McClatchyDC.
Pour cet ancien spécialiste de la guerre de l’information et de la marine, qui travaille désormais chez Wapack Labs, une société de sécurité informatique, tout bâtiment qui s’avance dans le détroit de Singapour aura sur le pont une équipe complète de vigiles et d’opérateurs radars.
De son côté, interrogé par le site « International Business Times », Todd Humphreys, un professeur à l’Université du Texas et spécialiste en systèmes de navigation par satellite, va plus loin dans la suspicion.
Pour lui, cet accident semble « statistiquement très suspect ». Et il n’hésite pas à faire un parallèle avec un incident intervenu en juin en Mer noire et au cours duquel des signaux GPS auraient été trafiqués via, selon lui, « un signal qui provenait du continent russe ».
La piste russe n’est cependant pas la seule à être soulevée. Interrogé par le site australien news.com, Itay Glick, un autre expert de cybersécurité qui a travaillé pour les services de renseignements israéliens, avance que si la Russie a les capacités d’effectuer une telle attaque, la Chine l’a également.
« Je ne crois pas aux coïncidences », explique-t-il encore en rappelant que « l’erreur humaine » est toujours une solution de facilité pour expliquer un accident.
À « l’expert » dont les pontifications concluent l’article, on fera remarquer que la Navy a viré tout l’état-major de l’USS Fitzgerald et on rappellera aux Échos que l’amiral Richardson met en avant une deuxième hypothèse « matérielle ».
Certains font remarquer que les nombreuses gesticulations de la Navy dans un contexte où le nombre de bâtiments baisse pourraient avoir aboutir à une fatigue des équipements et des équipages…
Enfin, on sourira à la légende de la photo (bizarrement fournie par le SIPA) ouvrant l’article…
la légende d’AP est la suivante
Malaysian Maritime Director Indera Abu Bakar points to damage on USS John S. McCain at press conference in Putrajaya on Monday.
AP Photo/Daniel Chan
China Calls U.S. Navy ’Arrogant’ After USS John Mccain Collision Accident
▻http://www.newsweek.com/china-us-arrogant-john-mccain-653395
A Chinese state-run newspaper claimed Monday that the most recent collision of a U.S. Navy destroyer with a merchant ship was an example of the U.S.’s “arrogance” in conducting patrols in and around the South China Sea.
The nationalist Global Times ran an editorial Monday shortly after the USS John S. McCain was hit by an oil tanker east of Singapore in the Strait of Malacca and 10 sailors were reported missing.
While stating the collision was an example of the U.S. military’s decline and that Chinese society’s “applause” was tantamount to the nation’s feelings toward the U.S. encroaching on its territory, the opinion piece also claimed that the U.S. is not trying to avoid such collisions.
“U.S. warships are constantly involved in accidents around the South China Sea,” the op-ed, which is often considered direct thoughts from the Chinese government, read. “On the one hand, the U.S. Navy has behaved arrogantly in the Asia-Pacific region. It lacks respect for huge merchant ships and fails to take evasive action in time, thus resulting in serious accidents.”
On n’est pas loin de la blague du phare…
Blague qu’évoque le deuxième commentateur de l’article du Monde sur le sujet.
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/623860
CNN sur la même – et évidente – question, mais beaucoup plus terre à terre : quand il y a série, c’est qu’il y a problème de fond…
Why are so many Navy ships crashing ? - CNNPolitics
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/navy-ships-crashing-readiness/index.html
The US Navy is facing difficult questions about the health of its fleet in the aftermath of the USS John S. McCain’s collision with an oil tanker east of Singapore on Monday, the latest in a series of naval accidents in the Pacific.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson ordered a rare, one-day operational pause in response to the latest collision. And while the cause of the USS McCain crash is still to be determined, the spate of accidents — four since January — suggests there could be a more systemic issue.
Lawmakers and defense analysts are warning that the Navy’s readiness problems — which have led to longer deployments for ships and less time and money for maintenance and training — could be playing a role in the uptick in crashes.
In addition to the Navy’s stand-down, the Marine Corps grounded all of its aircraft for 24 hours earlier this month on the heels of two deadly crashes “to focus on the fundamentals of safe flight operations, standardization, and combat readiness.”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said it was unprecedented that “two military services have now had to take a knee to review safety and training procedures.”
[…]
Former Virginia Republican Rep. Randy Forbes, who is now a fellow at the Naval War College, said the concern over the recent incidents goes beyond just determining why the collisions occurred, but points to a broader issue if the Navy had to ramp up in a significant conflict.
“When our ships are having this much difficulty sailing in open waters, it gives us a lot of concern about what would happen if we were in a major conflict and how we would operate there,” Forbes said. “The Navy is in desperate need of additional resources so that they can do the kind of training they need, they can do the kind of ship maintenance they need.”
[…]
Thomas Callender, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation and former Navy submarine officer, noted that the destroyer collisions occurred in low-light times of day and highly trafficked areas.
“Those are some of the most difficult times, sunset and sunrise, of trying to determine what your contact picture is, what you’re really seeing with this,” Callender said.
Forbes said traffic congestion would likely be a commonality, too.
“It’s like when you have accidents on roads: Normally it’s going to be where more vehicles are,” he said. “It still doesn’t justify it — we’ve got to operate in those waters.”
But the fact that all four Navy collisions this year occurred in the Pacific could also point to issues with training that are specific to the region, Hendrix said.
“The fact this is so regional ... it strikes me there’s a degradation in training standards and operational procedures,” he said.
Déclaration, ce soir à Singapour, de l’amiral Scott Swift, commandant de la Flotte du Pacifique (3è et 7è flotte)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4YIXBf03eo
• toute première question (7:00) (on ne les entend pas bien, mais les réponses permettent de les reconstituer) : cyberattaque ?
– j’ai entendu cette hypothèse, mais on n’a rien vu qui puisse laisser penser à quelque chose de cette nature, mais nous (il cite le CNO) n’écartons aucune hypothèse
• des modifications dans la chaîne de commandement
– c’est trop tôt pour conclure quoi que ce soit, laisser se dérouler l’enquête
• la flotte n’est-elle pas épuisée ? y a-t-il eu des négligences ?
– ce n’est pas ce que j’ai vu ce matin lors de ma visite du navire, les équipages sont déterminés et opérationnels, ils ont bien bossé pour le damage control
• découverte de corps ?
– la marine malaisienne a récupéré un corps (en mer, donc) et va nous le restituer ; les plongeurs ont trouvé des corps, nous sommes en train de les identifier
U.S. Navy to relieve admiral of command after collisions: WSJ
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-crash-admiral-idUSKCN1B3034
The U.S. Navy plans to remove from duty the commander of the fleet that has suffered four recent collisions in Asia and the deaths of a number of sailors, the _Wall Street Journal _reported on Tuesday, citing U.S. officials.
Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the three-star commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, will be relieved of command on Wednesday in connection with four collisions since January, including two involving fatalities, two U.S. officials said, according to the Journal. It said Navy officials declined to comment.
La Chine remet une couche…
After U.S. destroyer collision, Chinese paper says U.S. navy a hazard
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-crash-china-idUSKCN1B20O2
The state-run China Daily said in an editorial on Tuesday that people will wonder why such a sophisticated navy keeps having these problems.
“The investigations into the latest collision will take time to reach their conclusions, but there is no denying the fact that the increased activities by U.S. warships in Asia-Pacific since Washington initiated its rebalancing to the region are making them a growing risk to commercial shipping,” it said.
China has been upset at U.S. freedom of navigation operations near Chinese controlled islands in the disputed South China Sea, where China has been reclaiming land, building air bases and increasing its military presence.
“While the U.S. Navy is becoming a dangerous obstacle in Asian waters, China has been making joint efforts with the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to draw up a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea and it has boosted navigational safety by constructing five lighthouses on its islands,” the China Daily said.
“Anyone should be able to tell who is to blame for militarizing the waters and posing a threat to navigation.”
Ah, quand même, on se décide enfin à demander leur avis à des experts en autre chose que les cyberattaques !
US Navy 7th Fleet commander dismissed, Navy says - CNNPolitics
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/22/politics/uss-mccain-7th-fleet-commander-dismissal/index.html
Carl Schuster, a Hawaii Pacific University professor and former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said that he thought it was unlikely that the ship would have been hacked.
“Navigating a ship in a shipping channel is a manual operation. It comes down to watch attention and awareness. It’s a training procedure issue and a watch qualification issue,” he said.
He added that even if the steering had been compromised it would be possible for the McCain to outrun the tanker, and that some degree of directionality would be possible by changing the speed of the port and starboard propellers.
The “traffic situation” in the shipping channel at that time should be the focus of investigation, Ridzwan Rahmat, a senior defense and security analyst at Jane’s suggests.
“The signs were that the merchant ship was in compliance and the damage on the USS John S. McCain suggests that it wasn’t in compliance” of traffic rules at the time, he said.
Si vous ne l’avez pas déjà lu, peut-être faites un petit détour sur le fil concernant le Fitzgerald, l’article de gCaptain, Red over red, concernant le rapport préliminaire sur l’abordage d’il y a deux mois est à lire absolument.
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/607667#message624112
Je reprends ici mon commentaire qui concernait plutôt les événements du McCain (je finis par m’y perdre…)
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/607667#message624116
Sur l’incompétence des commentateurs, je remarque qu’aucun n’a fait la remarque que le navire de guerre coupe la route d’un bâtiment de commerce dans un rail…
L’hypothèse d’une cyberattaque relève du délire. Mais peut-être que les hackers russes ou chinois dont déjà capables aujourd’hui de liquéfier les cervelles d’une équipe de quart en passerelle, après tout de quoi ne sont-ils pas capables ?
Si le GPS est tombé en rade ou a été piraté, on dispose d’autres moyens de navigation, mille sabords, notamment en vue de terre. Bon sang, l’abordage a eu lieu à 5 miles du principal phare de la région et à 10 miles de la côte ! Si la passerelle a besoin du GPS pour naviguer, il y a lieu de s’interroger sur les compétences requises pour être officier de quart dans l’US Navy.
Mais, de fait, on en est bien là : couper la route d’un navire dans le rail (je sais je me répète, mais ça ne passe pas !…)
d’où mon soulagement (enfin, presque…) dans le commentaire précédant immédiatement celui-ci…
Search for Missing U.S. Sailors Slowed by Extensive Damage to Vessel - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/world/asia/mccain-collision-destroyer-united-states-navy.html
In the McCain case, the search is taking longer because the damage to the vessel appears to be more extensive. According to one Navy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because investigations were underway, the Alnic appears to have hit the McCain nearly head-on, whereas the Fitzgerald suffered more of a glancing blow.
C’est en effet compatible avec l’enregistrement de la trajectoire de l’Alnic MC (j’ai complété mon commentaire de la vidéo des relevés AIS ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/623510#message623551 )
Par ailleurs, le corps repêché par la marine malaisienne n’avait pas de lien avec l’abordage.
A Malaysian Navy vessel found a body at sea on Tuesday, but it turned out to be the decomposed corpse of an elderly man and was unrelated to the collision, the United States Navy said.
China suspected after crashes of USS John S McCain and USS Fitzgerald | World | The Times & The Sunday Times
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0988b8f8-88fa-11e7-a8f3-117a3aea90d9
The collision on Monday between a Liberian tanker and a US warship, the latest in a series of incidents in Asia, has provoked questions about possible Chinese involvement.
A former Royal Navy officer said that the movements of the Guang Zhou Wan, a Chinese commercial vessel, could be significant in explaining the fatal crash off Singapore that left at least one sailor dead. A further nine are missing.
Tracking data indicates that the tanker that collided with U_SS John S McCain_ was followed by the Chinese vessel, which appeared to steer out of the way before the incident.
“You get the impression that fleet forces command are going to be looking at wider potential problems — hacking, crew training, how they are navigating, validating of ship-watch…
With the USS McCain collision, even Navy tech can’t overcome human shortcomings | Ars Technica
▻https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/with-the-uss-mccain-collision-even-navy-tech-cant-overcome-human-shortc
Initial reports from the organization suggest that a “steering casualty”—a loss of control over steering from the bridge—contributed to the McCain’s fatal collision. That, and the nature of the ship’s steering and navigation system, has led to speculation that the McCain was “hacked” and that perhaps some sort of malicious electronic attack was also involved in the Fitzgerald’s collision.
But so far, available evidence suggests something much less sinister—though potentially more threatening to the overall readiness of the service. There was no hacking, no GPS spoofing or jamming, nor any other deliberate enemy electronic attack on the Navy ships involved in this year’s accidents. Instead, much more human factors were at work—and some of them are endemic to the Navy’s current management culture and operational readiness.
[…]
Watch standers aboard modern warships may have more technology to help them, but they still face a daunting task when they enter high-traffic areas as treacherous as the Strait of Gibraltar—or the Strait of Malacca, the approaches to the Bosporus and Dardanelles, and the approaches to Tokyo Bay. In each, hundreds of other vessels may be visible to the naked eye or on the radar scope. The resulting sea of data points can overwhelm even an experienced bridge crew regardless of how good their technology is.
Long article, où je finis par perdre le fil de ce qu’il cherche à dire…
Up-close look at gash on tanker that collided with USS John S. McCain Video - ABC News
▻http://abcnews.go.com/International/video/close-gash-tanker-collided-uss-john-mccain-49375629
U.S. Navy Provides Details of Surface Fleet Review In Wake of ’Disturbing Trend’ of Accidents – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navy-provides-details-surface-fleet-review-wake-disturbing-trend-accid
The U.S. Navy has provided details of a comprehensive review of the Navy’s global surface fleet operations after the destroyers USS Fitzgerald and John S. McCain were both involved in major collisions with commercial vessels just two months apart.
▻http://navylive.dodlive.mil/files/2017/08/MEMO-FOR-USFF_COMPREHENSIVE-REVIEW-OF-RECENT-SURFACE-FLEET-INCIDEN
2. You are directed to lead a Comprehensive Review of surface fleet operations and incidents at sea that have occurred over the past decade with emphasis on SEVENTH Fleet operational employment to inform improvements Navy-wide. This review should address the follow areas:
a. Individual training and professional development, to include seamanship, navigation, voyage planning, leadership development, officer and enlisted tactical training in formal schools and on the job;
b. Unit level training and operational performance, to including manning, personnel management, watchbill management, bridge (and CIC) team resource management, contact management, contact avoidance, leadership oversight and risk assessment/mitigation at all levels of the chain of command;
c. Development and certification of deployed operational and mission standards (Force Generation) with particular emphasis on Forward Deployed Naval Force (FDNF), to include validation of required certification standards, gaps between required standards and actual employment practices, effectiveness of leadership and oversight at all levels of administrative and operational chains of command, maintaining and enforcing standards throughout FDNF assignment including self-assessment practices, external inspection reinforcement, remedial action mitigation plans;
d. Deployed Operational Employment and Risk Management (Force Employment), to include Combatant Commander mission requirements, theater security cooperation requirements, maintenance impacts, other competing priorities (fleet experimentation, concept development), and their corresponding impact to operational tempo (OPTEMPO) and fundamental mariner and seamanship proficiency;
e. Material Readiness of electronic systems to include navigation equipment (e.g. AIS, radars, ECDIS, VMS, WSNs), propulsion machinery to include steering systems, combat system modernization, and material availability;
f. Practical Utility of current navigation equipment and combat systems including sensors, tracking systems, displays, and internal communications networks to evaluate their effectiveness at integrating tactical data and providing situational awareness to our people.
Fatigue and Training Gaps Spell Disaster at Sea, Sailors Warn - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/world/asia/fatigue-and-training-gaps-spell-disaster-at-sea-sailors-warn.html
The bridge of each Navy destroyer is controlled by a round-the-clock shift of young officers, who must pass written and oral exams to qualify for the positions. Still, they typically are under 25 and may have little shipboard experience. Junior officers also move on to other assignments after limited tours.
“Are we shortchanging their basic training, especially as we rotate our junior officers every 18 to 24 months?” asked Admiral Crowder.
Training for junior ship officers has changed significantly in recent years. In 2003, the Navy dropped what had been an intensive six-month training course on navigation, basic seamanship, engineering and maintenance before new officers were assigned to their first ship.
Instead, the new officers were sent directly to a ship where they were supposed to learn on the job. Some said they got practical training on deployments, and noted that the Seventh Fleet had a reputation as being the most experienced in the Navy. But, many commanders said, crews were too busy to provide that kind of instruction.
By last year, the Navy had largely reversed course, sandwiching a junior officer’s first sea tour between 14 weeks of classroom work.
[…]
Most ships use a traditional “five and dime” watch rotation, in which sailors serve five hours of watch, then have 10 hours off, he said. But during those 10 hours, sailors often have daytime duties.
The rotation can lead to a watch officer pulling a 20-hour day every three days, Mr. Cordle said, adding that even designated sleep time can be interrupted by drills or refueling operations that can keep sailors up for days at a time. A recent Government Accountability Office report said sailors were on duty up to 108 hours each week.
“I averaged 3 hours of sleep a night,” someone described as a Japan-based Navy officer wrote on Reddit last week. “I have personally gone without sleep for so long that I have seen and heard things that weren’t there. I’ve witnessed accidents that could have been avoided because the person was so tired they had no right to be operating heavy machinery.”
Navy tests of sailors on the five-and-dime schedule found lack of sleep led to blunted decision-making and reflexes that were roughly the same as those of sailors who had downed several beers.
The Naval Postgraduate School has developed a shorter watch schedule to match circadian rhythms, which uses three hours of watch duty and nine hours off. Recognizing the benefits, submarines were ordered to move to a similar schedule in 2015.
Mr. Cordle said adopting the schedule could result in greater safety. But the Navy has left scheduling up to individual captains, and three quarters of ships still use the five and dime.
Ship Collisions : Address the Underlying Causes, Including Culture | U.S. Naval Institute
▻https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-08/ship-collisions-address-underlying-causes-including-culture
Un think tank naval, grosse institution privée (estd 1873…), entre dans la danse (après plusieurs autres dont gCaptain). Dans le collimateur :
• l’organisation des tours de quart
• la non-spécialisation des officiers entre pont et machine
• la (non-)formation au quart
(j’ai lu sur un blog que, sur les navires modernes de la Navy (classe Ticonderoga !), il n’y aurait plus de table à carte en passerelle (support traditionnel du point à la main) mais uniquement de l’électronique…, à confirmer)
In the wake of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) collisions, the Navy is conducting investigations, relieving commanding officers, conducting safety stand downs (operational pauses), and retraining. This is a similar response to past mishaps, but this time the Navy must include true root cause analysis . Analysis after mishaps invariably uncovers human error and training deficiencies as causal factors. Some people get fired and others retrained. The Navy has begun to dig deeper with the CNO’s mandate for a fleet-wide investigation last week. I predict some of the findings of root causes will include the Navy’s approach to training and career development, surface warfare officer (SWO) culture, and high operational tempo (OpTempo) driving mission over people.
When a junior officer (JO) reports to a warship, he or she immediately has three jobs: standing watch under instruction, running a division, and earning qualifications (first as an officer of the deck and then as a SWO). Once qualified to be a watchstander, a JO is on the watch bill and expected to train the next batch of JOs. Depending on the number of qualified watchstanders on board, the watch rotation varies: “port and starboard” (6 hours on watch and 6 hours off); “five and dime” (5 hours on and 10 hours off watch, rotating); three or four section “chow to chow” rotating (based around mealtimes); “3 on/9 off” or “4 on/8 off” with two watches per day that do not change for a given underway. The “off” time is when a JO can accomplish day work, run the division, and work on qualifications—along with a little sleep and maybe squeeze in a run on the treadmill.
[…]
The U.S. Navy appears to be the only maritime organization in the world that does not have dedicated watchstanders and separate dedicated professional tracks for deck and engineering.
[…]
Another root cause likely will be the alertness level of those watchstanders. Watch rotations vary greatly in the fleet, partly because of the variability in the number of qualified watchstanders and partly because of SWO culture. Many COs will direct the watches be run the way he or she experienced as a JO. The vast majority of Navy ships still use rotating watches, which is completely against human circadian rhythms. With rotating watches, everyone sleeps when they are off watch because they are in a constant state of exhaustion. Myriad sleep deprivation studies have proven that lack of sleep is cumulative. You can’t “catch up” on sleep, and decision-making is impaired just like being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Yet the Navy has not addressed watch rotations to maximize crew rest. Instead, it perpetuates a culture where lack of sleep is a rite of passage, and the main risk assessment tool does not account for crew rest.
Singapore-led safety investigation underway into USS John S McCain collision - Channel NewsAsia
▻http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-led-safety-investigation-underway-into-uss-john-s-9174198
The Singapore Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) launched a marine safety investigation following the collision of the USS John S McCain and Liberian-flagged oil tanker Alnic MC on Aug 21.
A TSIB spokesperson said on Thursday (Aug 31) that the investigation was launched immediately after the collision, and the probe was being conducted in accordance with the International Maritime Organization’s Casualty Investigation Code in Singapore’s capacity as a coastal state.
“The US Coast Guard, on behalf of the US National Transportation Safety Board, and the Liberian Maritime Administration are participating in Singapore’s safety investigation as Substantially Interested States,” the spokesperson said.
To date, investigators have interviewed the crew members of the Alnic, while TSIB has been coordinating with the US Coast Guard to gather relevant information on the US guided-missile destroyer, including statements of account from its crew.
TISB has also obtained shipboard data from the Alnic and other ships in the vicinity at the time of the collision to support the Singapore-led safety investigation, the spokesperson said.
Si on lit entre les lignes, il semblerait que le TSIB rende public l’ouverture de leur enquête (avec 10 jours de retard) pour faire pression sur la Navy qui, à son habitude, ne semble pas particulièrement coopérative…
Clairement, il n’est pas prévu qu’ils aient accès directement aux témoignages des marins du McCain…
U.S. Navy to Haul Damaged Destroyer John S. McCain to Japan for Damage Assessment – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navy-to-haul-damaged-destroyer-john-s-mccain-to-japan-for-damage-asses
The U.S. Navy is planning to haul the damaged guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain to its ship repair facility in Yokosuka, Japan where damage assessments will continue to take place.
The Navy said Tuesday it intends to issue a task order on an existing contract, for the salvage patching and transport via heavy lift of USS John S McCain (DDG 56) from Changi Naval Base in Singapore to the U.S. Navy’s Ship Repair Facility-Japan Regional Maintenance Center in Yokosuka, Japan. The Navy did not specify which existing contract it was referring to.
Une hypothèse circule depuis quelques jours : l’USS John S McCain aurait été en train de doubler l’Alnic NC, suffisamment près (ie beaucoup trop près…) pour que, vers la fin du dépassement, la perturbation hydrodynamique due à la vague d’étrave de l’Alnic vienne perturber le safran du McCain, provoquant une embardée à gauche, voire mettant en panne l’appareil à gouverner.
▻http://forum.gcaptain.com/t/uss-j-mccain-alnic-mc-collision-near-singapore/45819/327
Un peu de ménage…
Pour l’instant, l’état-major du destroyer n’a pas été touché.
Admiral, Captain Removed in Ongoing Investigations into USS John S. McCain, USS Fitzgerald Collisions
▻https://news.usni.org/2017/09/18/admiral-captain-removed-part-investigation-uss-john-s-mccain-uss-fitzgera
The commander of the Navy’s largest operational battle force and his subordinate in charge of the attached destroyer squadron have been removed from their positions as a result of ongoing investigations into a string of incidents this year that resulted in the death of 17 sailors and hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, USNI News has learned.
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Philip Sawyer removed Rear Adm. Charles Williams, commander of Combined Task Force 70, and Capt. Jeffery Bennett, commodore of Destroyer Squadron 15, from their positions on Monday (Tuesday local time) due to a loss of confidence in their ability to command, two Navy officials told USNI News and later confirmed by a statement from the service.
Les réparations auront lieu « localement », à Yokosuka. Localement, parce qu’il faut encore acheminer l’USS John S McCain de Singapour à Yokosuka (transfert prévu dans le courant de ce mois). Contrairement à l’USS Fitzgerald qui lui était à Yokosuka et va être acheminé à Pascagoula dans le Mississippi (probablement en décembre).
USS John S. McCain to Be Repaired in Japan – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/uss-john-s-mccain-to-be-repaired-in-japan
The U.S. Navy will repair the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) at the U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility-Japan Regional Maintenance Center in Yokosuka, Japan.
Repairs will begin upon arrival from Singapore aboard a heavy lift vessel in October, the Navy said.
Accessoirement, on profitera de l’immobilisation pour faire un peu de remise à niveau :
In addition to supporting repairs, the McCain’s crew will focus on training, readiness, and certifications to prepare the ship for its return to the Seventh Fleet, according to the Navy.
[…]
On Thursday, the USS John S. McCain departed Changi Naval Base to meet the heavy lift transport vessel MV Treasure, which will transport it to Fleet Activities Yokosuka for repairs.
U.S. Navy says deadly McCain collision was #preventable, relieves ship commander
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-asia/u-s-navy-says-deadly-mccain-collision-was-preventable-relieves-ship-command
“The commanding officer exercised poor judgment, and the executive officer exercised poor leadership of the ship’s training program,” the USS Seventh Fleet said in a statement released in Japan on Wednesday.
[…]
The McCain’s captain, Commander A. Sanchez, and his executive officer, Commander J. Sanchez, were reassigned to other duties in Japan, where the Seventh Fleet is headquartered, the Navy said.
On attend le rapport préliminaire d’enquête…
Time lapse de la mise en place de l’USS John S McCain sur le MV Treasure qui va l’acheminer jusqu’à Yokosuka pour les réparations.
Conclusion de l’enquête singapourienne ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/675189
Étude détaillée de ProPublica sur le rôle de la technologie dans la catastrophe ►https://seenthis.net/messages/817125
Kickstarter officially launching in Japan this September
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-18-kickstarter-officially-launching-in-japan-this-september
Site will also launch Japanese version, allow local devs to use Japan-based bank accounts and identification
Sri Lanka signs $1.1 billion China port deal amid local, foreign concerns
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-ports-idUSKBN1AE0CN
Sri Lanka signed a long delayed $1.1 billion deal on Saturday to lease its southern Hambantota port to China ignoring an appeal by opposition parties to debate the pact in parliament.
The deal was signed between the two state firms — Sri LankaPorts Authority (SLPA) and China Merchants Port Holdings(0144.HK) to handle the commercial operations of the Chinese-built port on a 99-year lease.
Chinese firm will hold 70 stake in a joint venture with SLPA to run the port, part of a plan to convert loans worth $6 billion that Sri Lanka owes China into equity.
[…]
Hu Jianhua, the executive vice president of the ChinaMerchants Port said the port facilities belong to the citizens of Sri Lanka but will be a key part of China’s massive #One_Belt_One_Road initiative to build trade and transport links across Asia and beyond.
[…]
Government and diplomatic sources told Reuters that the United States, India and Japan have raised concerns over possible military activities by China in Hambantota port.
#OBOR
Indian Punchline - Reflections on foreign affairs
By M K Bhadrakuma – July 23, 2017
▻http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/07/23/a-new-normal-in-russia-china-military-cooperation
No sooner than the annual Malabar 2017 exercise (July 14-17) ended in Bay of Bengal, another naval exercise has begun with equally profound geopolitical implications for India – Joint Sea 2017, Russia’s week-long joint drills with China (July 21-26) in the Baltic Sea. Each highlights in its own way the realignments under way in the Asia-Pacific and Eurasia. India is a participant in one, more than a curious observer in the other.
The four-day Malabar-2017 (US, India and Japan) had a distinct anti-China flavor. India downplayed that aspect, while Japan hyped it up and the US embellished the optic. The Japanese ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu penned a rare opinion piece, euphorically hailing Malabar-17 as the harbinger of an Asian security alliance.
On the other hand, Joint Sea 2017 is being watched closely by Western powers and reportedly “raised alarm in Washington” (Telegraph). Interestingly, it comes in two parts. The Baltic exercise will be followed by a second Russia-China naval exercise in September in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. Indeed, the Baltics is to Russia’s defence line vis-à-vis NATO what the Sea of Japan is to China’s vis-a-vis the US-Japanese alliance.
China says it won’t take any more foreign #garbage
►http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-environment-idUSKBN1A31JI
China notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday that it would stop accepting shipments of #rubbish such as #waste_plastic and paper as part of a campaign against “foreign garbage”.
The import ban, which will enter into force by the end of 2017, will also cover slag from steelmaking, and many kinds of waste wool, ash, cotton and yarn.
“We found that large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials. This polluted China’s environment seriously,” China’s WTO filing said.
“To protect China’s environmental interests and people’s health, we urgently adjust the imported solid wastes list, and forbid the import of solid wastes that are highly polluted.”
China is a major importer of waste. Last year it imported 7.3 million tonnes of waste plastics, valued at $3.7 billion, accounting for 56 percent of world imports.
Apart from Hong Kong, the biggest sources of that plastic waste were Japan and the United States, which accounted for roughly 10 percent of the volume each, according to data from the International Trade Centre, a United Nations-WTO joint venture.