publishedmedium:navy times

A warship doomed by ‘confusion, indecision, and ultimately panic’ on the bridge
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/a-warship-doomed-by-confusion-indecision-and-ultimately-panic-on-the-brid

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The Navy has paraded out a series of public reports addressing both the Fitzgerald tragedy and the Aug. 21, 2017, collision involving the John S. McCain and the Liberian-flagged tanker Alnic MC that killed 10 more American sailors.

But none of those investigations so starkly blueprinted the cascade of failures at all levels of the Navy that combined to cause the Fitzgerald disaster, especially the way the doomed crew of the destroyer was staffed, trained and led in the months before it the collision.

Fort’s team of investigators described a bridge team that was overworked and exhausted, plagued by low morale, facing a relentless tempo of operations decreed by admirals far above them, distrustful of their superiors and, fatally, each other.

And Navy officials knew all of that at least a year before the tragedy.
[…]
[The Commanding Officer (CO) Commander] Benson was “a little more active” on the bridge than Shu [his predecessor], but “it was not routine for the CO or (executive officer) to come up to the Bridge from (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.),” Fort wrote.

Out of 78 underway days from February to May of that year, the CO was on the bridge just four times between the dark hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., according to the report.

Et donc logiquement, absent de la passerelle quand le navire a croisé le “rail” de nuit…

A watery hell: how a green crew fought the Fitz to save her
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/15/a-watery-hell-how-a-green-crew-fought-the-fitz-to-save-her

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On the day after the Fitzgerald limped back to Yokosuka, a plane carrying Rear Adm. Brian Fort landed in Japan.

A surface warfare officer with a quarter-century in uniform, Fort had been tasked with creating a report the Navy would use, in part, to defend itself against potential negligence lawsuits brought by ACX Crystal’s owners and operators and, indirectly, by the families of the Fitz’s dead sailors.

Completed 41 days after the disaster, it remained secret from the public until it was obtained by Navy Times.

Far more candid than the parade of public pronouncements by senior Navy officials since 2017, Fort’s report details how the the skills of Fitzgerald’s crew had atrophied in the months since it went into dry dock.

For example, after reporting to the Fitz, sailors were supposed to receive instruction on how to escape flooded berthing areas, a crucial course that was to be followed up by retraining every six months.

Of the 38 sailors assigned to Berthing 2, which flooded minutes after the ACX Crystal collision, 36 of 39 “were delinquent in the six-month periodic egress training,” Fort wrote.

Et si, le rapport de l’amiral Fort est resté secret, c’est parce qu’"il recouvre très largement les informations fournies dans les rapports publiés" (publiés d’ailleurs, nettement plus tard…

CNO defends hiding scathing internal report on Fitzgerald collision from public
▻https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/02/16/cno-defends-hiding-scathing-internal-report-on-fitzgerald-collision-from-

The Navy’s top officer Friday defended the decision to keep from the public eye a damning internal report on the 2017 warship Fitzgerald collision that killed seven sailors.

Speaking to reporters after his appearance at the U.S. Naval Institute’s West 2019 conference here, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said much of the report overlapped with what the service publicly released.

But much of the probe overseen by Rear Adm. Brian Fort portrayed a far grimmer picture of what the crew of the guided-missile destroyer faced. It also prompted hard questions about the actions taken by the Fitz’s squadron and Navy officials back in the United States.

First revealed by Navy Times, the Fort report chronicled details that Richardson, other Navy leaders and their public reports never mentioned, such as specifics about the destroyer’s brutal operational tempo, officers who didn’t trust each other, radars that didn’t work and sailors who didn’t know how to operate them.

The investigators also portrayed the warship’s chiefs mess as ineffective and their sailors plagued by low morale in the months leading up to the June 17, 2017, collision.

(les 3 expressions en gras sont des liens vers les articles ci-dessus)

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

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Admiral_Michelle_J._Howard_VCNO.jpg/480px-Admiral_Michelle_J._Howard_VCNO.jpg

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.

le 30/08/16

Another LCS, 4th in a Year, Breaks Down During Pacific Transit | Military.com
▻http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/08/30/another-littoral-combat-ship-breaks-down-during-pacific-transit.html

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The littoral combat ship USS Coronado is returning to Pearl Harbor from the Western Pacific after experiencing an engineering casualty earlier Tuesday, officials with the Navy’s Third Fleet confirmed.

The incident comes just days after the Navy acknowledged that another littoral combat ship, the USS Freedom, had sustained significant damage to one of its diesel engines.

The Coronado departed Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Aug. 26 for an independent deployment to the Western Pacific, Third Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry told Military.com in a statement.

“USS Coronado (LCS 4) experienced an engineering casualty today while transiting to the Western Pacific,” Perry said in the statement. “The crew took precautionary measures and the ship is currently returning to Pearl Harbor to determine the extent of the problem and conduct repairs.”

The Coronado is the fourth littoral combat ship to be sidelined by an engineering casualty in less than a year, following breakdowns by the USS Freedom in July and the USS Milwaukee and USS Fort Worth in December and January, respectively.

However, the ship is the first of the Independence-class littoral combat ships, made by Austal USA, to suffer such an issue. The other ships are all part of the Freedom Class, made by Lockheed Martin Corp. The news of the Coronado’s breakdown was first reported by Navy Times.

le 29/08/16

Third Freedom-Class LCS Breaks Down in 12 Months | Military.com
▻http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/08/29/third-freedom-class-lcs-breaks-down-in-12-months.html

http://images04.military.com/media/news/equipment/ssn_lcs_freedom.jpg

The littoral combat ship USS Freedom will need an engine rebuild or replacement after a seawater leak resulted in significant damage, Navy officials said.

The Freedom is the third ship in the Freedom class of LCS, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., to suffer an engine casualty in the last year. The news of the incident, which happened July 11, was announced by the Navy on Sunday night.

The Freedom, the first ship in its class, returned to its homeport at Naval Base San Diego, California, on July 13 under its own power to conduct repairs on an unrelated issue, officials with Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in a release.

While in port, personnel examined the leak, which happened at the seawater pump mechanical seal, allowing seawater to enter the engine lube oil system and damage the ship’s second main propulsion diesel engine, officials said.

#US_Navy #ingénierie_navale #classe_Zumwalt

Pour mémoire, c’était en juin 2016, la conception (innovante !) des génératrices des 6 destroyers de Type 45 de la marine britannique les rend totalement inopérants (plus aucune source d’énergie…) en eaux chaudes (genre Golfe ou Méditerranée…)
cf. ►https://seenthis.net/messages/498430
ou
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3629306/Royal-Navy-s-advanced-destroyers-break-Gulf-water-WARM-bungling-defence

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