Posted on 12/24/2019 11:17:04 AM PST by Retain Mike
To guide the McCain, Bordeaux relied upon a navigation system the Navy considered a triumph of technology and thrift. It featured slick black touch screens to operate the ship’s wheel and propellers. It knit together information from radars and digital maps. It would save money by requiring fewer sailors to safely steer the ship.
Bordeaux felt confident using the system to control the speed and heading of the ship. But there were many things he did not understand about the array of dials, arrows and data that filled the touch screen.
“There was actually a lot of functions on there that I had no clue what on earth they did,” Bordeaux said of the system.
Bordeaux, one of the newest sailors on the ship, was joined in uncertainty by one of the most seasoned, Cmdr. Alfredo Sanchez, captain of the McCain.
A 19-year Navy veteran, Sanchez had watched as technicians replaced the ship’s traditional steering controls a year earlier with the new navigation system. Almost from the start, it caused him headaches. The system constantly indicated problems with steering. They were mostly false alarms, quickly fixed, but by March 2017, Sanchez’s engineers were calling the system “unstable,” with “multiple and cascading failures regularly.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
I can’t help thinking of my weekly experience at the VA clinic where I volunteer and spend my day with computer software. So often I get the message Word is not responding and a screen asking me to wait or restart the system. Several times I have called the national help deck because the system holding patient files had a problem. Hydraulics and 120-volt electrical circuits created more than enough problems for me on the Westchester County.
I think its nuts that folks would have to spend weeks in a tech school to learn how to control the speed and heading of a ship. The article says the chief petty officer in charge of training the crew had received less than an hour of instruction. When we got our Toyota Highlander a couple years back, my wife spent half a day in the driver’s seat with the manual figuring out how to operate the car.
This doesn’t sound like progress to me. I must agree that the officers should be court-martialed, it looks to me like there was a lot of CYA in Washington going on.
Just how does the Navy think they are going to fight against a near peer adversary???
Satellites off line. Comms down. EMP and cyber attacks. GPS jammed...
“...Sanchez had watched as technicians replaced the ship’s traditional steering controls a year earlier with the new navigation system..”
I wonder what politicians got schmiered by defense contractors/beltway bandits to slip that garbage in6o the budget.
In my Navy experience, automated and computerized systems were consistently problematic. I trusted hydraulics and servos to do the job, but nothing more sophisticated. I expect equipment in a ship to get wet, with salt water, and modern technology is not compatible with the reliability required for critical systems in that environment.
Read this yesterday. Many failures along the entire chain of command. Sometimes ‘aft steering’ is a good thing. But people have to know how it works.
I’ve been operating pleasure boats up to 80’ for 45+ years on the Atlantic coast, and my brother in-law is retired Navy having served on the Iwo Jima and oversaw maintenance on the training fleet here in Annapolis. This push for technology and a video game approach is a recipe for disaster as we saw. It’s a manual helm/steering wheel and throttle/clutch controls, period, no matter how big the platform is. The sailors need a basic understanding of the dynamics and to feel and sense what the ship is doing. I preached in to people I was training along the way, you need to have situational awareness and a fundamental understanding of what the boat is doing. Forget all the high tech aids. I would turn off all the electronics and see if they could figure out how to navigate. Some interesting stuff
Yeah, that would really work well as the ship is headed into the path of huge lumbering cargo ship. Not all tech systems are progress. Many were fired from the McCain and Ferueson collisions. Now we hear it was because of faulty tech and minimal training? Sheesh, what happened to my Navy (75-86)?
Point well taken. The military assumes that its most complicated systems can be operated efficiently and in combat conditions by recruits of varying abilities. Its a dubious assumption. Most folks regardless of age and education do not know how to use all the features built into their cars and consumer products. As demonstrated by the Boeing disasters, a small lapse in knowledge or competence can lead to disaster. The Navy never publicized why their ships were colliding with merchant vessels but the reasonable suspicion is that the OD and those on the bridge were bewildered and did not know how to maneuver the ship the way your shipmates once knew.
“When we got our Toyota Highlander a couple years back, my wife spent half a day in the driver’s seat with the manual figuring out how to operate the car.”
BOL! My wife’s Lexus 300e is about 15 years old, and it has two owner manuals.
My Ridgeline is about 7 years old and has a manual the size of a big Bible with every book known known at that time.
We still find stuff that we don’t know what do with or when a weird light shows up.
I bought the Ridgeline due to Honda’s great vehicles and lack of electronic stuff.
We can only imagine what the bridge on a US Navy ship looks like today.
We have a couple of simple Chromebooks, smart phones, a Kindle reader.
After cutting the tv cable we stream programs. About once a week, we can’t get the system to work.
So I use an old trick I learned from IBM decades ago.
Unplug the device for a minute or two. Then, plug it back and restart everything. That worked last night and we finally got Acorn back on with the Brit program, we wanted to watch.
We used to do that with the Radar and a few other systems while underway in the old Navy.
“I think its nuts that folks would have to spend weeks in a tech school to learn how to control the speed and heading of a ship”
That is not the case.
Given what the engineers and the Commanding Officer knew about the unreliability of the system, they should have CASREP’d it with a CAT 3 - that would have at least gotten some attention.
” it looks to me like there was a lot of CYA in Washington going on.”
Perhaps, but I think it had far more to do with the demand by Obama that unqualified affirmative action hires be promoted within the Navy.
The first hit the ship gets could throw the computers off line. WTF is wrong with these people?
They don’t do wing lookouts with Mark 1 Eyeballs any more?
Probably the building decisions are made by officers who haven’t been to sea in 20 years and are looking for retirement jobs.
Satellites off line. Comms down. EMP and cyber attacks. GPS jammed...
= = = = = = = = =
Sounds like sour grapes to me!!
Why complain, we got wommmin in Subs, close to SEALs, he/he getting married at the Academy.
Isn’t that progress??? (SARC/)
Like the old Chief said
When I came in the Navy in 56 Queers were ‘outlawed’ and would do Brig Time....
By mid-60s they were just discharged
By 80s they were welcomed with open arms..
“So”,the Chief said, “When I went in they were taboo, then became somewhat accepted, I am getting the hell out before it is mandatory”.
All it’ll take is one drop of water, one speck of dust or one reboot that takes longer than a split second at the wrong time for everyone on board to die.
Satellites off line. Comms down. EMP and cyber attacks. GPS jammed...
= = = = = = = = =
Sounds like sour grapes to me!!
Why complain, we got wommmin in Subs, close to SEALs, he/he getting married at the Academy.
Isn’t that progress??? (SARC/)
Like the old Chief said
When I came in the Navy in 56 Queers were ‘outlawed’ and would do Brig Time....
By mid-60s they were just discharged
By 80s they were welcomed with open arms..
“So”,the Chief said, “When I went in they were taboo, then became somewhat accepted, I am getting the hell out before it is mandatory”.
Bingo. Which politician or family member got the kickbacks?
The casual and open corruption in DC is astounding and I do not doubt it may have played a hand in the Grumman contract.
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