Posted on 12/23/2019 8:54:41 AM PST by Oatka
And people wonder why I have grave concerns about the state of the US Navy...
Who’d serve on the US John McAsshole?
As an old USN vet, that's my thinking as well.
In the early hours of Aug. 21, 2017, the McCain was 20 miles from Singapore, navigating one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Sanchez was on the bridge to assist in the complex maneuvers ahead. He ordered Bordeaux to take over steering the warship while another sailor controlled its speed. The idea was to avoid distractions by having each man focus on a single task in the heavy maritime traffic.This is a bit misleading. Sanchez (the Commanding Officer) ordered sailors to change the configuration of the Ships Control Console, splitting steering and throttle control systems. In the middle of one of the worlds busiest, most congested waterways. Short of an emergency, you NEVER do this under such conditions. Not a single person on the Bridge was properly trained on this equipment, or how to configure and operate it in the mode the CO ordered.
This article focuses only on the technology, while that was not the primary failure. Sure, trying to turn the bridge of destroyers into a giant video game, with touch screens everywhere was a mistake, and made the ship more complex instead of simpler. But that's not what killed the 10 McCain sailors. They died because of incompetence and poor leadership.
Heh. McCain and Disaster in the same sentence. Good.
well he is right not many his age have driven a battleship..
in fact, no one his age has.
The language is fine for video games, not the military.
McCain is never at fault. LOL Crappy and named after a crappy man. What is new?
Not if he doesn’t even know the class of ship he is on.
Technology, an excuse and not a reason.
Just like the 737, too much reliance on systems and not enough on brains. When the systems go wrong the brains aren’t there to take over.
There are a whole lot of things we can do with technology but there are also a whole lot of those things we should not do at all.
The last US battleship ( The USS Missouri ) was retired in 1992. The USS McCain is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
Every officer and EM that receives orders to do so.
should he really be there?
I don't know his comment and attitude seem appropriately 'McCainish', prideful and conceited.
The Chief they court martialed was a Boatswains Mate, AKA "Deck Ape". He had no clue how to operate the system, and falsified the qual's of his sailors to stand the "helmsman" watch.
Normally, when a new system is installed, ships technicians work directly with the installation team, and receive "onboard training" directly from them. The Ships Control Console is maintained by the IC and GSE rates. The Chief should have sent his sailors to the IC shop to get proper training on this equipment. At a minimum, they would have been trained using written CSOSS/EOSS procedures that would have taught them how to properly configure and operate the Ships Control Console in every possible mode.
If the CO had been doing his job, not only would the helmsman have been properly qualified, but the ship would have been in a "modified sea and anchor detail" watch condition, and there would have been an IC rated sailor on the bridge, with his/her greater understanding and training of the steering system.
This warship was originally named after John S. McCain, Sr., and
John S. McCain, Jr.,[2] both admirals in the United States Navy.
On 11 July 2018, just 1 1/2 months before John McCain passed
away, at a rededication ceremony, Senator John McCain was added
as a namesake, along with his father and grandfather.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_(DDG-56)#cite_note-1
He wasn’t at the controls of that stuff either.
But, after reading the article he probably had almost as much training on how to fire a Tomahawk as he had on how to steer the ship.
Why shouldn’t he be there?
Good to know. I’d hate for us to waste the honor of ship-naming on that horrible little person who deserves none.
And yet that is exactly what the admiral that investigated the accident ordered for all of the destroyers with this control system to do.
The new guidelines warned that IBNS instructions available on the bridge of the McCain and dozens of other destroyers did not include clear procedures for transferring steering and thrust.
And they required every destroyer captain to do exactly what Sanchez had done: Split the helm whenever using the IBNS, directing one sailor to steer and a second to control speed, in order to “maximize confidence” in the modernized system.
I believe that in the past these controls were normally separate and controlled by different individuals namely the Helmsman and the Throttleman.
The article has a lot of holes...like where the author mentions the speed as being, “20 knots per hour”. UGH!!
A knot is a nautical mile per hour and a ship’s speed is reported in Knots, not knots per hour.
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