USS John S. McCain Collision 20 Aug 17

[dimsum]

USN goes back old school.

A four-page directive obtained by The New York Times suggests the Navy will return to old-fashioned chartwork and precise piloting to prevent future deadly nighttime collisions, particularly in the heavily trafficked area of the Pacific Ocean, where the 7th Fleet operates.

“Commanders are requiring sailors to use old-fashioned compasses, pencils and paper to help track potential hazards, as well as reducing a captain’s discretion to define what rules the watch team follows if the captain is not on the ship’s bridge,” The Times reported.

http://taskandpurpose.com/navy-goes-old-school-prevent-future-collisions/?utm_content=tp-facebook&utm_campaign=news&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

 

[Lumber]

USN goes back old school.

http://taskandpurpose.com/navy-goes-old-school-prevent-future-collisions/?utm_content=tp-facebook&utm_campaign=news&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

I do not see how in any of these two collisions using paper charting for navigation, or manually calculation rel-vel solutions instead of using AIS and ARPA, would have made any difference.

The Fitz collision happened because of a poor Command climate, poor bridge resource management.

The McCain collision, from what we know, was a mechanical failure. Having a paper chart on the bridge isn't going to save you when the ship suffers a hydraulic failure and your rudder goes hard over.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I tend to agree with Lumber. Paper charts have value, but a fix on a chart only shows you where you were in the past, not where you are now. In a close quarters situation, that is of limited value.

The value in paper charting is that it forces you to understand the underlying principles of both fixing and of navigation; an understanding which you can nicely transfer to electronic charting systems. It also gives you a fallback in case your electronic systems fail or are interdicted.

Teaching Manual Relative Velocity calculation allows one to keep a better mental picture of what is happening around the ship. This is a useful skill for a BWK. It is of limited value, however, if there are dozens of contacts within a few miles...

 

[dimsum]

I tend to agree with Lumber. Paper charts have value, but a fix on a chart only shows you where you were in the past, not where you are now. In a close quarters situation, that is of limited value.

The value in paper charting is that it forces you to understand the underlying principles of both fixing and of navigation; an understanding which you can nicely transfer to electronic charting systems. It also gives you a fallback in case your electronic systems fail or are interdicted.

Teaching Manual Relative Velocity calculation allows one to keep a better mental picture of what is happening around the ship. This is a useful skill for a BWK. It is of limited value, however, if there are dozens of contacts within a few miles...

Agreed. 

 

[FSTO]

Will the USN come to the realization that their BWK training process is not producing a safe and knowledgeable Officer of the Deck?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Will the USN come to the realization that their BWK training process is not producing a safe and knowledgeable Officer of the Deck?

I think their OJT model of training has been proven to be an abject failure.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I saw the reference to using paper charts as aimed at the USS Antietam incident: It was a grounding in an anchorage.

I can see where using paper charts could help for that. Using the electronic charts, if you "zoom" down too much becomes like the people today who rely on their GPS in their car: They get used to seeing only a small part of the way and concentrate too much on it, but lose view of the overall picture that falls outside its borders.

This could be compounded by the fact that (regardless of the fact that the USA produced a navigation genius in Nathaniel Bowditch) the US Navy has never been very strong in navigation practices, even before all the electronics. They are an ocean going Navy and are weak in coastal or pilotage navigation, which they don't practice enough.

Personally, I think the Navy should call on an excellent outside organization to review their basics of navigation, bridgemanship, rules of the road and basic seamanship practices to recommend improvements: This organization is called the US Coast Guard.

 

[Lumber]

Personally, I think the Navy should call on an excellent outside organization to review their basics of navigation, bridgemanship, rules of the road and basic seamanship practices to recommend improvements: This organization is called the US Coast Guard.

For a second there, I thought you were about to say VENTURE.

 

[dimsum]

Personally, I think the Navy should call on an excellent outside organization to review their basics of navigation, bridgemanship, rules of the road and basic seamanship practices to recommend improvements: This organization is called the US Coast Guard.

While this is a great idea, I think pride of "not being worse than the Coast Guard" would take over and they'd have the Royal Navy do that instead. 

 

[Loachman]

Uh-oh!!!

Another one...

https://www.duffelblog.com/2017/08/navy-destroyer-collides-with-building-in-downtown-houston/

 

[Ping Monkey]

US Navy worked around its own standards to keep ships underway


https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2017/09/07/us-navy-worked-around-its-own-standards-to-keep-ships-underway-sources/

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy’s top officer in the Pacific is reviewing a program that allowed ships from the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet to operate with expired certifications amid a wide-ranging probe into two deadly collisions that killed 17 sailors and caused untold hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to two destroyers, three sources with knowledge of the decision told Defense News.


Adm. Scott Swift has taken on direct supervision of the “risk assessment management plan” program, a system otherwise known as RAMP that allowed the local destroyer squadron, fleet trainers and stateside commanders to keep their ships on patrol even if their qualifications in critical areas such as damage control, navigation and flight deck operations had lapsed.


The U.S. Government Accountability Office is set to testify Thursday that nearly 40 percent of the Japan-based cruisers and destroyers were operating without valid warfare certifications.


The widespread use of the RAMP system alarmed Navy officials when they began examining readiness issues inside the fleet, raising questions why fleet leaders tolerated the degraded readiness that had taken root in 7th Fleet, even as the demand for its strained ships is at historic highs. And while it’s impossible to draw a straight line between degraded readiness and a series of damaging accidents in the Pacific, experts said the issues are a symptom of an overstressed fleet taking too many risks to meet its demands.


It’s unclear when the RAMP system was put in place, but several retired senior Navy officials were unaware of the program when asked about it. What has become clear, however, is that the system was used routinely and with increasing frequency in 7th Fleet over the past two years.


Now that system is under direct scrutiny by Swift and is part of the inquiry led by fleet boss Adm. Phil Davidson into how 7th Fleet operates.


The GAO will testify before members of the House Armed Services Committee that the system appears to have taken firm root since its 2015 report that showed that the Navy was shorting its readiness and training in 7th Fleet in exchange for increased presence in the region.


“This represents more than a fivefold increase in the percentage of expired warfare certifications for these ships since our May 2015 report,” GAO Defense Capabilities and Management Director John H. Pendleton’s testimony read, according to a copy obtained by Defense News sister publication Military Times.


CNN first reported the GAO’s testimony concerning the rate of lapsed certifications in 7th Fleet.


Ships in 7th Fleet are considered deployed at all times and achieve their certifications in a different manner than ships stateside. A destroyer in San Diego, for example, returns from an overseas deployment and begins a 36-month cycle where the ship is maintained and the crew is trained in increasingly intense operations until the ship is fully qualified and sent back overseas.


But in Japan, qualifications happen on a 24-month revolving basis, according to Navy officials. If the ship is unable to maintain its qualifications — engineering operation, anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, etc. — the squadron commander and/or task force commander then works with the ship’s commanding officer and fleet trainers to get the ship back on track. That system is overseen by the 7th Fleet commander and the top surface warfare officer, Naval Surface Force Pacific, in this case Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden.


But those kinds of fixes are intended to be temporary and not a standard operating procedure as it appears to have become, said Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.


“It’s the kind of thing you’d want to put in for a temporary period for an uptick in demand, then return to the standards of training,” he said. “So it seems like the Navy went into this as a kind of mitigation strategy and it seems like it‘s sort of became the operational model they’ve been working off of for some time now — at least the last two years.”


The issue of strained readiness among Japan’s high-operational tempo ships is not new and comes in ebbs and flows, according to several sources familiar with 7th Fleet operations who spoke on background. The issues, however, have become even more pronounced as the threat of a nuclear exchange with North Korea has spiked. Most of the surface ships in Japan are equipped to try and shoot down missiles fired at allies or even U.S. territories such as Guam.


There is a standing requirement that the Navy has a set number of ballistic missile defense shooters underway at any given time as a check on North Korea. Both the destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain are ballistic missile defense-enabled ships.


The workarounds in 7th Fleet are yet another sign of an alarming decline in readiness triggered by a Navy too small for what it’s being asked to do, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and analyst at the Center for a New American Security.


“The news reports about the waivers being used to keep ships underway are deeply troubling, and it highlights the real challenge of maintaining readiness in 7th Fleet and in the Pacific,” Hendrix said. “It also highlights that the fleet is not large enough to do every step of the process in getting ships qualified while maintaining its operational commitments.”

 

[tomahawk6]

Time lapse video of McCain being loaded onto the heavy lift ship.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/video-shows-uss-john-s-mccain-loaded-aboard-massive-heavy-lift-ship-2017-10

 

[YZT580]

The possibility of an outside source having hacked into the Nav. system of the civil ship still should be examined carefully.  There are a number of reported, recorded, and verified reports of exactly that happening in the Black Sea with ships receiving GPS information that places them miles from their actual position.  This would also place a spoofed PX onto the global ship tracking system so that system would be unable to verify the actual position of the vessel.  Below is the advisory report on the incident.  The same technology could easily have been employed in both incidents in the South China Sea

Active U.S. Maritime Advisories:
2017-006-GPS Disruption-Global

Reference: U.S. Maritime Alert Message Reference Number 2017-005A.
Issue: During the week of 19 June 2017, a vessel transiting the northeast portion of the Black Sea reported multiple instances of GPS interference. More than 20 other vessels in the same area reported the same interference, which included an incorrect signal.
Guidance: Indicators of positioning systems interference include an intermittent signal, no signal, or an incorrect signal. Critical information to report during a disruption event includes: actual location (Latitude/Longitude), date/time, and period of outage and/or disruption. Additional background information on GPS interference and disruption is available at http://www.gps.gov/spectrum.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Except that in the McCain incident, no one reported any GPS issues. There were hundreds of ships within the immediate vicinity. Had someone messed with the GPS signal, there would have have been dozens of collisions- not just one.

Occams Razor....

 

[Good2Golf]

The possibility of an outside source having hacked into the Nav. system of the civil ship still should be examined carefully.  There are a number of reported, recorded, and verified reports of exactly that happening in the Black Sea with ships receiving GPS information that places them miles from their actual position.  This would also place a spoofed PX onto the global ship tracking system so that system would be unable to verify the actual position of the vessel.  Below is the advisory report on the incident.  The same technology could easily have been employed in both incidents in the South China Sea

Active U.S. Maritime Advisories:
2017-006-GPS Disruption-Global

Reference: U.S. Maritime Alert Message Reference Number 2017-005A.
Issue: During the week of 19 June 2017, a vessel transiting the northeast portion of the Black Sea reported multiple instances of GPS interference. More than 20 other vessels in the same area reported the same interference, which included an incorrect signal.
Guidance: Indicators of positioning systems interference include an intermittent signal, no signal, or an incorrect signal. Critical information to report during a disruption event includes: actual location (Latitude/Longitude), date/time, and period of outage and/or disruption. Additional background information on GPS interference and disruption is available at http://www.gps.gov/spectrum.

Shenanigans in the littorals around Crimea and Novorossia come as a surprise?

 

[YZT580]

Except that in the McCain incident, no one reported any GPS issues. There were hundreds of ships within the immediate vicinity. Had someone messed with the GPS signal, there would have have been dozens of collisions- not just one.

Occams Razor....

Nor would it be reported since as far as other traffic was concerned their positions would be normal.  GPS spoofing can be focused and targeted to a single receiver.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You would have to be in LOS of that receiver and pretty close

 

[Navy_Pete]

Also, visually tracking the great big ship coming right at you would be a pretty big clue that maybe your GPS is off.  People tend to 'trust but verify' by sighting the visual bearings to make sure you aren't on a collision course when you get close.

 

[FJAG]

Navy relieves two officers of duty following deadly USS McCain crash

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/10/navy-relieves-two-officers-duty-following-deadly-uss-mccain-crash.html

:cheers:

 

[YZT580]

Also, visually tracking the great big ship coming right at you would be a pretty big clue that maybe your GPS is off.  People tend to 'trust but verify' by sighting the visual bearings to make sure you aren't on a collision course when you get close.

So if they were visually tracking why the heck didn't  they get out of the way?  It is sort of self evident that no one was paying attention on either the McCain or the tanker until the sound of scraping metal woke them up.  The helmsman on the tanker would probably have been following a GPS track down the traffic lane.  Spoofing him would alter his course by 14 degrees or so without his actually paying much attention.  If no one on the McCain was keeping a sharp bridge watch you can be certain that the crew of the tanker was no more aware, after all they were linked into the master tracking programme and probably relying on it for other traffic.  The McCain wasn't linked so it would not have been visible except from the wing and at night even an alert watch keeper might have had difficulty noticing the converging traffic.  Sure as heck the McCain's watch didn't notice