USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain collisions

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"The McCain’s steering configuration was changed five times in the roughly three minutes before the collision, according to the Navy report.

By the time the aft steering was manned and the sailor on the bridge fixed the speed issue that was forcing McCain left of track, it was too late." :facepalm:
 
“ low morale and disfunctional chief’s mess” tells me enough and they should feel the rath of the UCMJ.
CHIEF’S lead the way has been the tradition of the USNavy, no excuses.
MCPO Retired
 
In a foxhole the value of emotional intelligence and political correctness is yours to determine.
 
HiDHo said:
“ low morale and disfunctional chief’s mess” tells me enough and they should feel the rath of the UCMJ.
CHIEF’S lead the way has been the tradition of the USNavy, no excuses.
MCPO Retired
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The military started seriously eroding the Chief Petty Officer leadership roles back in the mid 80s....by 2000, in the USCG I saw leadership as a checklist method rather than exerience for both good midlevel O's and CPO ranks.
 
It's sad that we put young men and women in such situations. We talk about looking after them and our veterans but it's mostly just lip service.
 
What we allow, we ultimately teach.


We have lowered the standard so far that the young sailors who have never been in battle believe this low standard is just that...the standard.



Sad
 
GFC said:
What we allow, we ultimately teach.


We have lowered the standard so far that the young sailors who have never been in battle believe this low standard is just that...the standard.



Sad
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It is the standard. The Navy can claim they have higher standards, but those are only on paper. These are the ones in practice. When you consistently allow a certain level of training and performance, then you've made that the de factor standard. Very sad.

Businesses do the same every day, one set of policies in writing but quite a different set in practice. The big difference is that most businesses don't deal in situations where lives are at risk.
 
BandB said:
It is the standard. The Navy can claim they have higher standards, but those are only on paper. These are the ones in practice. When you consistently allow a certain level of training and performance, then you've made that the de factor standard. Very sad.

Businesses do the same every day, one set of policies in writing but quite a different set in practice. The big difference is that most businesses don't deal in situations where lives are at risk.
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I’ve noticed that with performance grading. When you are grading things you say aren’t a priority, and not grading things that you say are a priority, you’ve just changed the priorities.

I.e., we aren’t going to grade you on customer service, which is a priority, but we are going to grade you on filling out your TPS sheets, which isn’t a priority.
 
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There are over 400 ships in the fleet. These ships all have there own indivdual co’s and crews which do compete with other ships for excellence in there ability to wage war. They live fire there weapons, etc. The training each sailor and officer receives begins in navy school’s, the training is honed by real shipboard duty. We have all watched on tv the launching of aircraft and tomahawk missles during the gulf war’s. Yes there are indivdual ship commands that did not maintain the standards set by the rest of the fleet. The navy will releave for cause those co’s and crew members guilty of derelict, some with demotion and or brig time, some booted out with less than honorable discharges.
 
Group9 said:
...I.e., we aren’t going to grade you on customer service, which is a priority, but we are going to grade you on filling out your TPS sheets, which isn’t a priority.
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I used to work in a call center where operators where rated by how long it took to handle customer complaints. A consistantly below average employee all of a sudden had the best scores..... He figured out if you just hang up on callers your average call time drops.

Metrics can be great tools, but only if used properly.
 
What HiDHo said - particularly #3.

Former SCPO
 
HiDHo said:
“ low morale and disfunctional chief’s mess” tells me enough and they should feel the rath of the UCMJ.
CHIEF’S lead the way has been the tradition of the USNavy, no excuses.
MCPO Retired
Click to expand...

Well put. Bravo Zulu Master Chief! DivOs, Dept Heads, XO, CO were continually knocking at the Chief's Mess door (out of respect/tradition) for their Chief's leadership. If it was not there we/they were in deep kimchi. - FCC (SW). 12 years (sea time) riding Aegis Cruisers.
 
Benthic2 said:
I used to work in a call center where operators where rated by how long it took to handle customer complaints. A consistantly below average employee all of a sudden had the best scores..... He figured out if you just hang up on callers your average call time drops.

Metrics can be great tools, but only if used properly.
Click to expand...

Kind of like Stalin's 5 year plans. You got sent to the gulag if you didn't produce 10 million pairs of boots. So you make 10 million size five boots. Done.
 
Software is no excuse. What happened to the Mark I eyeball? What were the destroyer's officer of the deck doing? Regardless of who's fault the collision is, it should have been seen and avoided by the destroyer. If another vessel is on a collision course with you, you're not required to sit and take the hit. A navy rule of the sea - small ships stay out of the way of bigger ships.

It's been a long time since I stood navy deck watches, but it's hard to imagine a deck watch unaware of a larger ship within a mile, and on a collision course. Apparently the navy has been doing monkey see, monkey do training.
 
Failure to understand the "big red button" emergency transfer of control by everyone on the bridge is quite stunning.
 
Lepke said:
It's been a long time since I stood navy deck watches, but it's hard to imagine a deck watch unaware of a larger ship within a mile, and on a collision course. Apparently the navy has been doing monkey see, monkey do training.
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A fine point, but they weren't on a collision course until the destroyer (unintentionally) changed course due to the (unnoticed) incorrect throttle setting.

I'm having a hard time totally blaming the crew, who seem to have been thrown into a situation they didn't have the experience or training to deal with. Yeah, I like to think I'd have done better, and they should have done better. But I've been around boats a lot longer. Some of these kids had never seen an ocean before they enlisted.
 
https://www.passagemaker.com/technical/mccain-helm-system-blamed-collision

The NTSB put it plainly: “The design of the John S McCain’s touch-screen steering and thrust control system,” the board found, “increased the likelihood of the operator errors that led to the collision.”
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I have never liked having a touchscreen be the only means of interacting with a nav display (let alone one that actually controlled systems directly). There's just too many ways for incorrect touch input to happen. I'm all for the option to use them, because there are some things (like those oujia board 'keyboards ' for text entry) that are insanely tedious otherwise. But for "while navigating" functions like panning and zooming to get a better understand of what's on-screen... give me the hard button controls instead.

Likewise, cramming too much info onto a screen is also a bad plan.
 

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No matter what control system you use, all have pluses and minuses... is how easy is it to cancel a command and change it.

Just li,e discussing something important with a significant other... :)
 
psneeld said:
No matter what control system you use, all have pluses and minuses... is how easy is it to cancel a command and change it.

Just li,e discussing something important with a significant other... :)
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The real tragedy here is that the helmsen were not trained sufficiently and no one, including the skipper, seemed to understand how the control fully worked AND transfer of control.

If you haven't already, read the ProPublica report above.

At first I was thinking the skipper did all the right things, but then come to realize that they pushed the "big red button" without fully understanding what it did.

How is it possible that this was not practiced in an empty ocean previously??
 
Oh I agree that one has to be smarter than the equipment they are working with, I was just pointing out that tiller, wheel, auto pilot remote, joystick, pushbutton, touch screen, etc can all be effective steering ....but only if easy to comprehend under pressure and easy to overcome if something goes wrong.
 
The ability to transfer helm controls seems to be at the core of the problem. Being able to move control functions around is great (like a damaged bridge scenario). But it seems like it wasn't designed with average crew usability in mind. Combine that with a moving target due to design changes AND lack of training gets you this sort of disaster.

I mean, really, too many control systems get designed by people without taking into account field conditions. From both perspectives. Systems made too complicated for stand-in personnel to operate, or systems made too dumb that prevent seasoned personnel from making the most of it.

You wouldn't think something as basic as rudders and throttles could be over-complicated, well, never say never.
 
wkearney99 said:
The ability to transfer helm controls seems to be at the core of the problem.
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That caused a lot of confusion and distraction. But in the end, it was the incomplete transfer of the throttle controls which led to the hard turn. The helmsman didn't notice, and by the time the Captain and the other officer figured it out, it was too late.

Like all such accidents, there are plenty of threads to pull.
 
CaptTom said:
That caused a lot of confusion and distraction. But in the end, it was the incomplete transfer of the throttle controls which led to the hard turn. The helmsman didn't notice, and by the time the Captain and the other officer figured it out, it was too late.

Like all such accidents, there are plenty of threads to pull.
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No doubt.

I'd imagine the synchronizing effort the control system was designed to handle wasn't expecting the kind of 'hot potato' game of transfers that seems to have been going on.
 
Wxx3 said:
At first I was thinking the skipper did all the right things, but then come to realize that they pushed the "big red button" without fully understanding what it did.

How is it possible that this was not practiced in an empty ocean previously??
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First level leadership failures while the captain, XO, and senior P.O. were on the bridge.

1. NO ONE should be allowed near any automated system without demonstrating the ability turn it off and revert to analog. (See also Boeing stabilizer trim disconnect).

2. One steaming hour from destination, Captain recognizing potential threat of high traffic situation, comes to the bridge but then sends the experienced (I hesitate to call any of these fools qualified) helmsman to lunch.
 
I worked in a Nuclear control room for for 20 years. I lived through the years of analog to digital control upgrades that moved from knobs to LCD screen and touch screens. Many mistakes were made due to the lack of study on human factors on the system changes.
A simple simulator of that system where they train and drill the heck out of the sailors before they are qualified could have solved this issue. It could have been a cheap fix on a laptop.
 
This also begs the question, what about the weapons systems. Those controls probably make that bridge system look like child's play.
 
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