Who's hunting US ships?

[Aimless]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...70a_story.html

Is it Soros or is it just statistics?

We know that modern ships, planes, helicopters etc. are in theory vulnerable to a variety of attacks that can target their navigational systems. How long will it be before these attacks are used irl?

[Hazir]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...70a_story.html

Is it Soros or is it just statistics?

We know that modern ships, planes, helicopters etc. are in theory vulnerable to a variety of attacks that can target their navigational systems. How long will it be before these attacks are used irl?

Yeah, I won't say I had thought that far, but it is a bit strange, these American warships getting involved in collisions. Stranger still is how they always seem to have 'sailors missing'.

[wiggin]

Yeah, I won't say I had thought that far, but it is a bit strange, these American warships getting involved in collisions. Stranger still is how they always seem to have 'sailors missing'.

Hazir, I'm not sure how this is 'strange' in either case. While the two latest collisions are unusual both in that they are relatively close together and a decent amount of damage was done and lives were lost, it's hardly unusual for ships to get involved in collisions, even US Navy ships. IIRC there were four collisions involving USN ships this year, but people only remember the two latest ones. I'd have to see a lot more data to believe it was anything other than happenstance. There are plenty of non-strange explanations - the USN is overstretched, deploying more and training less, and it shows. The circumstances around these two latest collisions are still unclear (I'm sure that more details will come out with official reports in a bit), but there doesn't seem to be much evidence that they occurred through anything more than a combination of bad luck and bad training.

As for the 'sailors missing', that's just the USN's way of saying they think the sailors are dead but they haven't confirmed it yet. The bodies will likely be either found inside a flooded compartment or will be presumed lost at sea. Sucks, but it's just normal USN parlance. I'm not terribly surprised that these incidents have caused casualties; generally it's hard to run into a oil tanker and come out unscathed.

I would imagine that PACCOM at a minimum and likely the entire USN fleet will be doing some retraining, fixing up policies on avoiding such collisions, etc. But in the absence of more compelling evidence that a slight clustering being seen as 'strange', I'm not particularly concerned.

[Hazir]

Well, I find it strange that a multi billion navy vessel can stay ignorant of a big ass commercial vessel being on a collission course. Seems to me that one of the basic functions of a navy vessel is to know what else is floating around in its vicinity. Also, it seems like the American navy isn't so convinced that the events are 'normal' at all with a world wide operational pause for review declared.

[Aimless]

Fox is on my side: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/...collision.html

As a result of this development, I withdraw my previous implied allegations, because they must surely be wrong.

[Aimless]

Somewhat reasonable arguments being made against the idea that this may have been caused by something so blatant as GPS-spoofing.

Regardless, this is potentially the biggest US navy scandal since the USS Montana...

[wiggin]

Well, I find it strange that a multi billion navy vessel can stay ignorant of a big ass commercial vessel being on a collission course. Seems to me that one of the basic functions of a navy vessel is to know what else is floating around in its vicinity. Also, it seems like the American navy isn't so convinced that the events are 'normal' at all with a world wide operational pause for review declared.

Perhaps this is a definitional problem. When I hear 'strange', I think it's talking about something inexplicable and vaguely conspiratorial. I think this is certainly unusual and unacceptable, but I think it's far more likely a case of bad training and bad luck than anything else. I find that unfortunate but not strange.

As for their supposed ignorance, in the absence of more details it's hard to know, but remember that destroyers and oil tankers are both large and have a lot of inertia - they're hard to quickly steer. And given the volume of commercial traffic in the area of the collision, it's easier to miss a potential problem. Obviously it's the Navy's job to notice, but there are some factors that explain why it may have been a challenge.

[Hazir]

That's the way how I meant strange; seriously diverging from what you reasonably could expect from an operation you give hundreds of billions a year to keep you safe. I understand that thing about big vessels not being able to move nimbly; doesn't mean I'm very forgiving in the case of navy vessels missing oil tankers on their radars.

[wiggin]

That's the way how I meant strange; seriously diverging from what you reasonably could expect from an operation you give hundreds of billions a year to keep you safe. I understand that thing about big vessels not being able to move nimbly; doesn't mean I'm very forgiving in the case of navy vessels missing oil tankers on their radars.

I don't know specifically what happened in either case - it looks like the destroyers both had their ID transponders turned off (which is a common thing for US Navy vessels for security purposes) and the commercial ships both appeared to have had their autopilots on, which may or may not have malfunctioned. Visual identification would have been difficult given the time of day (and it's unclear it would have allowed enough time to avoid a collision in any event), so the only question is what was going on with their radar. The two obvious options are that the radar wasn't turned on or that no one was looking at it. The first option is eminently possible if they were concerned about emissions security, but it seems like a poor choice in a busy shipping lane. The second option seems more likely and rather concerning.

For the last 16 years the US Navy has been on a punishing operational tempo; the fleet has been shrinking in size, resulting in lengthening deployments (frequently for combat missions) and shortened maintenance and training time. Meanwhile the Navy has been given more and more missions - heavy airstrike roles throughout the Middle East, stepped up exercises and deployments in the Pacific, ballistic missile defense, etc. Of course, that's not even taking into account budgetary uncertainty due to the utter clusterfuck that is sequestration. It's not really surprising that something had to give.

There aren't easy fixes for this, but there are some obvious things that could be put in place. Building more smaller ships (say frigate sized) would take some of the load off of the more capable AEGIS destroyers that form the bulk of the major deployed forces. Forcing some budgetary certainty on the service by a real appropriations bill would also help. Then there's reforms that should be done to naval procurement - stop wasting money on useless ships like the LCS corvettes or overly expensive updates to existing ship classes like our supercarriers and attack subs. And don't even get me started on naval aviation, which is going to be unsustainably expensive with the F-35C when they should probably just be shifting to fully unmanned platforms.

I don't think that anyone who is actually familiar with the Navy's current problems is really surprised that something like this happened. The clustering of problems in the Pacific Fleet is obviously bad luck - it means that they're critically short of BMD assets in the Pacific at a time when tensions with NK are very high - but the fact that it happened is, unfortunately, not all that unexpected.