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US Navy Cruiser and Submarine Collide
An anonymous reader writes "Despite billions of dollars in advanced electronics, radar, and sonar it seems the Navy needs to install backup cameras on their boats. 'The Pentagon said late Saturday that it is investigating why a Navy submarine collided with an Aegis cruiser during routine operations at an undisclosed location.' According to ABC, 'the two ships were participating in a “group sail” along with another vessel. The three ships were participating in an anti-submarine exercise in preparation for an upcoming deployment as part of the strike group for the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman."
It could have been worse.
"Despite billions of dollars in advanced electronics, radar, and sonar it seems the Navy needs to install backup cameras on their boats. '
The point of a submarine is to be undetectable. Apparenly it worked.
My speculation, knowing submariners, is that the sub's captain was playing grab-ass with the surface ships, as they are wont to do during these kinds of exercises, due to the utter disdain for the surface fleet.
There are two kinds of seagoing vessels. Submarines and targets.
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BMO
Heck of an impact. Seems it split one of them in two. Luckily the fragments appear to be able to float independently.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not much of a sailor on the cruiser. According to TFA he saw the sub 100-200 yds ahead and ordered "all back". Should have been hard a port or starboard
Navy Times has better information. The collision occurred off Jacksonville, FL. The sub was surfacing to periscope depth when it was hit by the cruiser. The cruiser's bow sonar dome was damaged. No injuries.
"A collision at sea can ruin your whole day". It's usually a career-ending event for a Naval officer. The captain of the USS Essex, which had a collision with a fleet oiler during a replenishment operation in May 2012, was removed from command. Even though the collision was apparently due to a steering malfunction, the captain is responsible.
They need a man with "Welcome Aboard" tattooed on his dick.
This isn't exactly unusual when you have subs and surface ships in close proximity. If I remember correctly, the Royal Navy lost at least a couple of subs which sank after colliding with a surface vessel during anti-submarine training; admittedly decades ago when they had far less expensive electronic gadgetry to tell them where the other guy was.
with, aircraft carriers are *stupendously* noisy. In fact, one time, as they were deploying out of San Diego, they barged right over a Soviet sub waiting for them. A chunk of one of the sub's propellers was stuck in the hull for the whole deployment.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Depending on the result of the investigation that's at least one CO's career that's down the drain.
...someone in the US Navy is in a world of ship.
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
A friend who was a coastie told a story about a sub messing with them:
The guy watching the radar grabbed the first officer because he was confused. He was seeing an occasional weak reading from behind them, a real small return like a little boat or something, fairly close, but when he'd look there was nothing out there. It was daytime, plenty of visibility, all that. It was inconsistent, not always there. Nothing seemed to be wrong with the radar. The XO saw this too, so they grabbed my friend and had him continually monitor aft to see what was going on.
The answer? A sub goofing around. It would raise up part of its sail, wait until it got hit with the radar (they have ESM antennas) and then dive. When it came back up again, my friend flashed Morse at it with a light and the sub then surfaced and came over to say hi.
It wasn't an exercise or anything, just a sub screwing around. Was it against Navy regs? I dunno, probably, but the sub was doing it anyways and it wasn't like anyone got in trouble. Everyone had a laugh and the sub went on its way.
Like two ships that pass in the night, when worlds collide.
Does having a faster computer make you a better programmer?
We can give the Navy better tools, but that's just going to push them to try more difficult maneuvers. In the end, we can't get rid of human error.
Homer: On the water, under the water. On the water, under the water. Hey, this pentagon operations coordinator gig isn't so difficult at all. On the water, under the water. On the water, on the water. D'Oh!
quack,quack quack quack
Generally, an incident like this will be traced to the submarine commander skipping the surfacing protocols spelled out in the exercise tasking. The submarine CO has everyone tracked, knows where everyone is and can torpedo at will. The reality is there are surfacing protocols, signals and course/speed specified to avoid collisions built into any ASW exercise. USS Leftwich collided with submarine in 1982 during exercises. The Leftwich CO and bridge watch were cleared and commended for rapid damage control reaction and rendering assistance. The submarine CO was selected to pursue other career options.
just lost their jobs. For the CO ( commanding officer ) his career just ended. The JO ( Junior Officer ) that more then likely had the Deck and the Con ( In other words he was in charge of operating the sub at the moment and a single person is normally the Officer of the Deck and the Conning Officer generally referred to as the "OD" ) more then likely will get a punitive letter of reprimand ( A kiss of death) and here is why:
Periscope Depth (PD) is ~ 65' feet of water over the Deck ( The top of the submarine you see ). When preparing to go to PD the sequence is: The Conning Officer gets a round ( a spoken list ) of contacts from the Sonar Supervisor on watch, eg: "Sonar, Con give me a round." and the list of all known contacts is told to the OD orally. In addition to there is a display repeater to show the OD what the sonar guys see on their displays.. Generally if the CO is awake the OD informs the CO that he believes all is clear to come up to PD from ~ 150'. At this point the sub is going slow enough to raise the #2 Periscope ( they have two ). So the OD raises the Scope and the takes a look around. He looks for shadows or hulls form in the vicinity. When he is satisfied he then gives the order to the Diving Officer ( Normally a Chief Petty Officer that is in charge of the Chief of the Watch, the Helmsman ad the Planesman), "Dive make your depth 65 feet." the Diving officer responds, "Make my depth 65 feet, aye sir." and he will then tell the Helmsman and Planesman to position the control surfaces to accomplish that.
At this point the OD is just basically on the Scope spinning around looking for anything that will ruin his day and focusing most his attention to a 30 degree area in front of the sub and should be calling out to everyone in the control room, "No underwater hull shapes or forms, no shadows." When the Scope lens breaks the surface, he calls out, "Scope Clear, no close aboard contacts." This lets everyone in the Control Room chill out a little. Meantime he is still looking everywhere to make damn sure that they are not going to get run down."
So a chunk of the officer corp is now fucked but my SWAG on this is that it will go a little deeper then that. My guess is that the Sonar Supervisor ( an enlisted guy ) will at minimum get his Watch Supervisor certification yanked ( possibly for good ) and quite possibly demoted since an Aegis Class Cruiser is VERY damned obvious to submarine sonar and the Fire Control guys should have had a continuous plot on the damn thing and the SONAR system should have had them locked on with Automatic Target Following.
The Submarine Squadron Commander more then likely met the boat at the pier and relieved the CO on the spot as that is pretty much SOP for the Navy. The CO of a naval ship at sea is responsible for everything except when the Bow of the sub crosses over the sill of a dry dock ( at which point it shifts to the docking officer ) and when transiting the Panama Canal ( The Co takes orders from the Certified Canal Pilot as far as navigation and speed ) and even then he will still get singed of the shit goes wrong.
And yes I was a Submarine Sonar Tech ( SSN-650 and SSN-692 ).
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The article reminds me of that old US/Canadian joke that circulates every so often ...
------------------
This is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. The Radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on Oct. 10, 1995.
US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.
CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!
US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!
CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Perhaps the AEGIS system had some Chinese made parts, which were actually bought from Russia, where the traditional equivalent of the AEGIS system is a Crazy Ivan. Perhaps the defective AEGIS directed the ship to make a sharp turn to clear the baffles... not realizing it was installed on a cruiser.
On the other hand, maybe it just saw a whale and froze up, like a dog with a squirrel. "Ship... ship... ship... ship... WHALE!!!"
This is yet another career-ender for some unfortunate officer. These incidents aren't even called "relieved" any more, they're flat-out called "firings". They have skyrocketed in recent years, so much so that the Navy Times keeps a list, updating it frequently. It is a long list. A few of them are justified, such as "a loss of confidence in Parkerâ(TM)s ability to command" (incompetent) or "a survey found a poor command climate" (officer is such a prick above and beyond normal officer prickishness that it makes his subordinates do a bad job). A few are DWI or other arrests, which makes sense as you don't want someone with that lack of self-control in charge of nuclear weapons. A lot of these firings are what's called "zipper failure" or more formally "having an âoeunduly familiar relationshipâ with a female member of the crew." Hey, humans are humans, you put females on a ship and this is what will happen. Well, equal opportunity, right? Cmdr. Etta Jones was fired for among other things, taking a 9mm pistol out of a gun safe and pointing it hat her crew. It's a hard life being a Navy commander, all eyes are on you and you can be held accountable for everything, even if you didn't do it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They sure don't make sailors like they used to.
"The three ships were participating in an anti-submarine exercise"
Seems to me that it was successful.
"We have had circumstances where Navy vessels have collided at sea in the past, but they're fairly rare as to how often they do take place,"
Yes, that would be the usual meaning of the word rare.
The Iranian Navy are pissing themselves laughing.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
So is jamming gear just the same as having a stronger transmitter than the other guy and blowing out their signal? Interfering with comms wouldn't require blowing out the signal level but just introducing enough noise to screw with it. And if they're using other modulation or spread-spectrum or multi-frequency transmissions, than a simple FM/AM transmitter wouldn't work so well. Would just plain old spark coils with a super-wide noise band be enough? (though I wouldn't think so since lightning doesn't screw with FM radio as much as it does with AM radio.) Sorry for the ramble, just some naive questions from someone who doesn't know all the buzzwords to search for on the wikipedia or other sites...
It seems like that sub-captain was hot-dogging it, just the pilots like to do at NAS-Miramar near San Diego. And if you look at the history of crashes, when you've got flat-hatting and hot-dogging, it's almost inevtiable that someone's going to get hurt and lose a job and lose a command, along with th e loss of lives, sadly.
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Second question regarding timing: how fast would the sequence you described usually occur? Is it all happening real fast like a movie sequence, or are these definite key-points or lock-points which must be verbally okayed and takes 5 or more minutes and anyone could shout out a veto or warning or so? Would the time scale be faster in case of a real emergency, or are people even more cautious when it's the real-deal instead of a controlled training exercise?
If it was the Gulf, we have just avoided the start of WW III (or is it IV, maybe V - I've lost count)
I've already posted on this thread...ewanm89 knows his marine architecture and makes much more sense than some of the armchair admirals above.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's usually a career-ending event for a Naval officer.
Couldn't the commander of the cruiser say, "I was really getting into the exercise and seeing the sub was too close for firing on it, I decided to ram?"
No?
It apparently happened off the coast of Florida.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Sounds more like a group hug. :)
Those involved were serving in the US Navy. In the US, billion is 10^9. The US uses the short scale, not the long scale. I think most people in the long scale using locales, where billion is 10^12, are pretty familiar with US usage.
It seems weird to me to call it an "Aegis"cruiser. Aegis is a combat system. If I recall, the Aegis is specifically a integrated system of radars, weapons, and computers.
Broadly speaking, the surface ship involved (the USS San Jacinto) is a cruiser. More specifically, it's a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. ("Ticonderoga" is a "class ship". That is, there was an actual ship named USS Ticonderoga, and the San Jacinto has the same general design, so it's called a Ticonderoga-class ship.)
Another class of U.S. ships which sometime (always?) are carry the Aegis system is the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers.
Ship happens on subs sometimes.
Damn kids.
He did a little demo, he pointed the antenna at different cars and they were able to determine what stations these folks were listening to
I'm having a hard time believing this one. How does one determine what frequency a remote passive receiver is tuned to?
Oh really...! How deep..? ..So HARD?! Sweet Mary!
Oh, tell more?
That's all I can remember: we worked together 22 years ago.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Should have used the green paint trick. Just spread it on the water, when the periscope comes up, all green - so they keep rising. As the sub gets to 500 feet, you shoot it down with ack-ack.
AFAIK, not being detected is a good thing for subs. OK, ramming something is going to get you noticed, but that nobody spotted the sub before it was to late ought to be good news for anyone planning stealth manoeuvres, no?
Insert
Anyone who thinks a billion is 10^12 is an ignorant foreign fuckwad.
If our submarines can't even see a ship next to them, how on earth will they EVER see the evil Taliban/Al Qaeda/Iranian/North Korean navy approaching US shores for a 2012 Red Dawn scenario?
Quick! MORE MILITARY SPENDING!
Actually the long scale makes more sense than the short scale.
Long scale:
thousand = 10^3
million (mono-illion) = 10^6
thousand million = 10^9
billion (bi-illion) = 10^12
thousand billion = 10^15
trillion (tri-illion) = 10^18
check - makes sense.
Short scale:
thousand = 10^6
million (mono-illion) = 10^6
billion (bi-illion) = 10^9
trillion (tri-illion) = 10^12
huh - come again?
It works!
... sort of indicates "mission accomplished". (Though I doubt that ramming an "enemy" sub is part of normal procedure.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Same thing happen to me serving on one of the Navy's Diesel electric subs (Pig Boat) back in the late 1960s. YUP.... it's a war game and has nothing to do with better or newer equipment being used.
I was an officer on the USS Sirago (SS485), a diesel boat. In our NATO exercises and also working with TASKGRU ALPHA we would try to lay low (under the layer) and wait until the "Tom Cats" would pass over us (the lead DDGs or DLGs that coordinated the (then) F4s in and out for the Carrier) and then we'd try to slip UNDER the screen of destroyers and then come up to periscope depth between the circular destroyer screen and the primo-targets (usually a carrier and a couple of cruisers in the center of the formation). This is ALWAYS very dangerous and we always had to make our torpedo approaches and shots from periscope depth (simulated with a green flare). It's dangerous and the carrier almost ran over us, but we were given all kinds of commendations for (simulated) sinking her.
Mike Bickel