Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils To Help Avoid Collisions at Sea (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Urgent new orders went out earlier this month for United States Navy warships that have been plagued by deadly mishaps this year. More sleep and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors. Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels. And ships whose crews lack basic seamanship certification will probably stay in port until the problems are fixed.[...] The orders issued recently by the Navy's top officer for ships worldwide, Vice Adm. Thomas S. Rowden, drew on the lessons that commanders gleaned from a 24-hour fleetwide suspension of operations last month to examine basic seamanship, teamwork and other fundamental safety and operational standards. Collectively, current and former officers said, the new rules mark several significant cultural shifts for the Navy's tradition-bound fleets. At least for the moment, safety and maintenance are on par with operational security, and commanders are requiring sailors to use old-fashioned compasses, pencils and paper to help track potential hazards (alternative source), 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. "Rowden is stomping his foot and saying, 'We've got to get back to basics,'" said Vice Adm.

Comments

B52 pilots and Cessna 150 pilots

[perpenso]

When the navigation computer has to reboot on the B-52 bomber, the crew breaks out the slide ruler and map to figure out where they're going.

Yes, but the E6B slide rule is not something that ever went obsolete like traditional slide rules. The E6B was still used in ground school in the 1990s, might still be used in classrooms today. And many pilots still carry one in their bag, next to the paper chart and a flashlight, just in case. Its not a B-52 or a military thing. We're talking Cessna 150 pilots too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That got answered previously

[Anonymous Coward]

At least for officers, the basic navigational and shiphandling courses got replaced by a dvd set.

I'm not kidding.

Out of the box solution

[Nidi62]

How about we just stop with all the "war on X"s? When you are constantly on a war footing training takes a backseat and duty patterns change, leading to fatigue. In the Navy's case ships are kept out of port for much longer than they should, meaning many repairs are done underway which leads to a further reduction of training time and off duty time for the sailors. Stop wasting money on massively overbudget projects like the DDX/Zumwalt program (only 3 ships produced for a cost of almost $4 billion per ship) or the LCSs which are under-gunned, have engine issues, and have hulls so poorly made that one got cracked from a champagne bottle at the christening. $12 billion just from the DDX program would have gone a long way towards refitting ships and training current/more crews for said ships. And let's not even get started on the F-35 program.....