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

Posted by msmash on from the ol'-good-way dept.

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.

12 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh. by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

    I mean.. I understand that they might not have the piece of paper, the same way they might not have passed the official driving test to drive a tank, but surely... surely at some point... someone gave them the equivalent skills and/or sent them on the same kinds of training such that it would be a cinch to acquire such certification?

    1. Re:Sigh. by D.McG. · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Being able to fly, lead a target, and shoot down a MiG, has no bearing on knowing the rules of the road, being able to shift gears in a standard, hill start, etc. Different skillsets.

      The OP has a valid point. If someone is training to get certified and is shadowed by someone who is certified, that's one thing. But if the bridge is filled with people that are not certified, that's a huge breakdown in the chain of command. The gov't spends HOW MUCH money on defense, yet we have untrained people on deck looking after a billion dollar boat? That's not what the taxpayers are expecting.

    2. Re:Sigh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because technology is making us lazier and dumber, not more efficient and smarter.
      GPS can be hacked (sidebar: Why the actual FUCK are signals from U.S. GPS SVs not encrypted to prevent hacking?); a magnetic compass, not so much (or at least, not at a distance).
      Are we lowering the bar, in all aspects of our society and not just within the military? Very possibly.

    3. Re:Sigh. by hey! · · Score: 5, Funny

      All I ask for is a tall ship and a satellite constellation to steer her by...

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Sigh. by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please explain why US Navy warhsips have crews who "lack basic seamanship certification".

      I read an article, I think on gcaptain.com, about this not long ago. Basically, it said that they just don't bother training them any more, because of cost-cutting measures in the late 2000s. They used to have some school they'd send them to to learn basic seamanship, but because of Congress's cost-cutting (Congress wants to spend lots of $$$ on weapons systems and shipbuilding, but they don't want to allow the Navy to spend any money on training), they closed the school and replaced it with a self-taught course on a bunch of CD-ROMs that sailors were expected to do on their own, *at sea*, while already way too busy with all their regular shipboard duties.

      Ultimately, I think the blame probably lies with Congress. The military really isn't able to run itself that much and make its own decisions for how to do things and fund things; it's highly micro-managed by Congress.

    5. Re:Sigh. by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It's not just the training, the thing that really struck me is:

      Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels.

      So when the entire world is relying on AIS to avoid collisions, the US navy isn't providing that in the middle of busy shipping lanes? It's a fscking aircraft carrier, how invisible is that going to be when it's going through the Singapore strait? Turn on AIS in busy areas and you won't need to go back to pencil and paper...

    6. Re:Sigh. by Teancum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The fear is that somehow an enemy could use that positioning data to target a U.S. Navy ship and use it in a preemptive attack.

      I agree with you in terms of a navy ship in the middle of a major shipping channel when they aren't in the middle of a war operation though. Sort of akin to a police car that shouldn't have his lights on or doing other thing than simply being an ordinary commuter in ordinary traffic when they are traveling from one point to another.

      A similar situation happens with air traffic, where military jets often don't turn on transponders to indicate position or other normal transponder information if they are on a war footing. Yes, it is dangerous and something they need to deal with as well. On the other hand, the USAF does have times those military jets do turn on transponders if they want to have civilian aviation stay out of the way or if the military jets are trying to play nice and friendly with civilian air traffic.

      Perhaps the last couple of decades of being in a continuous global war is something that is getting out of hand.

  2. Drawback of automation by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, one of the surprising findings was that adding more inspectors could actually make things less safe. Each inspector figured if they skipped inspecting a part, the other inspector(s) would catch it. So they felt it was not that big a deal to be lazy at their job and skip a few of the harder inspections here and there. But when all the inspectors think this way, the chances of a bad part passing "inspection" increased compared to if there was only one inspector.

    In the same way, if you know there's a computer system which tracks your ship's location and the location of all other ships, and automatically sounds an alarm if it detects a collision course, then you're more likely to slack at your job and start reading slashdot or the latest J.K. Rowling book. OTOH if there is no computer system, and you and ONLY YOU are personally responsible for tracking your and that other ship's position and course to make sure you don't collide, then you're going to have 100% of your attention devoted to that task. Double or multiple redundancy works for equipment, but not always for people.

    1. Re:Drawback of automation by bobbied · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However, there ARE ways to enforce accuracy.... Make the bridge crew enter their manual position observations and calculations and then routinely judge the accuracy of the manual log with the automatic position logs. If there are variances, they will need to be explained. If you are not accurate enough with your manual entries, you don't keep your qualification.

      I always wondered why the Navy gave up the celestial navigation qualification requirement. Never made sense to me.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  3. B52 pilots and Cessna 150 pilots by perpenso · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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/...

  4. That got answered previously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    I'm not kidding.

  5. Out of the box solution by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.....

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil