Remains have been found, presumably DNA tests needed to confirm, unless ID was present. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/uss-john-s-mccain-collision/index.html Some reports that the ship suffered a steering system malfunction: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wor...steering-malfunction-report-article-1.3431483 Though Fox New's military analyst thinks it's because you can't teach personnel that rape of female co-workers is bad AND teach them basic navigation. And blames Obama for that cause yeah they're still mad a black guy was in charge for 8 years. Yep, that guy in Avengers that Nick Fury had to tell how to navigate by the sun? Rapist. Probably fucks dogs too. And they ragged on the guy playing Galaga... http://crooksandliars.com/2017/08/fox-news-ralph-peter-obama-turned-military
Not exactly unexpected news. Navy to relieve admiral in charge of Japan-based fleet in response to deadly disasters at sea
Less than a month ahead of his already expected and planned for retirement. I figure either the CNO, PACFLT, or BUPERS had an old axe to grind and took the shot.
I must admit, this was an actual surprise to me. I think you might just have hit upon something, here.
I've got a coworker who was on a DD in the 1980s (USS Preble, DD-46). He said he's starting to wonder if these incidents are intentional rammings. Nobody should be able to get close enough to a USN vessel for this to happen accidentally this often.
Given the insane operation tempo, it's just as likely that the crew is just overworked and tired. Especially in the case of the Fitzgerald, who has always been the Seventh Fleet Savior, filling in for all the shitty ass brokedick commands.
Do you mean where in science fiction "sensors" can seemingly detect anything, anywhere, anytime? Unless a cloaking device is being used. Though if you go to the Atomic Rockets website you will see how "cloaking" is probably utterly impossible for spacecraft.
Even if it's intentional it still doesn't explain how the Navy ships are not seeing a ship as big as a city block coming at them. I've read from people claiming to have been in the the Navy in the last ten years has let go of so many experienced sailors in force reductions that now a lot of it's ships are manned by less experienced crews. Don't know how true that is since I'm not in the Navy.
They're not entirely wrong. There was a huge force reduction around the time I joined that's only just now slowed down. The whole system was a complete mess that maybe kicked out one sailor who absolutely did not need to be in. But a lot of the time, it seemed fairly random. An E-7 who had made rank in under six years was booted out just because there were no open billets the month he was up for review.
Congress is equally to blame though. Wasn't it Congress that came up with the stupid idea of "sequestration". Sequestration was devastating to the U.S. military. I read accounts of entire fighter squadrons that couldn't afford the fuel to fly or train with the crews reduced to towing F-15s from one spot to the another each week so the tires wouldn't go flat.
Welp, this ain't good news if stuff does kick off with NK... http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/06/politics/concerns-safety-us-navy-pacific-fleet/index.html
If the op tempo is so high it is causing accidents then they need to increase the size of the fleet so they can slow op tempo down.
I read in the most recent issue of The Economist that all major surface ships in the U.S. Pacific fleet have been on a schedule of "33% of their time is for maintenance" and "67% is deployment". Which means absolutely zero designated time for training. That all the training ship crews are able to conduct is while in the maintenance cycle or en route to deployment areas.
Alternatively, they could also stop taking 7th Fleet to play World Police and ask the deployed ships out of San Diego and WA to help our if they happen to be in the area. I can tell you for a fact that there was a huge imbalance in the workloads between the Fitzgerald and even the work we had to do to get Somerset commissioned (which is far more than a typical ship but at least we were in no danger of being recalled two weeks before Christmas.) Fitzgerald in particular was always the first ones put to every goddamn thing because we had the highest scores and was as close to the book as any ship in the whole of the Navy got....7th fleet or otherwise. But yeah, we were all stressed out and exhausted. Thank God we didn't have a horrid Triad of Leadership on top of that. Not quite. Even 7th fleet, which is the busiest fleet, aims for a 50/50 schedule, even if the ships don't always get that. More often than not a ship spends six to ten months deployed, the crew gets a month or so of downtime before the post-deployment maintainance period, followed by and/or concurrent with training for things like damage control and other systems, then post-deployment training and final checks before they go out to see. Usually, there's about a year to eighteen months between deployments.
Easier said than done when it takes at least two years to build a ship for an existing class with known variables. This has been a long time coming. Our surface forces have been on the decline since we ramped up the decommissioning of Cold War fleet assets without bothering to look more than one generation of upgrades into the future. The Zumwalt class DDG's don't even have ammunition for their guns. The idea of turning the troubled LCS program into an FFG program was rightfully stillborn so now the USN is looking at "off the shelf" solutions from other countries.
Two more admirals have gotten the boot. http://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-relieves-top-officers-deadly-ship-collisions/story?id=49926785
And again. US warship collides with Japanese tug boat, latest mishap for the Navy's 7th Fleet Fortunately no injuries this time.
Lots of shipping out there at any one time. And almost all of it actually transits through pretty constricted choke points.
Idiot. Tugboats--at least the ones that pull Navy ships in--dont go out that far to be in shipping lanes. When they attach to a ship, you're usually able to see the pier at that point.