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Seven US Sailors are missing after a US Navy destroyer collided with a 21,000 ton cargo ship 56 miles off the coast of Japan. Login/Join 
Go ahead punk, make my day
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quote:

I can hear this line in my head

“Fuck your boots, captain,”
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The second-half to the Pro Publica investigative piece is now up ...and it's damning. Mad Names are being named and examples are being put forth.

Unfortunately, within Congress, there's no defense stalwarts with juice like a Stennis, Vinson or Nunn that can hold Navy leadership's feet to the fire and start getting answers.

Years of Warnings, then Death and Disaster
quote:
When Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin was elevated to lead the vaunted 7th Fleet in 2015, he expected it to be the pinnacle of his nearly four-decade Navy career. The fleet was the largest and most powerful in the world, and its role as one of America’s great protectors had new urgency. China was expanding into disputed waters. And Kim Jong-un was testing ballistic missiles in North Korea.

Aucoin was bred on such challenges. As a Navy aviator, he’d led the “Black Aces,” a squadron of F-14 Tomcats that in the late 1990s bombed targets in Kosovo.

But what he found with the 7th Fleet alarmed and angered him.

The fleet was short of sailors, and those it had were often poorly trained and worked to exhaustion. Its warships were falling apart, and a bruising, ceaseless pace of operations meant there was little chance to get necessary repairs done. The very top of the Navy was consumed with buying new, more sophisticated ships, even as its sailors struggled to master and hold together those they had. The Pentagon, half a world away, was signing off on requests for ships to carry out more and more missions.

The risks were obvious, and Aucoin repeatedly warned his superiors about them. During video conferences, he detailed his fleet’s pressing needs and the hazards of not addressing them. He compiled data showing that the unrelenting demands on his ships and sailors were unsustainable. He pleaded with his bosses to acknowledge the vulnerability of the 7th Fleet.

Aucoin recalled the response: “Crickets.” If he wasn’t ignored, he was put off — told to calm down and get the job done.

...
 
Posts: 14573 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Festina Lente
Picture of feersum dreadnaught
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So can we just say “FUBO” and the entourage of political Admirals that sucked up to you?

And get on with re-training some warriors?



NRA Life Member - "Fear God and Dreadnaught"
 
Posts: 8295 | Location: in the red zone of the blue state, CT | Registered: October 15, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Info Guru
Picture of BamaJeepster
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quote:
Originally posted by corsair:
The second-half to the Pro Publica investigative piece is now up ...and it's damning. Mad Names are being named and examples are being put forth.


Both of these articles were very well done and informative. Thank you for posting them.

It's even worse than I had thought.



“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
- John Adams
 
Posts: 29408 | Location: In the red hinterlands of Deep Blue VA | Registered: June 29, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie
Picture of Balzé Halzé
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quote:
Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
quote:
Originally posted by corsair:
The second-half to the Pro Publica investigative piece is now up ...and it's damning. Mad Names are being named and examples are being put forth.


Both of these articles were very well done and informative. Thank you for posting them.

It's even worse than I had thought.


Yes, very well written and interesting.


~Alan

Acta Non Verba
NRA Life Member (Patron)
God, Family, Guns, Country

Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan

"Once there was only dark. If you ask me, light is winning." ~Rust Cohle
 
Posts: 30297 | Location: Elv. 7,000 feet, Utah | Registered: October 29, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Needs a bigger boat
Picture of CaptainMike
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quote:
Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Another collision, luckily no deaths.



https://www.navytimes.com/news...he-eastern-seaboard/


Rubbin' is Racin'.
Or in this case, Unreppin'
This shouldn't be news, and wouldn't if it weren't for the recent spate of shite our PACFLT brethren have gotten into.



MOO means NO! Be the comet!
 
Posts: 2769 | Location: The Tidewater. VCOA. | Registered: June 24, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:
So can we just say “FUBO” and the entourage of political Admirals that sucked up to you?

And get on with re-training some warriors?


Couple of issues:
1) Most FOGO's and senior enlisted are post-Cold War military, meaning they've never worked with the threat of actual combat looming over them and all the details and urgency necessary. Warfighters many are not.
2) Cultural: political appointees come and go but, leadership within the Navy has been corrupted with the corporate efficiency mindset, dispersed responsibility, and career ladder-climbing; no room for knuckle-dragging warriors. How many documents were produced showing evidence of training shortages and equipment failures yet, it was all minimized. Adm Swift choose to fire his subordinate rather than take responsibility for the issues in his AO. Breakneck Optempo was the norm and everything became a priority, no decision maker said, 'stop'. Did the brass actually tell their civilian/political leaders how bad things have deteriorated or, they said, 'no problem, we can do that.' Fully knowing that the worker bee's under them were burning the candle at both-ends?
3) NAVPER under-manned the largest deployed fleet, half the ships didn't have a senior quartermaster, WTF?! Once again, did senior leadership simply sweep this under the rug and not tell political leaders and policy makers?
 
Posts: 14573 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Semper Fi - 1775
Picture of Ronin1069
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This is so frustrating to read, yet the author is a fantastic writer. The story reads almost like a work of fiction, sadly that is not the case.

Gave me a much better understanding of what happened.

These paragraphs baffles me:

The Fitzgerald’s captain selected an untested team to steer the ship at night. He ordered the crew to speed through shipping lanes filled with cargo ships and fishing vessels to free up time to train his sailors the next day. At the time of the collision, he was asleep in his cabin.

The 26-year-old officer of the deck, who was in charge of the destroyer at the time of the crash, had navigated the route only once before in daylight. In a panic, she ordered the Fitzgerald to turn directly into the path of the Crystal.


This paragraph educated me:

The speed left Coppock nervous. Steering a massive warship through the ocean at night is an exercise in managed chaos. Imagine driving down a four-lane highway without guardrails, traffic stripes or dividers. It is pitch dark. Other vehicles, ranging in size from mopeds to tractor-trailers, zip around you. None of them have brakes that can stop quickly.


And this one terrified me.

Felderman was going to be submerged in seconds. He took a breath and went under. A battle lantern lit the quarters underwater, but the light was poor, and there was no clear path to escape. And now he was desperate for air.

He thrust himself upward. He burst out into a small pocket of air between two pipes. He found only inches of space between the water level and the top of the compartment.

He smashed his head into the opening so hard that he bruised his face, split his skin and began bleeding.

“I was raving like a wild animal for air, pushing my face as high as I could,” he remembered.

He sucked in what air he could and went under again.



Lt. j.g. Stephany Breau (the ship’s damage control assistant) gave me hope. It is difficult to believe the ship would not have gone under without her actions.

She picked up a microphone for the shipwide intercom: “I assume all duties and responsibilities for damage control onboard USS Fitzgerald,” she announced. She sounded the alarm for general quarters, directing sailors to pre-assigned stations designated for emergencies.

She did algebra, scribbling calculations on the back of a notebook. She had to figure out the weight of water in the ship in case she needed to counterflood the Fitzgerald, a technique to deliberately flood other ship compartments to counterbalance areas already filled with water.

One stubborn area remained: Water continued to flood into a lower deck compartment carrying equipment for the Tomahawk missile system. None of the pumps were powerful enough to carry the water out.

Breau’s last trick was a bucket brigade. For 10 hours, about two dozen sailors at a time snaked in a long, tight line from below ship up three ladder wells to the main deck. Sailors rotated in and out, relieving comrades fatigued by the nonstop passing of 10-pound buckets of water.




And this one caused me to roll my eyes....
The Navy explicitly ruled out problems with any of the ship’s radars.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ronin1069,


___________________________
All it takes...is all you got.
____________________________
For those who have fought for it, Freedom has a flavor the protected will never know

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
 
Posts: 12305 | Location: Belly of the Beast | Registered: January 02, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Too old to run,
too mean to quit!
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https://rense.com/general96/listof.html

The link shows how many senior officers of general/admiral rank were fired by obummer.

And there are apparently more that were not listed. Replaced those fired with those who were politically correct.

Since obummer was commander in chief, the fault lies directly at his feet!

He set out to destroy our military, and he did a pretty thorough job of it.

How many competent field grade officers were also affected by obummer's actions? Probably never know, but I figure there were a lot who had been in service long enough to retire, and did so. Not to mention the competent ones who got shitty performance evaluations for political reasons, and retired, or simply quit.


Elk

There has never been an occasion where a people gave up their weapons in the interest of peace that didn't end in their massacre. (Louis L'Amour)

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. "
-Thomas Jefferson

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." Alexis de Tocqueville

FBHO!!!



The Idaho Elk Hunter
 
Posts: 25640 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 16, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
The link shows how many senior officers of general/admiral rank were fired by obummer.

And there are apparently more that were not listed. Replaced those fired with those who were politically correct.


A president shuffles and appoints senior leaders (3/4-star level), but does NOT micro-manage ship captains. As much as I detest skippy the wonder turtle, I can't blame him for this mess. The preponderance of information leads me to the conclusion that (once again) the Navy doesn't have its crap together and this is the result of poor MILITARY leadership.

Also, I've been seeing threads about "zippy firing military leaders" where MOST of them were guilty of theft, gross sexual misconduct (including rape and assault), and other personal failings. You cannot tell me that an officer that takes bribes from contractors or who rapes a subordinate was "fired and replaced by obama" for political reasons.



I think the biggest problem is the whole "do more with less" mantra the military had been working under for the past 20 years. I came into the USAF right before the first Gulf War and retired in 2014, and I saw a LOT of this. People and positions get reduced in numbers, yet the operations tempo (OPTEMPO) increases. Nobody wants to tell their boss "We cannot do this mission;" the ones that try are soon replaced for not having a 'can-do attitude.' Therefore, we get results like this, with over-worked and under-trained crews working with deficient equipment (maintenance and training is expensive and the resulting down-time takes the few available ships and crews out of service).

I blame this on senior level Navy leaders for not giving their people the equipment and training they need.



Fear God and Dread Nought
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Jacky Fisher
 
Posts: 21821 | Location: Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle Earth | Registered: September 27, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Too old to run,
too mean to quit!
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Leadership starts at the TOP! Leadership firing 100s of flag level officers to replace them with "YES" men is a damned poor example of leadership!

Who, other than obummer, was responsible for those 100s flag officers getting thrown out?


Elk

There has never been an occasion where a people gave up their weapons in the interest of peace that didn't end in their massacre. (Louis L'Amour)

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. "
-Thomas Jefferson

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." Alexis de Tocqueville

FBHO!!!



The Idaho Elk Hunter
 
Posts: 25640 | Location: Virginia | Registered: December 16, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Needs a bigger boat
Picture of CaptainMike
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There is plenty of fail to go around for everyone in that story.
The "lookout" never went to the STBD side?

CIC didn't talk to the bridge for 40 minutes, while crossing a busy traffic separation scheme at 20 knots?
It's implied that OPS was completely useless, the worst sort of AA hire, as was the watch TAO.
A helmsman who had NEVER steered the ship before?

I have a retired ETCS who works for me who worked on both the SPS 67 and 73 on Fitz as a contractor in early 2017. He says CIC on that ship was "Sloppy as a soup sandwich."

A bunch of kids who didn't know what they were doing (but thought they did). Really an accident waiting to happen.



MOO means NO! Be the comet!
 
Posts: 2769 | Location: The Tidewater. VCOA. | Registered: June 24, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Official Space Nerd
Picture of Hound Dog
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quote:
Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
Leadership starts at the TOP! Leadership firing 100s of flag level officers to replace them with "YES" men is a damned poor example of leadership!

Who, other than obummer, was responsible for those 100s flag officers getting thrown out?


I've seen MANY threads here about flag officers and Colonels/Captains getting canned, where people claimed zippy was behind it all. I have seen VERY little evidence that supports the claim that they were fired for political reasons. Many of them got fired for sleeping around, committing fraud, and other CRIMINAL activities.

Read the post above this one, and tell me why this 'soup sandwich'wasn't the ship captain's responsibility.

Of course, it does go higher with issues of lack of maintenance and too many jobs with too few people, but a captain is responsible for his ship. This captain FAILED his ship and his crew.



Fear God and Dread Nought
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Jacky Fisher
 
Posts: 21821 | Location: Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle Earth | Registered: September 27, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Elk Hunter:
Leadership starts at the TOP! Leadership firing 100s of flag level officers to replace them with "YES" men is a damned poor example of leadership!

Who, other than obummer, was responsible for those 100s flag officers getting thrown out?

You can start with SECNAV Ray Mabus, longest serving SECNAV and served under 4 SECDEF. More concerned with putting new hulls in the water and naming them after SJW's then managing the fleet that currently existed.

You can also point the finger at Rumsfeld for being a 'transformationalist ideologue' demanding 'leaps and bound changes' while encouraging allowing idiotic ideas like the LCS to come to fruition.

Prior CNO's Vern Clark, Michael Mullen, Gary Roughhead and John Greenert for nodding their heads dutifully and allowing a careerist attitudes to permeate while ignoring core competencies like how to drive a ship, and fix it while underway.

There's a lot of blame to go around, and it starts where decisions are prioritized and the instructions to implement them happen.
 
Posts: 14573 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The Navy should be grounded, not allowed to take ships to sea, until they learn how to responsibly use ships. I know it sounds drastic and is impractical, but if this was anyone other than the military, wouldn't that be what would happen?


I don't even know where the Navy could begin to unteach a decade or two of improper training and bad habits out of crew, and how long it would take to properly train crew so they're sufficient. It really is a task that is going to take years to do. SO, what happens in the meantime?
 
Posts: 21335 | Registered: June 12, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
in the end karma
always catches up
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I feel for the Capt of the ship, he made mistakes and costs the lives of some of his sailors and almost his own. It is really easy to get caught up in the way things are and the expectation that you have to make mission. The problem starts at the top with presidents and works its way down to the helmsman. Every level had some failure, if Aucoin was serious about the 7th Fleets issues he would have resigned and went public instead of sending them out. It doesn't surprise me that forces based out of Japan suck. I did 4 unit deployments to Okinawa and the equipment sucked, poorly maintained, old and at the ends of the supply chain. Permanent personal were another issue. We have a Navy with more Admirals than ships. Let that sink in for a minute.


" The people shall have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State" Art 1 Sec 32 Indiana State Constitution

YAT-YAS
 
Posts: 3685 | Location: Northwest, In | Registered: December 03, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie
Picture of Balzé Halzé
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quote:
Originally posted by jimmy123x:

I don't even know where the Navy could begin to unteach a decade or two of improper training and bad habits out of crew, and how long it would take to properly train crew so they're sufficient. It really is a task that is going to take years to do. SO, what happens in the meantime?


In the meantime they head out to sea. They don't have a choice.

As Captain Ron said, if anything is going to happen, it's going to happen out there.


~Alan

Acta Non Verba
NRA Life Member (Patron)
God, Family, Guns, Country

Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan

"Once there was only dark. If you ask me, light is winning." ~Rust Cohle
 
Posts: 30297 | Location: Elv. 7,000 feet, Utah | Registered: October 29, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Interesting time lapse video of the Norwegian frigate KNM Helge Instad getting raised, moved, then put onto a barge. Quite an operation.

 
Posts: 14573 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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USS Fitzgerald CO, Junior Officer Receive Formal Censure Ahead of Dismissal of Negligence Charges

https://news.usni.org/2019/04/...f-negligence-charges
 
Posts: 21335 | Registered: June 12, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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On Wednesday, the Navy said it was abandoning all remaining criminal charges against sailors involved in fatal accidents in the Pacific. Here’s how the actions of the chief of naval operations helped doom the cases.

Navy Commander tainted evidence:
https://www.propublica.org/art...ainted-investigation
 
Posts: 21335 | Registered: June 12, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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