
Red Over Red, the Failure of U.S. Navy Leadership - protomyth
http://gcaptain.com/editorial-red-red-us-naval-leadership-not-command/
======
michaelbuckbee
There's a human factor here that I think cuts close to some startup practices:
sleep deprivation.

The watch schedules and setup for sailors is just ridiculous -

[https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain...](https://np.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/6uz5hj/uss_john_mccain_collides_with_merchant_ship/dlx2esb/?context=3)

You wouldn't let a civilian heavy equipment operator or truck driver work
under that level of sleep deprivation.

~~~
mgkimsal
don't we (for some reason) seem to demand similar schedules from medical
residents, people who are operating with our very lives (let alone heavy
machinery or trucks)?

~~~
roywiggins
There's some evidence that shorter shifts cause errors too, because you have
to hand patients off between doctors more often, and you lose information. I
don't know what the state of the science is on this but it's one issue (of
many).

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140520123428.htm)

~~~
GVIrish
Seems to me like the solution is to work on improving handoffs rather than
trading the risk of handoffs for the risk introduced by sleep deprivation.

From the medical professionals I know, handoff problems are partly because of
missing/difficult to find/ignored information in charts and in healthcare IT
systems. Improving on that front might be a way to allow a switch to more
sensible schedules that don't invite bleary-eyed mistakes from
doctors/residents.

~~~
colechristensen
Give everyone paper, pens, handwriting lessons, and AI powered OCR. Healthcare
IT systems are a mess, and taking writing away from people makes them worse at
their jobs.

Every medical professional I've ever managed to get talking about healthcare
IT gave me the impression that it gets in the way more than helps.

The ... lets call it ergonomics of record keeping are vitally important in
medicine and plenty of other disciplines. Computers have been used as a way to
enforce and expand bureaucratic rules, not as a tool to make record keeping
more expressive and powerful.

~~~
ribs
Doctors' handwriting is notoriously bad, even archetypally bad. It's its own
genre of humor.

------
dmix
Well, from a completely cynical perspective I'm curious if this is what it
takes to get government agencies with an operating policy completely
disconnected from reality to start functioning properly.

Similar to how the competition between the CIA/FBI and the two-decade-too-late
lack of connection between information systems prevented them from being able
to detect 9/11 despite having multiple (disconnected) early indicators.

I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know the American Navy (and
Airforce) are completely disconnected from the reality of modern warfare by
still being obsessed with billion dollar aircraft carriers and expensive
'stealth' jets from a bygone era (3-4 decades ago) which would be the lowest
hanging fruit in any modern war. Basically billion dollar machines that will
be predictably destroyed within the early hours of any combat by a barrage of
low cost missiles and highly mobile small attack boats by today's well known
adversaries.

Although those are the disconnects from the highly complex real-world
situations their stated mandates would put them in...whereas crashing into a
commercial boats in high-traffic sea lanes seems like something that no
sophisticated Navy should suffering from twice in a few months...let alone
having multiple fatalities from each. So I'm not sure how to react to this
honestly.

Other than having zero surprise that it's happening to one of the bigger
modern governments where disfunction is the status quo and cronyism outranks
tangible progress.

[1] [https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-
building-a...](https://pando.com/2014/05/26/the-war-nerd-iran-is-building-a-
fake-aircraft-carrier-how-can-you-tell/)

~~~
forapurpose
> I've read enough War Nerd blog posts [1] to know ...

The War Nerd is stimulating and entertaining, but the author, John Dolan, is a
sometime English professor with no military expertise or experience. Per
Wikipedia, his "PhD thesis on the literary works of the Marquis de Sade."
Apparently, he did geek out on military hardware books when he was young, so
there's that.

On the other hand, as I said, it's a fun, stimulating read. If you like Dolan,
I recommend his old publication (where the War Nerd originally appeared,
AFAIK), The Exile, if you can find it. I've never read anything like it.

~~~
warcher
That was quite the ad hominem right there.

~~~
mr_overalls
There are different levels of ad hominem. Recognizing that a claimant lacks
experience or education to make a highly technical/scientific claim is a
useful first filter in considering whether to devote the time to evaluate an
argument.

For example, if Richard Feynman had published a paper claiming to have
invented a prototype anti-gravity machine, his claim would have been taken
much more seriously than if an uneducated TV repairman from eastern Omaha had
claimed the same thing. Perhaps that's an ad hominem against the repairman,
but in the real world, it's also a useful heuristic. Our time and attention
are constrained quantities - doubly so in the age of the Internet where anyone
can claim anything.

~~~
warcher
I would argue that the readership of that blog would merit at least a
discussion of his argument, which you will not even attempt. Like it or not,
people know who he is and they read what he writes. If he's wrong, it's doubly
important that you address his point of view, because a lot of people are
reading it. Going ad hominem just gives credence to his unspoken assertion
that the US military is an old-boys club clinging to their preconceived
notions in the absence of an actual war to fight.

I would further argue that someone being wholly ignorant whereof they speak
would make it very easy to dismantle their position. I've seen it happen
pretty often on the internet.

~~~
forapurpose
Here are my thoughts:

I think the burden is on the author - any author - to establish that their
arguments are worth responding to, rather than on me to prove that they are
not. There are far too many authors and arguments to give them all credence by
default. Readership is not a good signal - plenty of absolute nonsense has far
more readership than the War Nerd.

> you will not even attempt

Even if Dolan's arguments are worth addressing, it's not my job to personally
address every argument. I think I added something valuable to the discussion;
other people can contribute too.

> Going ad hominem just gives credence to his unspoken assertion that the US
> military is an old-boys club clinging to their preconceived notions

That assumes that I'm representing that old boys' club, and I'm certainly not
a member. They wouldn't let me into the foyer unless I was delivering dinner,
nor do I desire to join. I could get into Dolan's club, however, if I wanted
to.

> in the absence of an actual war to fight

The U.S. military is fighting wars and has been continuously for almost 16
years, the longest such period in the nation's history, I think. The wars have
transformed their approach so much that there is a major concern that all they
know how to do is fight counter-insurgencies and not high-end near-peers
(e.g., China and Russia). As they shift back to the latter, everything is
being re-examined in light of AI and the wide availability of precision
munitions (e.g., rockets accurate enough to reliably hit a ship) along with
the accompanying sensor networks, which used to be a U.S. monopoly.

------
beambot
> And how, in 2017, when any civilian can purchase a handheld Iridium
> satellite phone for less than the price of the latest iPhone and a portable
> EPIRB for much less, could the communications system of a US Naval warship
> be so damaged and the ship’s leadership so shaken, that it takes the ship a
> full thirty minutes to transmit a Mayday (via Cell Phone no less)?

Appalling.

~~~
colechristensen
Now that's a pretty simple question. The Navy especially is filled with little
empires, and acquiring anything is a chance for each prince to put their mark
on the world. Military (and government) acquisitions are an appalling mess,
those that win bids are the ones that are experts at navigating the process to
win bids, and not necessarily those with engineering prowess.

------
nl
_The Navy will relieve the admiral in charge of the service’s 7th Fleet based
in Japan in response to four embarrassing accidents this year, two of which
killed sailors at sea, two U.S. officials said._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/22/in-
the-navy-a-premier-surface-fleet-faces-new-scrutiny-after-deadly-disasters-at-
sea/?tid=pm_pop)

------
rurounijones
“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day
one becomes dogma forever after.” Colonel John Boyd, USAF

 _Cough_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)
_Cough_

~~~
jessaustin
...and we wonder why we haven't won a war, or even honorably withdrawn from
one, since WWII.

(Wars in the Caribbean don't count. Talking about Grenada would sort of prove
my point...)

~~~
nl
Gulf War 1 was pretty successful.

~~~
jessaustin
It wasn't a win for the same reason Korea wasn't. The troops still haven't
come home, because if they did everything they "accomplished" would collapse
immediately.

~~~
nl
Gulf War 1 (1991) involved removing Iraq from Kuwait.

It was entirely successful, and the troops withdrew.

It involved leaving Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq until the entirely
different and disastrous Gulf War 2.

~~~
jessaustin
USA soldiers have continuously occupied Kuwait, Saudi, and Iraq since that
time. Famously, their ongoing presence in Saudi was cited as a "justification"
for 9/11, a decade later. Good job guys!

------
chiph
I'd hate to have been the helmsman on the Fitzgerald and the McCain, knowing a
collision was imminent. But unable to steer away because of a lack of orders
to do so.

(If they had, they would have been brought up on charges, in which their
saving the vessel would have been a consideration, but not an excuse for their
action)

~~~
protomyth
I thought there was always an Officer of the Deck empowered to make decisions
in these situations?

I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a billion dollar
warship having much less intrinsic strength than a Korean built containership
that was delivered for a fraction of the cost?” and the other construction
questions asked in the article.

~~~
JohnBooty

       I would also like to know the answer to “a the hull of a
       billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength
       than a Korean built containership that was delivered for a 
       fraction of the cost?” and the other construction questions 
       asked in the article.
    

This question is what made me doubt the rest of the article, which is
ostensibly written by somebody with some level of naval expertise. I have no
naval expertise, and the rest of the article seemed quite logical, but it
seems strange to me to insist that this collision shouldn't have seriously
damaged the _Fitzgerald._

1\. The _Arleigh Burke_ class destroyers aren't big ships; the cargo ship was
over 3x the size. 9,000 tons for the USS Fitzgerald compared to 30,000 tons
for the cargo ship:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/pa...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/path-
ship-hit-uss-fitzgerald.html?mcubz=1)

2\. I am not sure that any ship ever designed by humankind has been built to
withstand a 20-knot broadside collision with a vessel of its own size without
taking any damage, much less one with three times as much mass. As I said
above I'm no naval expert; please take me to school if I'm spectacularly wrong
here.

3\. While it would certainly be possible to build such a ship, the weight of
the ship would need to be increased by an incredible amount. It would be a
very slow ship. Or it could be fitted with a much more powerful propulsion
system, at a tremendous cost - more weight, more fuel consumption, more $$$.

3a. Modern (the last 100+ years or so) ship collision survivability design
principles basically revolve around bulkheads. It's impractical to make the
entire hull thick enough to survive any conceivable disaster (because the boat
still needs to float - you can't just add ridiculous amounts of armor
everywhere) so the general principle here is to contain hull breaches, not to
make sure that no hull breach ever occurs.

4\. Generally, modern naval battles are not fought by ships ramming each
other.

5\. So we can understand why the Navy didn't optimize for that possibility,
and at some point decided on a "please try not to let other ships ram you
broadside" doctrine. Which made a tremendous amount of sense for a very long
time, until our ships' crews decided to start tossing themselves about into
the paths of oncoming vessels.

6\. Seriously though: building ships to withstand this kind of thing without a
scratch is crazy for basically the same reasons why building planes to
withstand midair collisions with bigger planes (or, really, anything bigger
than a seagull) is crazy.

All things considered, _hats off_ to the designers of the _Arleigh Burke_
class and the _Fitzgerald_ 's and _John McCain 's_ damage control crews.
Considering the amounts of force involved here and differences in mass it's
actually quite admirable that the god damn ships didn't snap in half or sink
instantly.

~~~
valuearb
Modern naval battles won't be fought by ships ramming each other, they will be
fought by sending supersonic missiles carrying large explosive chargers. Do
these incidents give you any confidence that a modern US Destroyer could
withstand even one hit?

~~~
jandrewrogers
Which is precisely the point. The ship is equipped with defense in depth
against barrages of supersonic missiles. Defense against large ships ramming
them, not so much.

Most modern defenses are active intercept. More and more weapons are such that
practical armor doesn't buy you much protection.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The ship is equipped with defense in depth against barrages of supersonic
> missiles. Defense against large ships ramming them, not so much.

Its got defense against that, too. Though the first stage of that defense is
detection by sensors ranging from the Mk I eyeball to fancy radar, etc.

------
Animats
I read that report. It's all about post-collision damage control efforts.
There's nothing about the events leading up to the collision. The timeline
starts at the collision. Presumably there's a more useful report internal to
the Navy.

------
yread
After listening to [http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-
porter/](http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/) after the
Fitz collision I was surprised we don't see more collisions. When I sail with
my mates the cockpit is more disciplined than their bridge.

------
classicsnoot
I know it is a stretch, but there is enough unexplainable error that is not
uncommon in past events to indicate the possibility of a bit more going on
behind the scenes. words are worth their weight in gold, and double from the
mouth of a non-expert. Regardless, if some malicious software had found its
way into the navigation system causing an accident like this, i would do my
best (were it my responsibility) to hush up the whole thing, up to and
including unfair firings and forced resignations. I know this feels wrong, but
i am reminded of the brave and morally ambiguous members of Ultra during WWII.
Time and again, they did not act on good intel that would have saved lives
because keeping the enemy in the dark was the most important objective.

Nonetheless, this is little more than daydreaming. The US Navy is in a very
hard place to be. The US Navy is about the size of every navy in the world
combined. It is the second largest air force in the world. It operates
concurrently in every maritime zone on the planet. It is supposed to be able
to provide humanitarian relief as well as the fire of god at a moments notice
to almost any location. Accidents happen regardless of training. I think the
author is dead on in terms of institutionalizing bad habits, but at the same
time we do not know the whole story.

------
csense
How is it that the world's most advanced technological nation in 2017 can't
keep its navy ships from running into each other?

~~~
arca_vorago
I'll give you a hint. Its the technology. More specifically, over reliance on
it. I'm speculating, but my cyberwarfare spider sense is tingly all over.
Perhaps some entity is testing new GPS spoofing, hijacking, or other similar
things?

What confuses me the most is someone with NVGs should a seen the thing and
raised hell. Either they didn't, or did and didn't get a response in time. The
human factor of having sailors should always be part of the failsafes to
prevent exactly this kind of complacence, if that's what it is.

For what its worth, I am speaking outside of my expertise, being from the
men's department of the Navy.

~~~
Johnny555
No ship captain would rely solely on GPS charting displays to avoid a
collision, because they know that not all ships report positioning data (Navy
ships, for example rarely report AIS data because they don't want to be easily
tracked)

So it's not GPS spoofing that caused this collision. If the ship ran aground,
sure, I could believe they followed their GPS onto the ground.

~~~
arca_vorago
Then how has this happened so many times in the recent past? Its easy to say
"a captain wouldn't do X", but I'm having a hard time understanding how this
happened without such a level of complacence. Obviously there should be
multiple mechanisms, but none of them worked. Why? Also I said GPS or similar.
Obviously they shouldn't be relying on AIS data from other ships alone, why
did radar not pick it up? Why did the bridge not see it with flir/nv?
Something really isn't making sense here.

------
killjoywashere
> How then does half of the complex ship loose power completely?

What? You don't think a massive midships collision would disrupt of power
distribution? I'm amazed the ship had power at all. If you want an example of
brittle power distribution look at the 2011 outage of all San Diego county:
one maintenance worker at the Arizona border did that. Oh, by the way, during
that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought up their reactors and
powered critical infrastructure in the city.

> did the damage control efforts result in a reduced situational awareness
> after the collision?

Yes. Definitely. Being that it was dark out didn't help. Fog of war.

> What design and construction tradeoffs were made that resulted in a the hull
> of a billion dollar warship having much less intrinsic strength than a
> Korean built containership

None. If you drive a semi into the side of an F-1 race car, that race car is
going to be hella worse for the wear. Anyone who has ever played American
football understands the actor with more kinetic energy is going to come out
on top in a collision.

Konrad's shriller lines, as above, make it difficult for me to focus on the
rest of the topic. He raises some good points.

Unfortunately, he also lambasts Richardson for looking into "operational
tempo, trends in personnel, material, maintenance and equipment." Well,
actually, those were exactly the things I would think should be looked into.

Konrad has some decent points, but tread lightly while reading. Unless you
know something about ships, it'll be hard to pick out what makes sense.

~~~
Johnny555
_Oh, by the way, during that event, it was Navy carriers in port that brought
up their reactors and powered critical infrastructure in the city._

That's not exactly what happened.

I was skeptical that a Naval ship's generator could be quickly and safely
connected to the power grid during a short term (~12 hour) power outage, so I
looked it up:

[http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/in...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/09/california.power.outages/index.html)

 _Officials also thanked the U.S. Navy for powering up generators aboard its
many ships in port, freeing up the utility to restore power sooner to other
customers._

So it sounds like the Naval ships switched from shore power to their own
onboard generators, which meant that the utility didn't need to restore power
to them, and that as the restored power, the considerable electrical load from
large vessels didn't need to be restored immediately.

I'd be surprised if a modern carrier even had a feasible way to get the power
from the main generator off-board and into a common electrical grid.

~~~
fractallyte
But it does sound like an _awesome_ feature to implement! There could be all
kinds of utility in this, even in military scenarios.

~~~
rurounijones
Someone had a website (Now dead) dedicated to something like this.

Basically refit the USS Enterprise as a floating, mobile, disaster relief
platform. Plenty of storage for food and supplies and disaster relief workers,
desalniation for water and a nuclear reactor to supply power all wrapped into
one 33 knot package.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20170621182811/http://sendtheente...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170621182811/http://sendtheenterprise.org/)

Is a fascinating idea

