
Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea - sus_007
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/navy-orders-safety-operational-standards.html
======
bradleyjg
[https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-
swo...](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-
culture-in-crisis/)

"For nearly 30 years, all new surface warfare officers spent their first six
months in uniform at the Surface Warfare Officer’s School in Newport, Rhode
Island, learning the theory behind driving ships and leading sailors as
division officers.

But that changed in 2003. The Navy decided to eliminate the “SWOS Basic”
school and simply send surface fleet officers out to sea to learn on the job.
The Navy did that mainly to save money, and the fleet has suffered severely
for it, said retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold.

“The Navy has cut training as a budgetary device and they have done it at the
expense of our ability to operate safely at sea,” said Lippold, who commanded
the destroyer Cole in 2000 when it was attacked by terrorists in Yemen.

After 2003, each young officer was issued a set of 21 CD-ROMs for computer-
based training — jokingly called “SWOS in a Box” — to take with them to sea
and learn. Young officers were required to complete this instructor-less
course in between earning their shipboard qualifications, management of their
divisions and collateral duties.

...

In recent years, there’s been a push to re-energize SWO training. And on
paper, they’ve got a course for every level of SWO — all the way up to the
commanding officer level.

Young SWOs now get about nine weeks in fleet concentration area classrooms.
Generally, these new officers report to their ship first and then get a seat
in school within the first couple of months on board.

But, Parin said, “only a couple of days are dedicated to navigation and
mariner skills. The rest is damage control and other material division
officer-specific training.”

Another eight weeks of school comes between an officer’s first and second
division officer tours. They are taught more advanced skills, but still, the
professional mariner instruction isn’t what it should be, Hoffman said.

That’s still just a fraction of the original training."

~~~
mmanfrin
Skipping on training to save money -- with a budget the size of nearly half
the world's military expenditure.

~~~
jdietrich
US military expenditure is a stealth job creation program. It's politically
untenable for any American government to announce a $1.5 trillion dollar
scheme to create 100,000 skilled manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, unless
that scheme produces a fighter aircraft. It's a woefully inefficient job
creation scheme, but that inefficiency means that a lot of different
stakeholders can get a slice of the pie.

Everyone would be better off if that money was spent on clean energy or
healthcare, but the American electorate are far more willing to sign a blank
check for defence.

~~~
LeifCarrotson

        1 500 000 000 000
        ----------------- = 15 000 000
                  100 000
    

That would, in theory, result in 8-figure jobs for every serviceman. Is that
right? Where is the excess going?

~~~
jdietrich
I was obliquely referring to the F-35 program, which is forecast to cost
~$1.5tn and is estimated to have created ~100,000 jobs within the services and
via contractors, subcontractors and suppliers. The F-35 is a dreadful aircraft
that is grounded indefinitely because it keeps trying to suffocate pilots, but
it has kept a lot of factories busy and made a lot of senators happy. Lockheed
Martin proudly trumpet the fact that there are suppliers for the F-35 project
in 46 states - that's a lot of pork to go around.

The US defence budget is lousy with pork-barrel projects. The Army Chief of
Staff has repeatedly asked Congress to stop buying new Abrams tanks, but the
tanks keep rolling off the production line nonetheless. The services might be
facing deep sequestration cuts, but there's been no let-up in the procurement
of expensive and unnecessary hardware.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/congress-approves-useless-
mil...](http://www.businessinsider.com/congress-approves-useless-military-
spending-2013-5?IR=T) [http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-
tells...](http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-
congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The Army Chief of Staff has repeatedly asked Congress to stop buying new
> Abrams tanks, but the tanks keep rolling off the production line
> nonetheless._

Wow. One has to wonder when some of those tanks will eventually reach regular
law enforcement, like lots of other military hardware tends to.

------
yardie
As a transoceanic sailor I'm still shocked by how little our Navy knows about
seamanship. Complete disregard for colregs, disregard for other vessels in
confined spaces, and just general lack of knowledge on navigation. From
talking with other sailors our Navy is like the elephant in a china shop. An
angry, armed elephant deathly afraid of little mice.

USCG on the other hand are pretty great. Ocean rescue gives way to drug
enforcement so I know not everyone has a good experience with them. My few
interactions with the Coast guard have been courteous and uneventful.

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
The difference there is the level of detail in annual or semi-annual colregs
certification exams; In the navy you have a multiple guess exam. I have been
told, in the coast guard you answer the question and then write the full rule
or applicable paragraph of the rule longhand.

------
spyspy
> More sleep and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors

That's the far more important solution.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
The problem is that increasing manning doesn't really contribute to the
military industrial complex...so there isn't a real incentive to make room in
the budget for additional personnel. When I was in the Navy we routinely had
100hr+ workweeks while in port and the older guys said it was the same back in
the day.

~~~
euyyn
Honest question from someone that has no idea: Does training in these shitty
conditions help performance in case of war, where those conditions might be
necessary?

~~~
Pica_soO
No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp family.
You really get to learn who is what kind of guy/girl doing repeated 100 hr
weeks

~~~
Caveman_Coder
> "No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp
> family."

\- I'm not sure if this is the primary point of the 100hr+ work-weeks. In my
case, our submarine was going through an Engineering Refueling Overhaul in
Norfolk so we were just incredibly busy.

~~~
stephengillie
Failure to staff adequately is a managerial failure to plan, which is
sometimes used as a cost-cutting measure.

100-hour work weeks not only save direct worker costs (you get 2.5x the labor
at the cost of 1x), but also in managerial and other costs (you get 2.5x the
labor for the cost of managing a 1x headcount).

~~~
liberte82
I seriously doubt you get 2.5x as much work done, working people for 100 hours
a week versus 40.

~~~
derefr
You wouldn't think so, given how easy it is to burn out a regular white-collar
worker by overworking them, but people in the military are sort of the "high-
spec components" of humanity: there's been many layers of selection pressures
applied to find the people that can be pushed far past their "tolerance"
without breaking. Everyone that can't, washed out a long time before you got
your hands on them. (At least, that's the thinking. In reality, it's maybe 50%
that, and 50% everyone hiding their weaknesses and covering for one-another's
failures to give off the _image_ of this. But good officers know that, and
only expect 150%-of-tolerance rather than 200%-of-tolerance. :P)

~~~
logfromblammo
Judging this as a civilian employee of a business that does some government
contracting, you end up with about 110% as much output as people working 40
hours a week. That's 125% from working 60 hour weeks, plus a random negative
productivity averaging out to -15% from the hours worked beyond that.

But each individual is _super proud_ of being able to give a 280% effort. It's
just that after that long on the job, you are no longer capable of detecting
when the math no longer adds up. And they are "high-spec" components--most
people drop to 0% efficiency _long_ before that 60th hour worked in a week.
But there are no supermen in real life. Nobody on this planet can produce
positive value in the 112th hour worked in a week, even if there are people
out there willing to _try_ , and also resilient enough to bounce back from it
regularly.

It often boils down to the thoroughly debunked yet oft-echoed labor theory of
value. In some people's minds, a person that works 60 hours in a week is 50%
better than someone working 40. And if everyone in the organization works that
hard, then the whole organization is that much better. The harder you bust
your asses, the prouder you are of it, and the more you can ignore any
objectively measurable outcomes.

In reality, this just gives the military completely unrealistic ideas about
how actual productive labor happens, and how much it costs in time and money,
and contractor businesses of the military-industrial complex gleefully take
advantage of that.

~~~
lovich
Even if their assumptions that some people working 100 hour weeks were 2.5x
better than people working 40 hour weeks, where do you go when war happens?

If the whole system is being redlined when it's peacetime, then it only takes
one thing going wrong, a single casualty, some damage to the ship, anything
really to make the whole system collapse

------
leroy_masochist
FWIW, I caught up with a SWO buddy the other day and his take on this was that
there are two ultimate culprits for the recent collisions:

1) A "check-the-box-and-cover-your-ass" mentality with regard to the
implementation of annual training. The basic gist is that the (very necessary
to some extent) training designed to get young sailors to not get DUIs, manage
their finances properly, not beat their spouses, etc has gotten more and more
onerous every year, with more mission-focused training being sacrificed in
order to make hours available. By my friend's telling, there has been
something of an arms race in that every fleet-level commander has to do
_something_ quantifiable to put as a fitness report accomplishment (eg,
"restructured and implemented DUI awareness training; liberty incidents fell
13% during tenure in billet").

2) The tracking systems that Navy ships have turned on in peacetime started
getting turned off 10-15 years ago and the original impetus was the IGRC using
this data to antagonize Navy ships (ie get position/speed/bearing of a
destroyer over horizon, then send a couple of speedboats to cross its bow 300
meters ahead at 40 kts). This was briefly mentioned in article as something
that is getting reinstated following recent collisions.

Interestingly he said that the end of the SWO course had little to do with the
accidents and that the main reason the Navy ended it was that junior SWO
feedback was saying that they would learn more just being on the ship for that
amount of time (analogous to the concept of learning much more in your first 4
months as a junior engineer than you did during your senior spring semester as
a CS student).

~~~
Y_Y
For those wondering like me, SWO is surface warfare officer (someone who
manages shipboard systems) and IGRC is the Iranian navy.

------
rbanffy
It's absolutely ridiculous military vessels, that should have excellent
awareness of their surroundings, would collide with a very large piece of
metal that was not designed to be stealth in any way.

~~~
vonmoltke
You are assuming these collisions occurred because the Navy crews didn't know
the other ships were there. My understanding is that the US vessels knew the
other ships were there and did not react properly.

~~~
mabub24
It was probably similar to what happened when the USS Porter collided with
another vessel in the Strait of Ormuz. You can hear how confusing the
situation was from this audio recording. Apparently, the work environments can
be extremely stressful and that can lead them to become toxic.

[http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-
porter/](http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/)

------
mschuster91
> A Government Accountability Office report from May said sailors were on duty
> up to 108 hours each week.

... and people are wondering why accidents happen. If one sailor on the bridge
is overworked, there are his fellow sailors to correct the mistakes that are
bound to happen, but when the _entire bridge_ is next to collapse from sleep
deprivation, that's next to impossible.

------
ranger207
Something's going to have to give here. Between budget and scope, one or the
other will have to change in order to increase staffing, sleep, training, and
maintenance and reduce errors like this. It's only going to get worse in the
future, too. China is interested in the South China Sea, Russia is interested
in Eastern Europe, and North Korea may come to a head soon, so scope of
operations won't be decreasing. Procurement of the F-35, _Columbia_ SSBNs, FFX
frigates, and Ford class carriers (and that's only the Navy!) means that
there's going to be less budget to go around too. Something is going to have
to give.

~~~
vkou
> China is interested in the South China Sea, Russia is interested in Eastern
> Europe, and North Korea may come to a head soon, so scope of operations
> won't be decreasing.

Maybe it's time to realize that the global imperial ambitions of a country of
350 million people are not sustainable in the 21st century.

Oh, who am I kidding, of course that will never happen.

~~~
wahern
Counter balancing those "threats" wouldn't be a problem if the U.S. was't
constantly engaged in warfare in the Middle East. But the fact that 1)
conservatives are more interested in shifting attention back to Iran than
dealing with North Korea, and that 2) both conservatives and liberals
criticized Obama's restraint in Syria, tells you everything you need to know
about the ultimate, unfortunate fate of American foreign policy.

People criticized Obama for drawing a red line wrt chemical weapons in Syria
and then flinching. But IMO his decision to flinch is probably one of the
greatest acts of presidential leadership we've seen in generations. Obama's
mistake was drawing the red line, but that's something every American
president does almost habitually, paving the way to normalizing the
bombasticism of Donald Trump. Not only did Obama realize his mistake, he
resisted making an even larger mistake just to save face and supposedly
preserve our deterrent (as if it wasn't obvious we were already overextended),
despite universal advise to do otherwise. In many respects it's on par with
Kennedy's decision to cut a deal with Khrushchev, though the optics are less
flattering this time around.

The atrocities in Syria are morally repugnant. But while most European allies
criticized Obama for not getting the U.S. more involved, precisely none has
chosen to get more involved themselves. The situation is fundamentally
intractable given the politics and level of commitment that could be
sustained. Obama stood up, _alone_, to make the hard choice.

It took Obama years to develop that kind of spine. It's a shame he had to go
because that's something we sorely need when it comes to North Korea. Like
Syria, North Korea is a losing proposition every which way, except with
greater global consequence. Either 1) there's a major war with hundreds of
thousands or even millions dead (including tens of thousands of Americans)
within days or weeks, 2) global nuclear proliferation as North Korea exports
nuclear technology, or 3) a momentous quid pro quo with China that shifts the
balance of power in the Pacific to them in exchange for regime change in North
Korea. The best outcome for both America and the world is #3, but there is no
mainstream American leader willing to even conceive of that bargain, let alone
provide the leadership and intelligence necessary to negotiate those waters.

Instead we're likely to get #2, which will merely provide more fodder for
American chickenhawks to pursue fanciful military expeditions around the
world. Nothing is more certain to lead to the swift end of the American era.

~~~
nradov
Option 4: Contain North Korea like we contained the USSR until they collapse,
while maintaining a soft blockade and trade sanctions to limit global nuclear
proliferation.

~~~
wahern
Not possible. North Korea shares a border with both China and Russia, and
neither would agree to the type of embargo required. They haven't even
enforced the embargoes they agreed to. The last thing they want, particularly
China, is a total collapse of the regime and a flood of migrants coming across
their border. They also see significant value in having a buffer state between
them and American-allied South Korea. Both China and Russia benefit from a
situation which exposes the limits of U.S. power. Finally, they have a greater
tolerance for nuclear proliferation because, at the end of the day, it's
really only the U.S. with a global footprint and a target on its back. They're
playing a dangerous game, but however flawed their calculus they seem to think
the prospective benefits are greater than the costs.

You'd think it would behoove China to simply replace Kim Jong-un, but for some
of the above reasons, and more, they're not willing to try it.

If you track the past thirty years of diplomatic efforts, it's obvious how
stark the choices are. Frankly, I'm astounded at how short the memories are in
Washington, and how motivated their thinking. Across the political spectrum.
It's really made clear to me how increasing partisanship (including reactions
to that partisanship) has blinded everybody.

~~~
nradov
China has actually started partially enforcing the trade sanctions. They
aren't in favor of nuclear proliferation either and won't knowingly allow
nuclear weapons components through their territory. So containment is still
mostly possible. It doesn't have to be an unbreakable barrier, just good
enough.

~~~
wahern
If a blockade strategy were feasible, North Korea would have never gotten the
bomb. North Korea has pursued a nuclear capability in earnest since at least
the 1990s (EDIT: 1980s according to the Wikipedia timeline), though their
desire to obtain one was declared decades earlier. It's unfolded so slowly and
so deliberately that the public and many pundits don't even _remember_ all the
precipitating events because at this point they don't even stand out. Just
look at the timeline:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_North_Korean_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_North_Korean_nuclear_program)

If China were serious about containment, if the sanctions were effective, then
things would have never gotten even remotely this far. Both the U.S. and
Israel were on the verge of bombing Iran before they even got as far as North
Korea did before 2000.

The situation _inside_ China is complex, but ultimately the reasons are
irrelevant because 1) China manifestly has proven that it is unwilling to be
aggressive _enough_ even during the periods when they were truly upset with
North Korea and 2) there is no evidence that China's fundamental calculus has
changed or even might change--the calculus that has allowed North Korea to
openly a) begin a nuclear research program, b) refine and breed fuel, c) test
nuclear weapons, and d) import, develop, and export missile technology to the
point where they're close to e) having a delivery vehicle for a nuclear
weapon. At each step China has vehemently (and believably) opposed those
advancements, yet they've refused to prevent it. To be sure they've applied
some pressure, just as they are now; but North Korea's resolve is too great.

Despite all this overwhelming, indisputably clear history, people are still in
denial. It's incredible.

Trump is absolutely correct on at least one thing: negotiation is futile.
Fortunately, my guess is that Trump's vanity and preternatural instinct for
survival will stand in the way of the U.S. choosing to go to war over this
issue. Which is why my money is on North Korea joining the nuclear ICBM club,
with all that will entail down the road.

------
Theodores
We had a video posted from a merchant vessel not so recently. They have a 4-8
watch, a 8-12 and a 12-4 watch where juniors learn on the 4 to 8 watch, which
happens twice daily. This works pretty well compared to the U.S. Navy. I don't
hear a lot about merchant seamen needing more training budget or needing to
use pen and paper.

~~~
rtkwe
They also have a much simpler ship to deal with.

~~~
coldcode
More fancy things but its still a boat in the water with a rudder and
propellors that's moving.

~~~
rtkwe
So is a pontoon boat but that doesn't mean there's much useful comparison to
extract between them.

------
drawnwren
This seems like a UI issue more than anything. How do we even have multi
million dollar ships that are capable of violating the rules of the sea? It
seems like an ideal situation for a driver assistance type package that is
able to be removed during combat operation.

~~~
gaius
_How do we even have multi million dollar ships that are capable of violating
the rules of the sea?_

If shipping lanes were like roads that might be possible, but they aren't and
it isn't, because COLREGS don't work like that.

~~~
drawnwren
They arent, however the rules of the sea are very simple. More importantly a
calculation of probability of collision between two slow moving giant metal
objects would be easy.

~~~
gaius
Ever been a skipper manoeuvring in confined waters with multiple vessels
around you? I have, and it is at least an order of magnitude more complex than
anything I've ever encountered on the road.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Still; assuming you can get good, real-time estimates of mass, rough shape,
position and velocity vector of each of the ships around you, making a system
to compute probable collisions sounds like a small undergrad-level project at
best. What are the obvious things I'm missing here?

~~~
gaius
You would need to account for drag and windage. Basically know everyone's hull
shape and CFD it! And the seabed under them.

At a distance it's easy - but in confined waters it gets very complicated very
quickly. I've seen situations where literally the only solution is, who do I
collide with.

In the case of the USN they have a hell of a lot more manoeuvrability than a
freighter but they can't escape the laws o'physics...

------
pasbesoin
Back when I did accounting for a few years, I routinely found more than one
way to solve the problem at hand. And I cross-checked.

I remember in particular one instance, where I spent a day tracking back to
three garbage "test" orders that a development team was injecting into
production (our live accounting systems), assuming no one would even notice in
the midst of the normal "slop" in the system due to incorrect coding and
habituation to "these systems are outdated/buggy/German/yadayadayada".

I find it kind of unfathomable that e.g. a destroyer class ship would not have
multiple means of knowing where it is -- founded upon real-world, what you can
observe around you and in the sky, situational awareness. And that they would
not be cross-checking these _as a matter of routine._

You're a _war ship_. Do you think e.g. the enemy is going to tell you before
they take out or corrupt your satellite navigation?

'But we're not at war.'

Well, you spend billions and billions each year on training exercises. How
about some of the simplest, least expensive, and most direct training
possible, on a routine basis? I.e. run your bridge and crew with a persistent
eye towards ingraining the skills _before you need them?_

Not constant bullsh-t schedules that deplete them and inhibit learning. (How
well do _you_ remember the day after pulling an all-nighter?) But skills that
will prove critical, and the vigilance to be pro-active in using them.

That includes training for stress -- including functioning during sleep
deprivation. But not as a lifestyle.

Anyway, same for me, in software. Cross-check. Don't assume. But a lot of what
I've seen around me, is anything but that. Even and especially in our so-
called profession.

There are definitely professionals -- I've worked with some. Whether there is
a well-defined, high-skilled profession? Yeah, that's a lot less clear.

It seems the navy needs to be asking itself what is actually professional, as
well.

------
em3rgent0rdr
What about requiring military ships to illuminate their ships just like
merchant ships? (TBH I think but I don't know for sure that the US ship in the
singapore collision was unlit.)

------
jk2323
This also may have something to do with it:
[http://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html](http://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html)

See also: [http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467210492/u-s-navy-brings-
back...](http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467210492/u-s-navy-brings-back-
navigation-by-the-stars-for-officers)

------
geiseric
I was Army and learned the old school way. Compass, Protractor and Map.
Refused to completely trust GPS. It will fail you just when you really need it
most. Army navigation is much easier than Navy, but same rule applies.

