Another deadly collision.

August 21, 2017 10:30 AM

Top Navy admiral orders fleetwide investigation following latest collision at sea. Previous collisions involving U.S. Navy vessels. Discussion over at r/Navy suggests pervasive lack of sleep contributes to the problem.
posted by Bee'sWing (40 comments total)

"i like warships that don't crash into merchant vessels." –Donald Trump [fake]
posted by entropicamericana at 10:34 AM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

"That's too bad."
posted by reiichiroh at 10:40 AM on August 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

A copy of this book should solve the problem.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:49 AM on August 21, 2017 [14 favorites]

There is active radar alarm, and AIS which can supply a collision estimate 20 miles away. And probably super secret sensors. There is a rule that a visual lookout is required. Can't be much else other than "that alarm always wakes me for no good reason, mute the thing", sometime later, zzzzzzzz, bang.

They really should revert to older rules and have all officers in training walk past the captains of the four boats in involved in accidents this year. Said captains being in stocks on the front lawn of the naval academy.
posted by sammyo at 10:50 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

If 18 wheeler drivers and passenger airliner crews have required rest periods, why not sailors? It's not like we're in a war emergency.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:04 AM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

I wonder whether this is down to some kind of continuous high alert status designed to intimidate North Korea and China.
posted by jamjam at 11:04 AM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Back in the day the way to get promoted as a tin can SWO was to be known as super aggressive. Navigating through the eastern shipping lanes at high speed and with minimal clearance was part of the game.
posted by pdoege at 11:06 AM on August 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Are Sequester Spending Limits still in effect in the military?
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:09 AM on August 21, 2017

This should not happen once. Much less twice. Heads will roll.
posted by Splunge at 11:10 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

in before the Cuban Deaf Ray
posted by Fupped Duck at 11:19 AM on August 21, 2017

A copy of this book should solve the problem.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:49 PM on August 21 [4 favorites +] [!]

That is the best book title. Ever.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:28 AM on August 21, 2017

Wait, wasn't there a comment here (in the blue? the green?) on that very subject pretty recently?

Like, with advice like, "If the tanker appears to be stationary, you are on a collision course."
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:31 AM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

FOUND IT in the middle of a post about a prize for books with odd titles.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:39 AM on August 21, 2017 [9 favorites]

If 18 wheeler drivers and passenger airliner crews have required rest periods, why not sailors? It's not like we're in a war emergency.

I'm sure if experienced Navy people think that sleep deprivation is part of the issue, they're right. But it's an old problem in every Navy --- ship's like a shark, constantly in motion. You need to have enough crew to keep it going 24-7. But space on a ship is also at a premium. There's a constant pushme-pullyou in effect. Pour a little ambition or recklessness on top of it and I'm sure it's more than an enough to become dangerous.
posted by Diablevert at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

FOUND IT in the middle of a post about a prize for books with odd titles.
posted by Caxton1476

The combo of content and username in that linked comment is forever going to be the best goddamned thing.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 12:05 PM on August 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Do we have anyone here in the Navy who can comment? That linked Reddit comment is dangerously absurd. Human beings can't function on 3 hours of sleep a night and there's plenty of research in the armed services itself that measures just how degraded performance is. Why are we managing our Navy so poorly that in peacetime the people running these very large and important ships are so sleep deprived?
posted by Nelson at 12:05 PM on August 21, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hopefully, this captain wasn't showboating for VIPs like USS Greeneville's was.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:09 PM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

The ship's name is a nice reminder that Sen John McCain was not some salt of the earth Navy guy. He was military aristocracy. As a former ranker, I despise what Col David Hackworth described as "the perfumed princes."
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:26 PM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

What did you think of Hackworth himself? I found his writings interesting, but had to weigh in the hosting web sites that posted them when it came to credibility.
posted by ocschwar at 1:39 PM on August 21, 2017

The Reddit thread is frankly terrifying, and makes me wonder why collisions don't occur more frequently.
posted by mollymillions at 4:15 PM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

The navy perhaps does not want to discuss the newer electronic spoofing stuff that seems to be available for enemy ships and planes. Not saying that was the cause but merely indicating it may be worth looking into, unless they will and prefer to not let on about such stuff
posted by Postroad at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2017

My mind immediately wandered to wondering if one of the countries (e.g. North Korea) in that area could be using some new technology to screw with gps and signaling. Seems like far too much of a coincidence for two ships in the same area to have similar collisions so closely in time to one another. I hope they really look into this, but then again, I don't believe this administration is capable of putting damn eclipse glasses on, never mind do a proper investigation.
posted by floweredfish at 5:36 PM on August 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

They have radar, nav lights, radio's and eyes, it's pretty hard to screw with those remotely. Getting hit by an oil tanker in a shipping lane is a pretty big fuck up no matter if your software crashes or not.

The comments on this story in my local paper seriously make me wonder our the future of humanity. Split between " the Chinese made us do it" and "Obama made us do it!". Tools.
posted by fshgrl at 6:17 PM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

I was wondering about spoofing too, Postroad. The Russian navy is reportedly testing GPS spoofing in the Black Sea right now. It's half a world away, but the tech is simple enough any country could have it. Hell a reasonably smart radio engineer with a few thousand bucks could probably build it for the lulz.

GPS spoofing could either make the Navy ship confused about where it is or, more plausibly, make the merchant ship confused about where it is. Which would mean putting out bad data on its AIS transponder. But yeah, as fshgrl and others say there's other detection and avoidance technologies that should be at play.
posted by Nelson at 6:19 PM on August 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

My mind immediately wandered to wondering if one of the countries (e.g. North Korea) in that area could be using some new technology to screw with gps and signaling.

If North Korea can sufficiently jam GPS and other signalling to cause a collision between two ships, in peacetime, that, from everything I've seen, should have been easily preventable just using surface radar, or quite likely, a few pairs of binoculars and some alert watchstanders, there's much bigger problems than potential GPS jamming, a problem I suspect (or at least hope) the USN has given at least some thought to dealing with.

On preview:
They have radar, nav lights, radio's and eyes, it's pretty hard to screw with those remotely. Getting hit by an oil tanker in a shipping lane is a pretty big fuck up no matter if your software crashes or not.

Yeah, this is a failure of basic seamanship, not technology. It'd be like a car crash where a car was driving down the wrong side of the road being blamed on a failed GPS unit. Yes, a GPS unit might cause confusion with bad directions, but as a driver you can still notice that something is wrong and get off the road.
posted by thegears at 6:21 PM on August 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

I don't think ships are like jets, directed (and even allowed to be there) by controllers and dependent on GPS, The sea allows anyone to sail, regardless of technological capability. So, ships have to be aware of everything in their neighborhood, spoofing or no.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:31 PM on August 21, 2017

Ships absolutely are run on autopilot almost all the time. But there is always a person watching who can take over in seconds and radar is not GPS, it's literally your onboard equipment sweeping for big metal objects every few seconds. A ship that size probably has 4 radars. No way their radar missed an oil tanker and no way there was no attempt at radio contact prior to the collision, because the tanker has all that gear too.

A LOT of watch alarms and radio calls got ignored to allow this to happen.
posted by fshgrl at 7:31 PM on August 21, 2017 [6 favorites]

Someone asked for a reference / comment by a sailor and I'm not that person but I was just involved in a conversation with a sailor in Queen's equivalent of our navy and it did not go without mention that our sailors, compared to theirs, were A) worked much harder and B) much more specialized in their given roles with both of those things happening because C) the US Navy's output (in this case planes launched in x time) was that much higher than what they would/could do.

So, takeaway for me was that the difference in working conditions is known to be both different in flavor/scope and more demanding I think. It was an interesting chat to listen in on. One of the joys of playing EVE online with a good group of folks from all over the planet and having voice comms that are actually pleasant.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:17 PM on August 21, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ships absolutely are run on autopilot almost all the time. But there is always a person watching who can take over in seconds and radar is not GPS, it's literally your onboard equipment sweeping for big metal objects every few seconds.

And the thing has a freaking AEGIS system.
posted by mikelieman at 9:55 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

Doesn't Aegis run off Windows XP or something ridiculous though? I'm assuming they have back up old-school radar too. I hope. And binoculars. And an old fashioned collison alarm.
posted by fshgrl at 11:41 PM on August 21, 2017

Doesn't Aegis run off Windows XP or something ridiculous though?

My dentist still has computers running XP. Still shows the picture from the brand new panoramic dental x-ray just fine...

But yeah, as a fallback they're SUPPOSED to have watchstanders w/ Mk. 1 Eyeballs and binoculars.

something-something lighthouse...
posted by mikelieman at 11:52 PM on August 21, 2017 [3 favorites]

FWIW, as I was drilling down, it *appears* the Navy Standard display runs HPUX and X-Windows/Motif.

The servers in the middle? *shrug emoji*
posted by mikelieman at 11:56 PM on August 21, 2017

What do you do with an oil tanker? / What do you do with an oil tanker? / What do you do with an oil tanker? / Earl-aye in the mornin'?

What oil tanker? steer straight at it / What oil tanker? steer straight at it / What oil tanker? steer straight at it / Earl-aye in the mornin'

What do we do now the ship is leaking? / What do we do now the ship is leaking? / What do we do now the ship is leaking? / Earl-aye in the mornin'?

-- traditional
posted by 7segment at 3:30 AM on August 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

FWIW, as I was drilling down, it *appears* the Navy Standard display runs HPUX and X-Windows/Motif.

The servers in the middle? *shrug emoji*

As recently mentioned on the blue, AEGIS was introduced at a time that the military was big into "transformation" and "RMA" ("revolution in military affairs") -- including more use of "COTS" ("common off the shelf") components. AEGIS, and apparently some other ship management systems, originally ran on WindowsNT. Ships were getting cabled with ATM LANs.

In the early days of that there were incidents with shitty code that produced uncaught and unhandled exceptions that left ships dead in the water. (divide by zero errors in propulsion controls. Scalefree's link, from the Trump thread.)

It's not like the military doesn't know about real-time, fault-tolerant operating systems. The military (and, I suppose, the space program) is why we have them in the first place, along with ADA (the programming language). But that stuff is slow to develop, under-powered and obsolescent before it enters production.

The move towards the use of COTS components was probably for the best, but it does open the door to lots of other failures, and requires a lot more effort to make sure it isn't vulnerable to exploitation.

This, however, this really does seem like a training or logistics (personnel/sleep) problem. Warships shouldn't go around lumbering into things because their GPS is on the blink (whether due to hacking or malfunction). GPS spoofing may be a mysterious capability, but GPS jamming isn't.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:43 AM on August 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

So, Lockheed Martin got a $80M contract to do Aegis upgrades last year. (It's not an acronym. Oops.) Due to be done by the end of this year.

Also, a report today of a Navy official tweeting that the possibility ships were hacked is under consideration.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:02 AM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

Some data on the Alnic MC

The Alnic's engine produces 13 542 hp, vs 4 × 25 000 hp (2 gas turbines per shaft, 2 shafts) for the John S. McCain.

Its light displacement (~empty weight) is 9696 long tons, and it can carry up to 49 309 long tons DWT; at the time of the collision it had 12 000 tons of cargo (+ possibly ballast). The USS John S. McCain has a displacement (loaded) of around 9000 tons.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 11:03 AM on August 23, 2017

Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, commander of the Seventh Fleet, has been relieved of command.
posted by ogooglebar at 1:24 PM on August 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Here's something that goes deeper into the pervasive sleep deprivation problem in the Navy.
posted by Copronymus at 8:26 AM on August 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Collision: Did Culture Trump Technology?

During my final active-duty assignment prior to retirement, however, I spent more time on surface ships than on submarines. And I observed many cultural differences in the way the surface ships are operated. These differences may have some bearing on the conditions that contributed to the unfortunate outcomes.

This is not to suggest that submarines operate perfectly, which of course they do not. But there is a level of conservatism inherent in submarine operations that, as a general rule, I did not observe in the operation of surface combatants. That is the cultural underpinning of certain paradoxes I intend to demonstrate here.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:51 PM on September 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Did Culture Trump Technology?

Linked article: 'Maybe.'
But...
*sunglasses*
technology certainly hasn't cultured Trump.
YEAHHH
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:39 PM on September 8, 2017