Loose gear not secured on the mess deck (as the RN would call it) was allowed to float around impeding escape. A reminder, repeatedly learnt from past incidents, that unnecessary gear should either be secured in lockers (which should themselves be not free to float) or got out of the ship.
The U.S. Navy’s top surface warfare officer is expected to step down this week under pressure ahead of a forthcoming recommendation that he be relieved, the latest fallout from a string of accidents in the Pacific in 2017 that claimed the lives of 17 sailors at sea.
Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden is expected to send a letter this week stepping down as the head of Naval Surface Force Pacific, according to sources who spoke to Defense News on condition of anonymity. The head of naval reactors, Adm. James Caldwell, suggested Rowden’s relief as part of a series of recommendations related to the collisions involving the destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain over the summer.
Caldwell was appointed “consolidated disposition authority” over remaining disciplinary actions stemming from the accidents.
Rowden has been the head of surface forces since August 2014…
Defense News, 1/16/18
Can someone knowledgeable about the US Navy decode that for us?
Not Navy but Army is enough for what I think you are asking.
“Relief for cause” is a rough parallel for civilian firing; there’s also without cause but that doesn’t really fit the story. Relief doesn’t directly remove an officer from service but it’s really bad for continued career progression. It can shorten careers when other admin processes come into play. For a Flag officer like Rowden, it’s effectively a removal from service in the near term. General/Flag Officers require Senate confirmation for their promotion and duty postings. I won’t say it’s impossible but… A Rowden resignation from his position is effectively an announcement of his pending retirement.
Resigning from a duty position is largely the same discussion as the relief. It’s closer to a quitting a specific duty position rather than being fired from it. The nuances aren’t that important in this case. It’s a flag officer and it’s pretty clearly related to high profile cause. Rowden resigning mostly just speeds the process.
“Consolidated disposition authority” is a new one on me but I never operated at the level where this got attention. It fits with the general idea that the chain of command is responsible for decisions about military justice, like court martials, and adverse administrative actions, like relief for cause. Prosecutorial discretion in the US civilian system doesn’t really exist. Commander’s hold that discretion. I’m unclear about the legal underpinnings but Adm Caldwell seems to have been granted authority for all cases related to the two accidents. That would include things like relief for cause.
In very rough civilian terms, the rumor is that an executive, with firing authority, is rumored to have decided to fire a less senior executive. That less senior executive is expected to quit first. Again that is very rough.
And then the “poor” guy gets a fat pension and a high-paying job in the defense industry.
U.S. Navy to File Negligent Homicide Charges in Two Asia Ship Collisions
The ex-commander of the USS Fitzgerald will face charges of negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and hazarding a vessel
By Nancy A. Youssef
Updated Jan. 16, 2018 10:28 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The commanders of the two U.S. guided-missile destroyers involved in collisions that killed 17 sailors in Asia last year will be court-martialed on charges including negligent homicide, the Navy said Tuesday.
In total, the Navy is filing criminal charges against six sailors, officials said. Another eight will face nonjudicial punishment, a Navy official said, which could include reductions in rank and pay loss.
The former commander of the USS Fitzgerald, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, will face charges of negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and hazarding a vessel, as will three of his lieutenants, the Navy said. Cmdr. Benson was seriously injured in the June collision with a commercial vessel near Tokyo.
The former commander of USS John S. McCain, Cmdr. Alfredo J. Sanchez, will face similar charges, and a chief petty officer from the McCain has already been charged with dereliction of duty. The ship collided with a commercial tanker off the coast of Singapore in August, killing 10 sailors…
Ouch. “Hazarding a vessel” can still get the death penalty under the UCMJ.
Well, back when, the very first poster to reply to OP did call the score.
And the 3rd poster called out the CLM cliche. This is the extreme version.
The Singapore Ministry of Transport has released a report on the JSM collision. There are no ground breaking revelations, but it is impressively detailed compared to anything the US Navy has released about the incident. Detailed timeline with radar-snapshots and bridge conversation from the the Alnic MCs VDR. Is there any chance a similar report about the Crystal/Fitzgerald collision will ever come to light?
Conclusions from the report:
In a nutshell:
The JSM can be steered from 5 different locations on the vessel. There was a major fuckup in transferring control from one location to another. It seems like nobody was steering, and nobody even realised that they had turned into the path of the AM. The crew didn’t know their ass from their elbow.
When the master of the AM saw the JSM turn into his path, he reduced speed to Half Ahead, assuming that the JSM would be able to speed up and pass ahead of him. If he had switched to Full Astern, he may… possibly… have been able to avoid the collision.
Much talk above about the difficulty of recruiting people to crew these ships - surely it’s time to retire some of the ships. What purpose do most of them have in today’s world?
Sounds like an excellent topic for a GD thread.
Which ships are you referring to? If USN ships, I’d argue (in line with this military.com article and this readiness report of 2010 by VADM Balisle) instead that a large component of why these collisions occur has to do with how few ships the USN has to perform its missions, and the correspondingly very high operational tempo that each of those ships and their crews endures.
In other words, the USN has a lot fewer ships now to do all of the things it wants to do, and it therefore drives each of those ships harder. Add to that the can-do and zero defect attitude of USN officer corporate culture, which provides the perception that any officer complaining about this tempo will be replaced with someone that won’t, and you have a recipe for sailing ships and crews into oblivion.
I forget whether it was the Fitz or the other DDG or CG that got itself hit, but one thing that really struck me [pun not intended] about the accounts of the collision, was that many of the crew didn’t wake up until they were immersed in frigid ocean water. The collision alarm didn’t do it, the screams of the awake didn’t do it, even the shock of collision didn’t wake some of them up. That’s how tired these guys were, and how tired we can imagine the watchstanders and guys in CIC driving the damned thing were. Tired people screw up and break things.
But what are these ‘missions’ that they are straining so hard to perform? Sailing up and down looking tough? There are a few trouble spots they need to keep their eye on, but otherwise it would make little difference to anyone whether they were there or not.
From their own webpage:
The page is an abysmal attempt at a mission statement. Opaque, vague, filled with circular reasoning: it’s an exemplar of government reasoning and policy. Briefly though, the purpose of the US Navy is to keep the sea lines of communication and supply open. International trade is vital to the growth and maintenance of Western society. Most goods are shipped by sea, ergo, maintaining international trade requires that international shipping be kept safe from harm.
What does keeping the sea lines open entail? It means ensuring that overt acts of piracy, or other interference with trade, are curtailed. So, ships are needed to patrol places like the Horn of Africa, Straits of Molucca, West Africa.
It means practicing to keep proficiency in preventing other countries’ navies from blocking the sea lanes for the US and its allies. So ships are required to practice things like anti-submarine warfare, as submarines are going to be the likeliest most effective tool for accomplishing what’s termed “sea denial.” It takes a lot of resources to practice and perform that sort of task. (Mine warfare too, but the USN has traditionally not spent a great deal of time and resources either practicing it, or defending against it. Despite the multiple lessons of history. Maybe UAVs will save the day?)
Further, the US practices what are known as “freedom of navigation” exercises, where the Navy will sail into what are international waters by treaty, but nevertheless are claimed as territorial waters by some state or other. See Libya and the Gulf of Sidra, the Soviet Union and the Black Sea, China and its artificial islands in the Spratleys, etc… I haven’t even addressed the nuclear deterrence mission or the primary mission of carrier naval aviation which is primarily the task of keeping their eye on the few trouble spots you mention. That involves projecting air and missile power to an area away from US land bases.
Suffice to say that it takes a lot of ships to do all of this stuff, everywhere, and no other friendly to the West nation is capable of performing even a fraction of these tasks. Never mind willing to perform them.
Or, the US can stay home. And the world will then use some other form of primary exchange than the US dollar; the secondary effects of which would cost the US economy more than the cost of maintaining and operating all of those ships.
And hasn’t an admiral has already been dismissed because of this?
Not just in the bygone days of the Soviet Union: THHN wire size & amp chart - Passion Plans