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CBDR...what does that mean anyway?
- Thread starter Hozer
- Start date
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
He collided with a tanker. They tend to have large radar cross-sections, transmit on AIS which tells you their exact location, course, and speed, and display several lights. Unless this was a tanker that went dark to hide from everyone, this isn't a NVG issue... you'd see his lights better without them.
(Not saying NVGs aren't useful, but they're better served looking for things like a fisherman who fell asleep and forgot to turn his lights on).
(Not saying NVGs aren't useful, but they're better served looking for things like a fisherman who fell asleep and forgot to turn his lights on).
Got links?
Thanks for the feedback, BigRed. Great insight.
Seems to me there's much room for improvement in the lookout capabilities of the surface Navy, and as you alluded to, a lot of those capabilities already reside within aviation. If LSEs are using ANVIS-9s (hell, even ANVIS-6s) to land us, there's no reason that watch standers on the SS Essess can't be outfitted with them to help build SA. Not sure what you guys are seeing with your devices, but I can sure as hell make out other boats with Gen 3 NVDs...even on LLL nights. FLIR? Never used it, but I imagine it's another great tool to help build SA.
I guess what I'm getting at is that the cost of testing/implementing readily available, proven technologies is pennies on the dollar when compared to the loss of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, loss of readiness, and loss of morale that we incur whenever we go bump in the night. It might be worth looking into a little more.
(Again, not pointing to this event - I cannot and will not speculate on this collision.)
http://shipfinder.co/?bounds=26.249719, ... ,56.302759
Playback from 8/11 at around 17:30.
Shows the tanker cut to starboard looking like they're trying to overtake Shatt al Arab. Speculation is that then PORTER has cut across the TSS and is southbound when the tanker swings around the stern of Shatt. The tanker shows as MMSI 371687000.
Absolutely. Regardless of who was at fault, this should be used as an opportunity to do things better.
As far as NVD effectiveness goes, I guess the main issue I've had with it is magnification. Could also be a POV thing, nav lights are generally blocked out to send most light "out" on the horizon, not radiating up where it does no good. But with even moderate magnification, it'd probably be more helpful.
I can't overstate how money existing Maritime FLIRs are though. With the TIS on the DDG, I could clearly see a Somali pirate walking the deck of his ship, when he flicked the cigarette overboard, and every detail of the ship. Even lower end units are gyrostabilized, variable zoom, and usually feature a high res screen.
Totally concur Big Red. Keep the perspective though. This happened in the Straits of Hormuz, as I recall the SOH was geographically narrow but didn't have an enormous amount of background light to render the bridge team handicapped. I wasn't there that night but the situation does seem kind of "unusual".
NODS in 1987 were Virgin Gen1's yet we used them all the time and they never told us a different story from the SPS-55. Multiple sensor data ALWAYS provide a better picture than just one source of info.
Again, it's FFG info and not the more high-speed/high-dollar ships, but from my experience, TIS seemed to be Fleet/Coast dependent. At Pearl, every FFG (and DDGs I think...I never really hung out on the bridge of the CGs when underway with them, so not sure about them) had TIS. The Day Optic was fantastic with a very good auto-lock and eye-safe LRF. On the FFGs, the bridge could punch up the TIS image on their little TV they had for the HAWS (or whatever that acronym is) camera, so they could get SA on what the TIS was looking at. At night, the FLIR on the TIS was pretty rough, in part because it was so expensive to fix, which usually meant the Shoes didn't want to pay to fix it. It wasn't anywhere near as good as our older FLIR on a -60. Maybe one step below the first Gen Apache FLIR system. But still, it allowed them to range and image vessels for navigation and/or MIO.
Jump to the East coast several years later and not one FFG had TIS. People were surprised that I was even asking about such a thing. They would try to use CIWS, but it only had a limited field of regard due to super-structure.
phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
Or get PVS-17's.