I'm actually hoping they do pull a lot of them. In the long term, the transparency and embarrassment will be good for the Navy's tactical proficiency.
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USS Fitzgerald collision in C7F
- Thread starter Ken_gone_flying
- Start date
That's not odd at all. It's entirely possible that he was leaving prior to the squadron RTB, or part of the ADVON.
You don't need a court martial to investigate why the bridge team failed. They already held a Comprehensive Review investigation chaired by a 4-star. Investigations are how we institutionally "pull the string," and that one was about as high powered as you can get.
If the Director of Naval Reactors couldn't pull together the story on what and why that happened, we suck as an institution.
A court martial is about punishment, and this is, IMO, Big Navy wanting to assign public blame to an individual rather than accepting that there are systematic flaws to be dealt with.
Yep- that and the fact that it took these mishaps to institutionally figure out how badly we suck at driving ships, that is a sign we have much greater institutional problems to worry about.
Huh, weird. Yeah, I mean, my memory is of single day that was 8 years ago, so I might be mistaken too, but I remember there being footage he destroyed, and this was one of the main points we kept crushing him on ethically; I remember his response was to the tune of "I know what we are taught as officers about integrity; things change when you genuinely think that the truth will lead to your death and you feel helpless," as he continued on regarding the anger of the Italians.
Yeah, that brain cell might have died or the guy giving us the brief may have not mentioned it. He also happened to be the only one to come away relatively unscathed, I just looked him up and he just retired as a Colonel not too long ago.
Are you being sarcastic?
It will certainly be good for the Navy's risk-aversion, layers of self-imposed administrivia and a poor safety climate of punish first, ask questions later... The Navy almost certainly won't decide that SWOs (or anyone else) need to be more tactically proficient because of this.
That being said, if it drives an effort to create actual, reasonable duty-day limits and improve basic ship-handling skills in the surface Navy, then I'm all for it. But two ships hitting each other- on multiple occasions- should have been more than enough to drive that point home.
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This is one of the possible unintended consequences that I hadn't considered.
You've pretty much ruined my day now.
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I'm with the government. I'm here to help!
The risk-aversion self-imposed administrivia? Already happened.
I very firmly believe that the only thing to abolish all of the above is an all-out, peer or near-peer shooting war.
That could work...for perhaps 6 months. Then it'll all come back, probably with a vengeance, as every little overlooked piece of paperwork, perceived or real, will need to be addressed! After all, bureaucrats gotta bureaucrat.
It's interesting to read some of the biographies and autobiographies of wartime heroes from WWII who often quit soon after the war when the services (US and UK) went back to their peacetime ways very rapidly, in some cases just months. Quite a few stuck it out post-war and some did well but a lot didn't, especially ones who thrived by bending and breaking the rules in combat where it paid off handsomely but not so much in peacetime.
But what will the NOSCs do when they don’t have any more SELRES to harass?
Probably just things that matter like keeping people's pay squared away and getting them out the door to their annual training and mobilizations on time.