USS John S. McCain - Collision in Singapore

I

Is ARPA in the rules?

I think the lesson here is that whatever are the common rules of the road, the US Navy chose to play by their own set of rules , with dire consequences. They have left behind all the training and rules that eliminated any of these disastrous encounters for the reasons included in the reviews.

The last ship is sailed on, which was in 2017, had ECDIS with AIS. But that had been installed only in 2016. Prior to the upgrade, we had a commercial Furuno receiver for AIS.

I don’t know what the gray hulls have, but given the documented equipment status of Fitzgerald, the operators probably would’ve been untrained, or the equipment would’ve been in operative.

No.
The rules are quite reserved in the use of electronic devices.
They allow for bridge to bridge comms by radio but insist that horn signals will prevail.
If equipped by radar, must be used along with a lookout is another comment.
These would be the only electronic comments in the ColRegs.

I'm not qualified to advise the Navy how to operate their fleet, but seems this collision could have been prevented if AIS/ARPA had been used to steer around a possible collision. The Lt. on the bridge did not trust others in electronic nerve center??? So, she shorted the rules. I'm with Pac Blue...time for a reset.

AIS/ARPA are aids and not required.
Proper lookout is required.
The LT herself stated that once she looked that way the other ships lights were easily recognizable.
The COLREGS were not followed.
The Captains ordered were not followed.

IMO;
The two local reasons for the collision are getting the less penalties.
The Lady observer who abandoned her post by not rotating port/stb watch.
The Lady LT (OOD) that interfered with the port/stb watch rotation and did not follow orders from her captain.
Then the OOD continued to ignore her captains order and made maneuvers that COLREGS recommends NOT doing.

It s not about the rules, it s about safety. A $5000 radar and AIS receiver on the bridge would have saved lives. And carreers. And embarrassment to the Navy.

Mind boggling

If it was about safety, the Boat should not have left port and the captain, XO & all watch officers know this. If they gripped about short hand and no training during de-briefing. Here is the embarrassments.

You would need someone actually trained well enough to actually look at the radar and understand WTF they were seeing.

The lack of training and experience on that entire ship and all of the others, is absolutely mind boggling, even if it were not short handed, the outcome would be the same.

I remember the last time I was touring the Saratoga (CV60) with a friend, there above the helm hung a Northstar 800x.
All that fancy stuff and here hung the same junk as on my boat.
Heck, I'd donate all the Pathfinder stuff in my shop to help a couple of ships.

It takes one person on my ship to watch ais, radar, and steer to avoid collision...bet your ship is the same.
What a cluster it must be on some of those bridges without trained competent personnel.
To be fair, in war time conditions i'm sure it requires additional watches and personnel.

Here's a quote from the Propublica report: "They included problems with the ship’s primary navigation system. It was the oldest such system among destroyers based in Japan. It was running on Windows 2000, even though other ships had been upgraded. It could not display information from the AIS."

The upgrade and other fixes were scheduled, but kept getting interrupted by being sent out on missions.

That still does not give me any relief from their poor seamanship, not following task & orders.

When my buddy with his latest Cessna 172 Garmin navigation/weather/bells and whistles suite hears what I (don't) have available in the cockpit of my 767 he just stares. The bureaucracy you have to navigate to get changes implemented in commercial/military operations is mind boggling and slows technological innovation by DECADES.

Let me expand on that. They would have still got clobbered in a small fishing boat. S F Bs.

That is shameful. A ship of that magnitude should have a electronics engineer qualified to install and maintain the electronics/ navigation system. The drill ships in the GOM have a electronics engineer on board to keep things running. Just updated my Nobeltec that runs on windows 10 with a new gps/heading sensor to make it stand alone. It also has radar and ais overlay. Even I can operate it with little training and it does not take a genius to read the screen. Cost was around $1500. Also have backup chartplotters which the Navy should have on the bridge. Most tournament SF's fishing in the GOM have better electronics than the Navy and the captains are monitoring it and running the ship. There is no excuse, the Navy has a lot of work to catch up. Reset time.

They didn't get clobbered by the freighter. They saw it, steered their own ship erradically zig zagging and drove directly in front of the freighter. All they had to do, was STOP the freighter and they wouldn't have gotten hit. Very poor seamanship and no situational awareness.

Not sure were getting each others point on our comments.
If they were in a fish boat, screwing up as they were, They would have still been clobbered.
Yes, we got this correct; Very poor seamanship and no situational awareness.

Yep