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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/world/asia/navy-ship-mccain-search-sailors.html
Search teams scrambled Monday to determine the fate of 10 missing Navy sailors after a United States destroyer collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore, the second accident involving a Navy ship and a cargo vessel in recent months.
The guided-missile destroyer, the John S. McCain, was passing east of the Strait of Malacca on its way to a port visit in Singapore at 5:24 a.m. local time, before dawn broke, when it collided with the Alnic MC, a 600-foot vessel that transports oil and chemicals, the Navy said. The destroyer was damaged near the rear on its port, or left-hand, side.
Half a day after the crash, 10 sailors on the ship remained unaccounted for. Five others were injured, none with life-threatening conditions, a Navy official said. Ships with the Singapore Navy and helicopters from the assault ship America were rushing to search for survivors.
Also at Reuters.
Previously: U.S. Navy Destroyer Collides With Container Vessel
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday August 21 2017, @06:59PM (9 children)
Over-reliance on whiz-bang tech gadgets, high operational tempos, shifting training time and emphasis toward touchy-feely crap, and personnel retention problems all contribute to the situation.
The answer is to get back to basics. Operating a warship in real-world conditions is not a video game or social gathering.
I think there's a bit of a problem here. The "touchy-feely crap" is likely not done just because of politics, it's done for those personnel retention problems you cite: the Gen-Z kids who the Navy is trying to recruit aren't going to put up with it for long if they run it the old-fashioned way, full of sexism. That's one big reason they've probably become so friendly to having women aboard, as well as LGBTetc. The Navy has to draw from society, and especially from the 18-25 year old subset of the society, and there just aren't that many kids these days who want to go into the Navy and spend 9 months of the year at sea doing drudge-work and not being allowed to have a relationship. And unlike days past when young Americans really did believe that going into the military was something honorable and serving the greater good, no one with half a brain thinks that the military is doing some kind of valuable work these days; it's just a job whoring yourself out, no different from working in any other industry where you're really just working to make the rich richer and hoping to catch a little bit of the benefit. So the Navy has had to expand its potential pool of candidates.
As for "high operational tempos", if you mean long deployments (leading to my comment above about spending 9 months at sea), that again is from being understaffed, for the reasons I stated above. It also doesn't help that the compensation package is pretty expensive, when you count the free education and early retirement and free housing and everything else that's included. If young people were all chomping at the bit to go into the Navy and risk their lives for corporate interests and didn't expect free education and all, things would be different.
Maybe we shouldn't expect to draw our military from our citizenry, and should just use foreign mercenaries. I hear that worked out really well for some past societies...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @07:21PM
Yes but in a democracy, the population will simply decide one day to vote that these foreign mercenaries are in fact terrorists. Then they will expect the real armed forces to go kill them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Monday August 21 2017, @07:56PM (5 children)
It's actually illegal according to the Geneva Convention. I don't really understand why.
So it sounds like the obvious loophole is in (c):
So all you have to do is either get rid of your regular military and only employ mercenaries, or pay mercenaries the same as your regular military? What's the difference between mercenaries and private military contractors?
Great. And here I was almost starting to think I understood the words.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 21 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)
Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. There's no obvious difference between a mercenary and a "private military contractor" (like Blackwater), except naming.
Moreover, the US military has had foreigners in its ranks for quite some time now, usually with a fast-track to citizenship being part of the compensation offer. The French have had foreigners in their military for ages; they call them the "Foreign Legion".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @09:10PM
At least in the US they are paid the same.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 21 2017, @11:59PM (1 child)
Probably because it adds a layer of hand-washing outsourcing.
"Hello and tank you for calling the US government department of war crime complaints. How may I help you today? I'm sorry our contractors troops lost their shit and slaughtered a hundred innocents in your village? Whats that... you want reprimands and justice? I'm sorry but the US government outsourced their oil war to $CongressDonor. You need to speak with the contractor who has an automated answering system which stores voicemails in /dev/null. Have a nice day and thank you for calling the US government."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:03AM
> Hello and tank you for calling
More like drone you, amirite?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:29AM
Seems e is even easier:
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict;
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @08:58PM
You are so full of shit your eyes are brown.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday August 21 2017, @09:47PM
Another field where a dearth of willing and qualified workers will drive a more rapid adoption of automation. I recall one of the big design requirements of the Zumwalt class was to dramatically reduce personnel requirements.
Robots don't question orders.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek