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Naval Commanders In 2 Deadly Ship Collisions To Be Charged With Negligent Homicide
The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the commanding officers of two vessels involved in separate collisions in the Pacific Ocean last year will face court-martial proceedings and possible criminal charges including negligent homicide.
The statement by Navy spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks says the decision to prosecute the commanders, and several lower-ranking officers as well, was made by Adm. Frank Caldwell.
[...] In the case of the USS Fitzgerald, the commander, two lieutenants and one lieutenant junior grade face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide.
The commander of the USS John S. McCain will face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide. A chief petty officer also faces one possible charge of dereliction of duty.
Previously: U.S. Navy Destroyer Collides With Container Vessel
10 Sailors Still Missing After U.S. Destroyer Collision With Oil Tanker
Chief of Naval Operations Report on This Summer's Destroyer Collisions
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:17PM (1 child)
Things do conspire to ruin lives. Small mistakes and bad timing, yes. But, that is a big part of leadership. When lives depend on the actions of several men, and many sensors, the drills are in order, until each man understands his part in the entire process. Hopefully, he understands more of the process than just his own part, but he MUST understand his part. Drill, drill, drill.
Those drills must also require precision, and accuracy. In one of those collisions, it was reported that the OOD seemed to be unaware that there were TWO ships in proximity, on similar relative headings. Obviously, the reporting was imprecise and/or inaccurate. What ever happened to "skunk able", "skunk baker", "skunk charlie" and so one? Maybe the Navy doesn't use grease boards and grease pens anymore, but the designators? What was reported to the OOD? "There's a ship over yonder, and maybe another one beyond it" is hardly precise, or accurate.
Now, the thing I'm getting to here is - if imprecise and inaccurate information is the norm aboard ship, then leadership is responsible. They have accepted slipshod work over the years, and everyone has grown accustomed to it. The bar has been lowered, and the lower ranks are taking advantage of it. Several layers of leadership are at fault in this situation. Captain, Executive, Quartermaster/Navigation division officer, the division Chief, and the division's Leading Petty Officer are all at fault, for failure to correct the situation.
Back in my day, we used a grease board, and a grease pencil, which was illuminated at night by a ring of lights around it. My first time with it, was at night. Guy in CIC would tell me, via sound powered phone, what they were seeing, and it was my job to update the board, AS WELL AS to announce those changes for the benefit of the OOD and bridge crew. I got my ass reamed, first time around, because I was timid about speaking up. I marked my board, and stated the changes aloud, so that the guy on the other end of the phone could confirm that I got it right. But - it was my JOB to BROADCAST all of that information, and ensure that the OOD was aware of updates. What was actually happening, because I was timid, was that the OOD was completely unaware of some of my updates. A first class petty officer jumped all over my ass, declared me to be an incompetent worm, and that he was going to use my boot camp ass for bait the next time he went fishing.
In my case, a lowly first class petty officer corrected the problem. And, in almost all cases, a petty officer SHOULD BE correcting deficiencies. If the third class accepts substandard performance, and the second class does the same, right on up through the CO, then you have multiple layers of incompetent leadership.
And, that seems to be exactly what TFA is suggesting.
Or, in terms a court martial will understand, you have "ineffective leadership". That is an unforgiveable offense in the military. No court martial will accept that fate conspired to ruin the day.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:59PM
Yeah, but the problem I see here is that the leadership is trained based on policies that are set at a level far above even a commander or captain, and really goes up to the Pentagon or even Congress. What's the captain supposed to do when the Navy itself refuses to provide proper schooling in maritime operations to any of its officers? How's he supposed to correct that systemic deficiency all by himself? This problem wasn't caused by a few officers on ships, or else we wouldn't have seen 4 ships have major accidents so close together. This problem was caused by policy problems within the Navy itself. Now the Navy is working to correct the policy and improve training and other policies (like with crewmen not getting enough rest, another thing the captain has little control over since he's given operational orders from people above him), but they're using these officers as scapegoats for their own incompetence at training them properly.
This is basically like sending a kid to ITT Tech instead of MIT, and then penalizing him when he doesn't do work at the level of a MIT grad. WTF did you expect? Remember, the Navy eliminated its training courses for maritime operations, and replaced them with a set of CD-ROMs to be read at sea. WTF kind of training is that?