So infuriating. I'm a former damage control assistant on a US submarine.
The fire response read like a clownshow, and this article doesn't even highlight the worst of it. There was a Sailor who saw the smoke and walked by it, thinking nothing of it!
Another officer thought the smoke might have been coming from the diesel generator. Why tf would the diesel generator be running???
It's hard for me to think of the software equivalent of these fundamental errors. Maybe something like finding a spike in network traffic and assuming it's load testing on prod, when you're actually getting pwned?
I had a buddy report and then help prevent a major electrical fire in the electrical mains coming from the submarine tender. They drug tested him after his heroic performance, found traces of THC and kicked him out of the Navy. Maybe the sailor saw the smoke and decided he didn't want to get drug tested.
After reading ~50 pages into the USN's own 400+ page Command Investigation report (dated 12 Jul 2020 and 20 Oct 2021, link further down)...the sailor and officer that you mention were no more than a couple little sesame seeds on the top bun of a triple-decker shit-show burger, with ALL the trimmings.
(Based on a quick search of that report for "DCA"...let me politely suggest that you do NOT read the report. Ever.)
One story I’ve heard told about the us navy (don’t have a link sadly) is that their current position is in some ways similar to the British navy in a time of dominance and peace (late eighteenth century maybe?) The story talks about a case where an elaborate system of instructions via raised flags directed two ships into crashing into each other somewhat catastrophically and the diagnosis from today is that the navy had fallen out of shape due to not having had to fight large naval battles—a situation that requires actual success rather than successful training exercises—and that their officers lacked the initiative to properly command their ships (e.g. avoiding crashing into each other). The story was particularly relevant with the US navy having recently had an avoidable collision at the time I saw it.
There have basically been no naval conflicts between fairly matched forces since WWII and the story goes that no one knows how to run a navy anymore. I say running a navy in such a conflict is mostly irrelevant because the weapons which may destroy ships (particularly large ones) are so much more effective now that your fleet would be quickly destroyed.
The unspoken secret here is aircraft carriers existed in the 80s as a component of Kissinger's soft power. In 2021 there isn't a single meaningful country you'd waste the cash to park a carrier on the coast of that couldn't immediately send it to a watery smouldering grave. Even punching bags like Iran are a dicey proposition as the proxy soldiers are too asymmetric to reliably expect a destroyer to engage, and the nation itself is armed to the teeth with the latest Russian missile systems and radar. Hell, that they managed to land a high tech us drone is in itself alone enough to pull teeth out of the navy.
Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction. Even here the accidents seem to mount lately though as these wandering souls of the doomsday device have seemingly nothing to do
The us navy is in the midst of an identity crisis fuelled by octogenarian politicians that have pedalled the institution into treading cold-war era water with no real direction.
> there isn't a single meaningful country you'd waste the cash to park a carrier on the coast of that couldn't immediately send it to a watery smouldering grave.
Carriers don't go anywhere alone, and they never stop moving except when in port. They are part of a carrier strike group which includes extensive anti-missile capabilities, both from escorting ships and patrol aircraft (LAMPS.)
> Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction.
Submarines are not only for launching nuclear ballistic missiles, as indicated by the relatively large number of submarines that are not designed to carry them. They're used for patrol, surveillance, special ops, escort, etc.
I think the bigger problem is that the economic incentives are totally out of step with war readiness or even just wise stewardship of taxpayers' money.
To the Navy’s credit it does appear they’re chopping some heads over it (even calling out the ships previous captain and some civilians) and perhaps this wake up call will help reorient the navy back towards where it needs to be. It’s certainly better than pinning this entire event on whatever E-3 started the fire.
Can’t say I’m super surprised it’s reached this point though, we’ve been running our military like schizophrenic kids on adderall for the last 20+ years.
Afghanistan, Iraq, countless foreign bases and deployments all around the world, civil crisis response (think weather disasters and the recent Trump unrest shenanigans) and oh also actual "homeland defense" responsibilities somewhere in the mix too. a nation not officially at war and yet... thousands of combat deaths, etc
“The U.S. Navy charged a sailor Thursday with starting a fire last year that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego, marking the maritime branch's worst warship blaze outside of combat in recent memory.”
As with the collisions in the western Pacific several years ago, I don't see anyone addressing the overwhelming workload and lack of resources provided to the US Navy. I read much about those collisions, not such much about this fire, so the following is based mostly on the former.
In absolute terms, they are very well funded of course. But what I read over and over is that there isn't time for training, because the demand we put on them - the world is a very large place - is much higher. They are told to cut training and deploy. After the collisions, they decided that officers (at least some positions) were too overworked and discussed (maybe implemented) limiting their workweeks to 100 hours.
Think of any organization; when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter, even at the obvious long-term cost. The pressure and immediate demand are too great. If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training, that actually seems like a valid choice - they need to function.
Fundamentally, the US military is optimized for quality over quantity.
Look at the US Navy: ~400,000 active duty personnel operating ~400 ships (~250 combat, ~150 aux).
Compare to the Chinese PLAN: ~250,000 active duty personnel operating ~750 ships (~500 combat, ~250 aux).
A huge portion of that difference is due to aircraft carriers (11 USN, 2 PLAN), average tonnage per ship, and specifically the USN's lack of frigates.
This arrangement optimizes for the USN's mission of international power projection, where logistics requirements are like an iceberg, with the deployed forces being the above water volume.
However, it does leave a problem of training and experience. If no numerous smaller vessels exist for SWOs and crew to come up through, how do we expect them to have a deep reservoir of experience by the time they're commanding and crewing a destroyer+?
The retirement of the Perry class, subsequent botching of the LCS program (and finally recent selection of a Constellation class design, to be built) left the current USN with ~50 less commands for officers and crew to cut their teeth on.
And the personnel issue goes deeper than that. Recruitment is seeing some negative trends. You need a lot of people to man the ships. There aren't a ton of people interested in that. Reducing crew numbers was a major consideration in the newer ship designs.
> the overwhelming workload and lack of resources provided to the US Navy
If you think it's bad now, wait until there's a war.
The military needs to be able to operate under conditions of overwhelming workload and lack of resources, because that's what it will be like if it ever actually has to fight.
> If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training
Then someone has the wrong definition of "training". Training is properly done as part of actual operations. You don't "train" to do something and then do it. You train by doing it, while others more senior to you are watching you while they're doing their part of the operations. For example, the officers who made the bad decisions that caused the collisions you refer to should have been training on ship handling and navigation as part of transiting the ship from place to place, routinely. You shouldn't have to set aside special "training" time for those things.
Firefighting is actually an exception to the above rule, for obvious reasons, so there is a good reason to have special training time for that. But you can do that while other things are going on as well.
> when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter
Your use of the word "managers" suggests to me the root cause of the problem: our military doesn't need "managers", it needs leaders. You don't "manage" a military organization; you lead it. And the collisions several years ago and this fire point to a lack of leadership in our military.
> our military doesn't need "managers", it needs leaders.
Funny, that's exactly what I said 40-plus years ago when I got out. (Naïve youth that I was, I even wrote a letter to Admiral Rickover about it; IIRC, the response was a bland thank-you letter from some functionary — but Rickover was famous for having said about certain managers, there but for the grace of God goes God.)
> Then someone has the wrong definition of "training". Training is properly done as part of actual operations. You don't "train" to do something and then do it. You train by doing it, while others more senior to you are watching you while they're doing their part of the operations.
I have a hard time understanding that. We all know that enormous amounts (maybe most) training is done outside actual operations, both in the military and otherwise. Obviously you are aware of that, so do you mean this in a specific context? Is the US Navy somehow different (and are you in the USN)?
The military is starting to succumb to the same ills of the modern corporate management culture. Everyone is managing up. Leave port on time because that is what I am measured on. I'm also assumed to be making sure my ship can leave on time, because it is ready, since I have been managing my ship correctly. Which I have not been, because no one is watching that.
Similar complaints are as old as time. I'm sure we can find Ancient Greek hoplites saying the same. How do we distinguish it from the inevitable challenges of managing large institutions?
In WW2 sailors fought horrific battles with fire and damage while under fire and trying to keep from dying. Yet today it appears no one gives a shit about training. We dump massive money into building new ships (with tech that often is pathetically bad, see the new aircraft carrier). Maybe our military has been reduced to a money sink for big defense contractors, but that doesn't absolve them from basic training and disciplined planning for disaster which really costs very little to do right.
The article assumes you already know the basic story. Here's a more comprehensive article.[1]
This ship was not at sea. It was docked, and partially disassembled for maintenance. Only 118 of the normal crew of 1000 were on board. On the other hand, they had assistance from the shipyard, other ships nearby, and civilian fire departments. Despite that, the ship burned for days and had to be scrapped.
I've done a lot of FOIA litigation. (b)(6) must refer to a paragraph of the federal FOIA statute - an exemption that prohibits the release of that portion of the image.
Here:
Exemption 6 protects information about individuals in "personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
https://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foia_guide09/exemption6....
At the end of the day the responsibility rest on the Captain. It is their job to see that those under them are well trained, retrained, and reenforced in that training as a daily operational objective. Every good CO I have ever met when taking over a new station will review in detail the training and readiness status of their command as job 1, and not just review on paper but execute all the drills and observe the results. This is fundamental and is taught in detail in command school. Their should be a full set of court-martial for this failure at the command level.
And a juicy (and damning) tidbit from the parent's second link - the San Diego (local civilian) Fire Dept, arriving at the ship's pier 30 minutes after FedFire, and at least 45 minutes after the ship's crew knew of the fire, and knowing nothing of the ship's layout or systems, and having to (in effect) ask passing sailors for directions - was the first organization to actually get a hose to the fire, and start doing something useful - before the fire grew out of control.
jwithington's comment about the whole fire response (presumably outside of the municipal crews) being a "clownshow" is profoundly understated.
Readit News
The fire response read like a clownshow, and this article doesn't even highlight the worst of it. There was a Sailor who saw the smoke and walked by it, thinking nothing of it!
Another officer thought the smoke might have been coming from the diesel generator. Why tf would the diesel generator be running???
It's hard for me to think of the software equivalent of these fundamental errors. Maybe something like finding a spike in network traffic and assuming it's load testing on prod, when you're actually getting pwned?
(Based on a quick search of that report for "DCA"...let me politely suggest that you do NOT read the report. Ever.)
Dead Comment
There have basically been no naval conflicts between fairly matched forces since WWII and the story goes that no one knows how to run a navy anymore. I say running a navy in such a conflict is mostly irrelevant because the weapons which may destroy ships (particularly large ones) are so much more effective now that your fleet would be quickly destroyed.
Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction. Even here the accidents seem to mount lately though as these wandering souls of the doomsday device have seemingly nothing to do
The us navy is in the midst of an identity crisis fuelled by octogenarian politicians that have pedalled the institution into treading cold-war era water with no real direction.
Carriers don't go anywhere alone, and they never stop moving except when in port. They are part of a carrier strike group which includes extensive anti-missile capabilities, both from escorting ships and patrol aircraft (LAMPS.)
> Submarines exist to keep the peace. Their real purpose is that they exist and operate in the dated service of mutually assured destruction.
Submarines are not only for launching nuclear ballistic missiles, as indicated by the relatively large number of submarines that are not designed to carry them. They're used for patrol, surveillance, special ops, escort, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victoria_(1887)#Camperdown...
Can’t say I’m super surprised it’s reached this point though, we’ve been running our military like schizophrenic kids on adderall for the last 20+ years.
Maybe. The reports are very clear that most of the problems are lessons learned but not implemented from the Miami in 2012.
> It’s certainly better than pinning this entire event on whatever E-3 started the fire.
Does this ever happen? I've never seen it.
> we’ve been running our military like schizophrenic kids on adderall for the last 20+ years.
Can you explain?
It does. In this specific case, even. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/1022514854/sailor-charged-ars...
“The U.S. Navy charged a sailor Thursday with starting a fire last year that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego, marking the maritime branch's worst warship blaze outside of combat in recent memory.”
It sure used to. Iowa turret explosion?
In absolute terms, they are very well funded of course. But what I read over and over is that there isn't time for training, because the demand we put on them - the world is a very large place - is much higher. They are told to cut training and deploy. After the collisions, they decided that officers (at least some positions) were too overworked and discussed (maybe implemented) limiting their workweeks to 100 hours.
Think of any organization; when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter, even at the obvious long-term cost. The pressure and immediate demand are too great. If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training, that actually seems like a valid choice - they need to function.
Look at the US Navy: ~400,000 active duty personnel operating ~400 ships (~250 combat, ~150 aux).
Compare to the Chinese PLAN: ~250,000 active duty personnel operating ~750 ships (~500 combat, ~250 aux).
A huge portion of that difference is due to aircraft carriers (11 USN, 2 PLAN), average tonnage per ship, and specifically the USN's lack of frigates.
This arrangement optimizes for the USN's mission of international power projection, where logistics requirements are like an iceberg, with the deployed forces being the above water volume.
However, it does leave a problem of training and experience. If no numerous smaller vessels exist for SWOs and crew to come up through, how do we expect them to have a deep reservoir of experience by the time they're commanding and crewing a destroyer+?
The retirement of the Perry class, subsequent botching of the LCS program (and finally recent selection of a Constellation class design, to be built) left the current USN with ~50 less commands for officers and crew to cut their teeth on.
Deleted Comment
If you think it's bad now, wait until there's a war.
The military needs to be able to operate under conditions of overwhelming workload and lack of resources, because that's what it will be like if it ever actually has to fight.
> If someone is working over 100 hours per week, if they can get a break by cutting training
Then someone has the wrong definition of "training". Training is properly done as part of actual operations. You don't "train" to do something and then do it. You train by doing it, while others more senior to you are watching you while they're doing their part of the operations. For example, the officers who made the bad decisions that caused the collisions you refer to should have been training on ship handling and navigation as part of transiting the ship from place to place, routinely. You shouldn't have to set aside special "training" time for those things.
Firefighting is actually an exception to the above rule, for obvious reasons, so there is a good reason to have special training time for that. But you can do that while other things are going on as well.
> when the choice is product or training, many managers will cut the latter
Your use of the word "managers" suggests to me the root cause of the problem: our military doesn't need "managers", it needs leaders. You don't "manage" a military organization; you lead it. And the collisions several years ago and this fire point to a lack of leadership in our military.
Funny, that's exactly what I said 40-plus years ago when I got out. (Naïve youth that I was, I even wrote a letter to Admiral Rickover about it; IIRC, the response was a bland thank-you letter from some functionary — but Rickover was famous for having said about certain managers, there but for the grace of God goes God.)
I have a hard time understanding that. We all know that enormous amounts (maybe most) training is done outside actual operations, both in the military and otherwise. Obviously you are aware of that, so do you mean this in a specific context? Is the US Navy somehow different (and are you in the USN)?
This ship was not at sea. It was docked, and partially disassembled for maintenance. Only 118 of the normal crew of 1000 were on board. On the other hand, they had assistance from the shipyard, other ships nearby, and civilian fire departments. Despite that, the ship burned for days and had to be scrapped.
[1] https://news.usni.org/2021/10/19/long-chain-of-failures-left...
Here: Exemption 6 protects information about individuals in "personnel and medical files and similar files" when the disclosure of such information "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. https://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foia_guide09/exemption6....
I've not heard much good about the USN on this front.
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/HotTopics/BHR%2...
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/HotTopics/BHR%2...
https://news.usni.org/2021/10/19/long-chain-of-failures-left...
And a juicy (and damning) tidbit from the parent's second link - the San Diego (local civilian) Fire Dept, arriving at the ship's pier 30 minutes after FedFire, and at least 45 minutes after the ship's crew knew of the fire, and knowing nothing of the ship's layout or systems, and having to (in effect) ask passing sailors for directions - was the first organization to actually get a hose to the fire, and start doing something useful - before the fire grew out of control.
jwithington's comment about the whole fire response (presumably outside of the municipal crews) being a "clownshow" is profoundly understated.