Naval Vessels, Shadowy by Intent, Are Hard for Commercial Ships to Spot

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/world/asia/navy-collision-uss-mccain-oil-tanker.html

by andysinclair • 9 years ago

41 45 9 years ago

eps• 9 years ago

Wouldn't the burden of steering off collision courses be on these shadowy hard-to-spot ships then?

maxaf• 9 years ago

Especially considering that their sensor suites must be orders of magnitude more powerful than commercially available civilian equipment.

aaronmdjones2• 9 years ago

Primary navigation radar gives away your position, as does active sonar, in the same way that AIS does. If they have the latter off, it's not unreasonable to assume they also have the others off.

Passive sonar would pick up a tanker if the engines are running fast enough or the ship isn't particularly streamlined (which tankers invariably aren't) so this is probably a failure of communication.

mikepurvis• 9 years ago

It's ridiculous that they're out there unlit and not broadcasting their position, and somehow not 100% liable for the damage caused by such behaviour.

frandroid2• 9 years ago

And you know, turn on the lights if necessary...

dhimes3• 9 years ago

The navigation lights should be on. They are not immune to the ColRegs (but they can add more lights and dayshapes if they want as long as they don't add anything confusing).

I don't understand how, after three accidents, they don't have a policy of careful watch in an area like that. Something still doesn't smell right with the info we're getting.

alain94040• 9 years ago

Yes, the tanker belongs to "Restricted in Ability to Maneuver", which means they have priority over pretty much anything. You can't ask them or expect them to detour to avoid you, you must avoid them.

jnty• 9 years ago

That's not correct - according to the Collision Regulations, simply being a large ship does not make you "restricted in ability to maneuver." That definition is reserved for vessels carrying out an activity which restricts them from altering their course, such as dredging or mine clearing. A large oil tanker may be "constrained by draught" in a narrow channel in which case it does indeed have right of way over smaller vessels, but larger vessels will be constrained too so "priority over everything" becomes a pretty meaningless concept as everyone will have it.

In open water, large vessels like that give way to smaller vessels when appropriate all the time.

https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=def3g_RAM https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=def3h_CBD

docdeek• 9 years ago

Relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...

bflesch• 9 years ago

This article contains yet another beautiful visualization by the NYT team. Really adds to the article and gives insight into how this incident developed and how to assess it in the greater picture.

Convinced me to think about it as an accident instead of some conspiracy to hurt us navy through various merchant vessel crashes.

pvg• 9 years ago

The visualization is pretty but missing an essential bit of info: scale.

dsfyu404ed2• 9 years ago

I expect the navy to adopt slightly modified SOPs to prevent this from happening in the future.

In a less friendly neighborhood of the ocean no vessel would be allowed anywhere near that close to a navel vessel without permission. It's not like they don't already know how to protect themselves.

dhimes3• 9 years ago

I expected that after the first incident.

dsfyu404ed2• 9 years ago

Big organizations have slow turnaround times. Policy changes need to be investigated thoroughly for unexpected consequences before implementation. Lives are at stake here. You can't just do another round of VC funding to get more of them.

sathackr• 9 years ago

makes me wonder how much they're really paying attention if they can be hit by a 30,000 ton tanker without anyone so much as sounding an alarm.

If that tanker were loaded with explosives and had malicious intent, we'd be missing a lot more than 10 sailors.

edit: changed 12,000 ton to 30,000 ton. It was carrying 12,000 tons of fuel oil but is a 30,000 GT vessel.

wbl• 9 years ago

Why do they not transmit location during relatively peaceful times? There is more of a threat from collision then hostile action in these waters.

noir_lord2• 9 years ago

Because if a surprise war was launched the first salvo would take out more of your ships.

Broadcasting your position in peacetime sounds good until it's not peacetime.

Of course the question is then - is any nation-state suicidal enough to launch a large scale pre-emptive strike on the US Navy.. Terrorists of course are another matter.

Raphmedia• 9 years ago

What's the point of patrolling if you transmit your location? Imagine how useless local police cars would be if they were equipped with a public GPS.

wyldfire2• 9 years ago

In a hundreds-of-million USD war vessel, LIDAR-or-some-other-clever-tech-based collision sensors sounds like a well spent couple-of-hundred-k. Probably not-too-hard to upgrade the fleet for a few billion USD.

Just spec it to GD like "y'know that beep that I get on my car when I'm about to backup into a tree? Let's get that on these boats."

mikeash3• 9 years ago

I'd think that they'd already have radar systems that can track every ship in a 50-mile radius.

kchoudhu5• 9 years ago

Using radar gives away your position and radar capabilities. For this reason, most active navigation measures are (almost) never used on naval ships.

noir_lord2• 9 years ago

They already have multiple systems that do proximity warning plus manned crews.

Lots of things beeping and going off just results in them been ignored, this had happened on flight decks and hospitals.

Semi-autonmous collision avoidance that's on by default however could be an interesting idea.

To err is human, to really fuck up requires a computer - as one of my professors used to say.

MengerSponge• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

kchoudhu5• 9 years ago

Momentum on a 8000 ton ship is a hell of a thing. By the time collision alarms are in play, you're already screwed.

wyldfire2• 9 years ago

I would argue that the range of the collision alarm should take the ship's mass into account. Certainly my minivan's does. Have softer threshold alarms that sound earlier. Yes, even if it causes some false indications it might be a net improvement (though they should be cautious in making this kind of design change because it might not be a net improvement).

na85• 9 years ago

LiDAR only really works in good meteorological conditions, which is frankly when you need it the least.

As cars have repeatedly demonstrated, LiDAR doesn't work well when there's water droplets in the air such as rain, snow, fog, or sea spray.

ed312• 9 years ago

Could it be possible there was hostile action aboard the US Navy vessel? There may have been a (possibly classified) incident in progress at the time of the collision. If there were truly no confounding factors... this should be massively embarrassing and _at_least_ career-ending for those who failed to act while on watch.

ceejayoz• 9 years ago

A screw-up seems a lot more likely.

The Navy just punished another crew for running a destroyer into a cargo ship. I'd imagine we'll see a similar response here.

Naval Vessels, Shadowy by Intent, Are Hard for Commercial Ships to Spot

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