OT: US navy collisions

Hey guys dumb question from down under.

There's been a couple of collisions lately, how can a navy ship collide with another vessel?

I would have thought that there would be multiple radars being watched by automated control and warning systems as well as by people.

Surely a dozen alarms are sounding several kilometers before a pending collision?

Cheers.

Reply to
Trumble
Loading thread data ...

Presumably they are running "Windows for Warships". Half :)

formatting link
"Some of the belief that the Queen Elizabeth class use Windows XP could come from the fact that much of the fleet use a specialised version of Microsoft Windows 2000 (?Windows for Warships?) for the fleet"

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Sure, but none of that helps at all if there's a miscommunication in crowded waters, and at the last moment one ship decides to zig when the other thought they were going to zag, and the other decides to zag when it was thought they were going to zig.

Reply to
bitrex

The interesting thing is that in most cases, the damage has ben to the mid-ship of a military ship.

Are they really trying to run just ahead of the bow of a commercial ship ? Did they misjudge the speed of the commercial ship or tried to create a provocation ?

One problem with any Microsoft product is the rapid version history.

For a product like a warship, the planned life cycle is several decades. How to match the software and hardware life cycles is a _big_ challenge.

Win NT 3.51, Win 2k and Win XP were quite good versions, but life cycle issues might force the use the Win 2k even these days.

During the last two decades, I did not have any objections of using Windows systems for _soft_ real time applications, provided that I had _full_ control of what hardware and software was used on each processor. These days Linux systems have similar performance.

Of course, I wouldn't do any time/safety critical application on any virtual memory platforms such as Windows or Linux.

Reply to
upsidedown

Indeed, but...

Warship systems are so complicated that no one person can comprehend them, and emergent behaviour becomes a real problem.

An example, which indicates the scale of that issue is that a couple of years ago there was a serious study and tests into what would happen if GPS failed on ships. The results horrified everyone: nobody realised how many critical systems depended indirectly or directly on GPS. No, I can't instantly find a reference!

Famously the first WfW-equipped ship was dead in the water for several hours due to WfW teething problems.

Of course I have zero knowledge of what has happened in the recent cases, but "crew fatigue" feels like a convenient shield/deflector/misdirector.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

It was a Liberian-flagged freighter, it would probably also be unjustified to assume what kind of collision-avoidance hardware that ship had on board. Maybe the crew had been working 28 hours straight. Maybe none of them spoke English. Who knows.

Don't like it then send a letter of protest to the Liberian government to be promptly dumped in the trash, liberoonies

Reply to
bitrex

Collision to the aft port at 5:24 AM local time sounds like another case of a dumpy freighter with a crew asleep at the wheel.

Reply to
bitrex

de with

d by

g collision?

-xp/

There's nothing to understand to get the ship out of the f_cking way! Those class destroyers/ cruisers are very fast and highly maneuverable. Getting out of the way of big freighter or tanker is like missing a tethered buoy!

Well for one thing, the collision proves they let the other ship come insid e the blind zone of their navigation radars ( they have two navigation rada rs, one overpriced milspec grade and the other Furuno based ), which sorta 'splains what happened. The USN is a cesspool of corruption and incompetenc e. The ships and their shenanigans are little more than a ruse for the cert ifiable morons and dupes. Their main purpose is to turn taxpayer dollars in to gold for the corporate thieves.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

By putting itself into danger either intentionally or by neglect.

That is why there are conventions. It looked to me like the warship got itself T-boned as a bonnet ornament on the supertanker - the tankers leading edge bulbous bow made a fine mess of the warships hull.

The supertanker probably didn't have too much choice about what happened

- such huge ships take a long while to do anything like manoeuvre.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

It would need to be /two/ crews and/or a significant systems failure.

The USN ships should be far more maneuverable than any freighter.

Maybe they did implement this...

formatting link
and follow the links for similarly pithy comments on related occurrences.

... and ran into [sic] human factors issues

formatting link

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Indeed.

So why has there been several similar occurrences recently? Once is happenstance Twice is coincidence Three times is enemy action ... but who is the enemy? :)

Reply to
Tom Gardner
[snip]
[snip]

Or is the commercial ship deliberately setting up a collision? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Those are inapplicable, and old, references to charting errors, and have nothing to do with collisions with moving objects.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

To quote an old Pogo cartoon, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

I have not worked for the Navy in this century, but when I did it was up to the two persons supposedly watching two separate radar screens, one on the bridge and one elsewhere, to notify the bridge when the ship is on a collision course (range is closing and bearing is constant), as well as keeping them posted on the location of all nearby targets. There were no automated alarms. One possible failure mode is that each of the two operators assumed that the other was watching. Another is rapid maneuvering putting the ship on a collision course with a very near ship, such that the bearing is not constant prior to collision, a slightly more complicated scenario requiring actual competence by the crew. When funds are short training is the first thing cut, and on the job training often proves to be expensive or deadly. Add the difficulty of attracting qualified personnel during a badly managed war, and you have the recipe for expensive failures.

Reply to
glen walpert

Probably true, but maybe they were in the wrong place because they relying on old charts or faulty equipment - and not looking out the windows!

I fail to see how the warship didn't spot the other ship, and I'm scrabbling around for improbable explanations.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

"Full control" means potting the mouse and keyboard ports :-)

What is so special about system design for a warship compared to a civilian ship ?

The only thing I can think about is the greater battle damage expected and hence more redundancy required.

Any non-US ship that solely rely on US-GPS (or Russian GLONAS navigation for that matter), will run on ground sooner or later !!

Was that some printer issues or something more critical ?

Reply to
upsidedown

It would have to be "_each_ of the commercial ship_s_".

If a warship can't stay out of contact with a civvie ship, then the USN has /serious/ problems!

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Maybe it's time to start firing a few large rounds at these offending ships?

--
Never piss off an Engineer! 

They don't get mad. 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Nothing that I know of.

Second-order differences might be fewer examples in existence, longer lifespan, and hopefully more attention paid to testing and fault avoidance/recovery.

The need for a quicker response; being dead in the water for a few hours might mean being dead under the water.

Fire control systems are somewhat more critical, and I don't mean extinguishers! The Iranian A320 found that to its cost.

Can't remember, can't be bothered to look it up (if it is public knowledge), and clearly it was more than a printer problem!

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Just announce that any ship within 500 yards will be sunk ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jim Thompson

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.