Why Can't The US Navy Stop Hitting Things?
A series of bizarre collisions have led to the deaths of American sailors, badly damaged the Navy’s global reputation, seen the removal of numerous commanding officers, the “early retirement” of the commanding American Admiral, and left senior media commentator's openly gob-smacked.
The bare facts:
January 2017. The guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam ran aground while trying to anchor in Tokyo Bay.
May 2017. A South Korean fishing boat struck the USS Lake Champlain.
June 2017. The USS Fitzgerald collided with a container-ship off the coast of Japan. Thirty-five sailors were asleep at the time. Seven sailors died.
August 2017. The USS John S. McCain, a Navy guided-missile destroyer, collided with an oil tanker THREE TIMES ITS OWN SIZE on the east of Singapore. Ten US sailors went missing. The remains of some of these sailors have susbequently been discovered.
These vessels cost hundreds of millions of dollars, carry state of the art radar and sonar, are connected to 24-hour GPS from dedicated military satellites, have a regular deployment of sailors standing at bow and stern, AND YET they are still repeatedly crashing into large, stationary objects that the untrained human eye can see from the horizon.
The harbours and sea lanes of the world’s major capitals constantly manage dense water traffic that includes enormous super-ferries, large private ships and thousands of small boats. With no major accidents (touch wood).
The American fleet is running around in a huge expanse of open, uncluttered Asian water. The fleet should be able to sail through these waters blindfolded while participating in non-stop, marathon cowboy dance offs - and not hit anything.
How is it possible that these modern sailors (whose only professional duty is to ensure their vessel doesn’t hit tiny fishing boats and large objects that are slightly bigger than a football field) are allowing these awful disasters to happen?
Are these collisions the result of tragic human error? Systemic steering issues? Putin-inspired computer failure? Unreported drunkenness? A pernicious dereliction of duty? Immoral, man-hating Mermaids? An ancient Iranian sea curse? Poor materials resulting from unpatritoic congressional cost-cutting? Dangerous profit-chasing on the part of the vessel's greedy capitalist manufacturers?
Or are we looking at terrorists using their boats as weapons to hit the American army, much like terrorists are now attacking citizens on the streets on London and Europe?
Or, as some intelligence experts and talkshow pundits are already speculating, did Russian and Chinese hackers take over the computers of these small boats and directed them into the US ships?
As a final aside: Why is it that everything that goes wrong with America nowadays is blamed on the Russians?
No doubt SQR's legendarily bright readership will have the answers.
NB. The commanding officer of the 7th fleet has been dismissed four weeks shy of his official retirement. The Navy couldn’t let him stay on and keep his unblemished record. How bad can things be for an officer of this stature to be dismissed with less than four weeks of his career to go?