IMO, those ships hit the the Navy on purpose, The Officers are not trained enough, The system is too

[CK_John]

complex or a non friendly has hack the system.

[Trust Buster]

1. Eyes do not require technology or training.

[Voltaire2]

2. no that is silly.

The McCain was hit by a 30,000 ton tanker. It is massively unlikely that anyone was deliberately steering that into a destroyer, its not maneuverable. This happened in the busiest shipping lane in the world, and it happened to a highly maneuverable military ship, a ship equipped with state of the art sensors. There is no way a fuel tanker should have been able to hit a destroyer, intentional or not. This was a fuck up.

[CK_John]

3. What about a third ship edging the Navy ship to hit the slow boats??

[Voltaire2]

4. Or perhaps goats were air-dropped onto the McCain by Isis drones?

In the confusion, BAM!

[CK_John]

6. You have a nice day.

[yardwork]

9. Laughing out loud!

[cwydro]

11. LOL!

[Achilleaze]

5. republicans put a freaking 5-time Draft-Dodger in command. Two major ship

accidents promptly happen.

'nuf said.

[Le Gaucher]

7. I have worked in the merchant marine ..you are wrong.

The biggest thing we face is getting cargo to the destination on time .. In many cases there are multiple charters involved and anything like this will set of a long set of claims and counter claims.

In fact, I wonder how is this even possible.. Everyone on board is extra vigilant. As engineers , we used to start up an extra generator , make sure that the starting air bottle was full, enough for 12 starts and stops of the main engine .. (A ship's engine that size uses compressed air to start ) . there are exra hands of bridge , deck and engine room ..all on walkie talkie. Plus, most likely there would have been a harbor pilot on board to keep the ship restricted to navigation channels.

More importantly the ships radar has multiple levels of alarm based on how it classifies collisions threats. This will alert the bridge

Even when the ship loses power , the steering gear can still be operated using emergency power.

[haveahart]

8. Why don't we just get the hell out of other folks backyards? International waters?

[Not Ruth]

13. International waters are no one's backyard by definition

[cwydro]

10. Oh please.

No captain of any vessel is going to intentionally damage their ship and put their crew, not to mention valuable cargo, at risk.

The last collision was found to be the US captain's fault, as I suspected would happen. But I remember these same type posts regarding that collision too. "They rammed us on purpose!"

Smh.

[Not Ruth]

12. If that is the case, have we taken the merchant ships prisoner?

Because they would know if they attacked us

[Squinch]

14. .

[procon]

15. How many watch standers would have been on duty?

Presumably there is more than one person on duty since it was a very busy traffic area, so how did 2 or more people, including officers, miss all the advanced warnings that a sophisticated ship like that would put out to warn about dangers? Is it possible that all the audible warnings were deliberately turned off?

The total failure seems to indicate that all of the watch standers must have been asleep at the same same time, distracted by playing music and video games, or not even at their post. That means there was a tacit understanding that it was OK to shirk off and no one on duty, not the officers or enlisted, would report you.

Even in a business setting this would tell me that the management was lackadaisical and ineffective, in a warship, is it any different?