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USS Fitzgerald: The Fort Report
Sightline Media is an independent media group (formerly part of Gannett) that focuses on the US military and publishes The Navy Times and her sister publications for the Army, Marines and Air Force. On Monday they published part of the Navy’s internal review of the 2017 incident aboard the USS Fitzgerald that claimed the lives of seven sailors. It is not pretty.
Overseen by Rear Adm. Brian Fort, it describes a ship (and a Navy) in disarray, stretched to the limit by multiple deployments, ill-trained and ill-prepared, low on morale and distrustful of leadership on the bridge. Fort describes finding bottles of urine all over the combat information center as evidently the crews were so bereft of trained personnel that those who knew what they were doing couldn’t even take bathroom breaks.
The Navy sought to bury this report for fear of lawsuits from the families of the dead and injured. It is a four part series and can be read here.
Published in Military
Just finished listening to the discussion about this on “All-Marine Radio” today…My blood is ready to boil; and I’m thinking very unchaplain-like thoughts right now. Thanks, @ejhill, I think.
That’s the Navy for ya…
I’m not sure it’s just the Navy, Spin.
I’d read, but I will let Nanda be mad for me.
It is what happens when you stop focusing on the mission, and focus on other things.
By “other things” are you talking about the officer of the deck?
I mean eliminating Training programs to save money. I mean promoting people to make a political point.
This really makes my blood boil…the OOD and the CIC OIC not speaking to each other while on watch and under weigh? What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here????? It is the bridge of a billion dollar plus major warship, not a high school cafeteria. Heads should roll and fast. If this is remotely common on Navy bridges, we have a serious problem.
This is a problem that dates back to the Korean War, and it became worse during the Vietnam War. A bean counter from General Motors made tactical and strategic decisions, like Rolling Thunder, an incremental bombing of North Vietnam from month to month.
The purpose of the military is to maximize the destroying of property, and to maximize the killing of the enemy, and the minimizing of our own losses.
The purpose of the military is not to hold static positions, it is to seize territory, or make the rubble bounce. This costs money, and it requires a strong full time military, not multiple deployments by reservists. It requires war planning, and commitment by the political class to clarify an objective, and then get the hell out of the way until the objective is achieved.
Some heads have – at least those on board ship. Since this report was commissioned and submitted to former Defense Secretary James Mattis last I tried in vain to find any report of discipline inside the Department of the Navy or the larger structure at the DOD.
Obama Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is an obvious culprit but he’s gone, although I’m not sure his priorities are.
Thanks for linking that EJ, altho’ it gave me cold chills. I can imagine almost exactly what it was like to try to get out of that berthing compartment, btdt.
No money, no time, all ops. Straight from the yard to duty with a busted surface radar. Complete command failure, leading to watchstander failure on the bridge and bottles of piss in CIC, aka the forward gym.
I saw plenty of dysfunction when I was in, but we could still deploy and fight – all the same trends were there in the ’80’s but today they’re turned up to 11. This situation sounds as bad as the Army back in the ’70’s.
If you’re referring to the chance that estrogen poisoning contributed, I’ve been speculating about that since I first heard the bit about the catfight between the OOD and the CIC duty officer. (Go ahead, moderate me.)
Call me unreconstructed, but even though I can’t envision the worst weakling male officers I ever saw behaving like that, I have no trouble imagining it happening today. But even if affirmative action did play a role, that’s a trivial factor compared to putting an unsupervised JG on OOD in those waters.
They say the CO suffered brain damage – how could they tell? We have the worst political class in our nation’s history today, and they’ve left their mark on my Navy. Just as China’s ramping up, too.
Doug,
I understand about your description of “bean counters”. I would only add that this may be the result of the latest version of the bean counter. The AI bean counter isn’t just counting equipment capability against a false premise. This new AI guy (like all AI guys) is looking to fire people. The more your cool AI is accepted as 100% viable the more people get fired. If you remember, this is what I suspected when this issue was first discussed. They are simply trying to run the ship with too few trained crew members. Remember the hype of the self-driving car. All AI is like that. First, we sell you on the AI being perfect then we find out where the real problems are (similar to Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare). As I have tried to express in the self-driving car debates, don’t underestimate a human. Humans are capable of amazing things both physically and mentally. A flaw in the AI armor can cause a catastrophic disaster and won’t be revealed until the right situation arises. Humans with multi-layered command structures re-enforce each other with knowledge and real-world experiences. Humans also have an instinctual drive for self-preservation that is very hard to reduce to programmatic form.
I prefer humans in command. BTW, as a former Process Control Sales Engineer, I know all about AI bean counters. If it really is just cut and dry with very few variables AI is great. However, if anything like split second complex decisions need to get made, I’d prefer a human in command.
Regards,
Jim
Except that this is not how we won the West. It is not how we won the Philippines, nor how we shaped Asia in the 19th Century versus European colonial powers. Nor is it how we kept our own hemisphere from becoming a much worse place. The “break things, make rubble bounce” thing is post WWII Pentagon propaganda, designed to avoid the hard tasks, with few shiny toys and big risks to senior commanders, we had performed for over a century already.
Thanks for posting. I had read the story earlier in the day. The same underlying problem existed here as in the SOF guys getting away with losing a thumb-drive, which showed up in an Afghan bazaar. The response was to ban thumb-drives and monitor networks for their presence, instead of court-marshalling someone and relieving some commander.
The Specialist Manning fiasco followed from this, as he waltzed in and out of a secure facility with a recordable CD or DVD, supposedly carrying his tunes. His supervisors did nothing, and why should they, since they had no fear of relief or court-martial (see the thumb-drive episode).
The ship in question had no leadership, and the layers of command above had, according to the story, repeatedly failed to respond to reported critical maintenance requests. Was an admiral retired at his last permanent rank, or busted back to captain? That is how you get real return to basic discipline.
I saw the Navy Times thing yesterday and immediately sent it to two Navy buddies with whom I worked in CIC. My first thought when I originally heard about the collision(s) was, how could that happen and what was going on in CIC? We would NEVER let a contact get even remotely close to the ship without notifying the OOD, we would run out to the bridge and tell him ( always him in those days) if need be.
I am a retired Chief Quartermaster. From 1990-2001 I was forward deployed out of Sasebo, mostly at sea on four different amphibs, where I was Assistant Navigator. I was underway OOD qualed on one of the ships and stood JOOD/conn on the others. I’ve done the transit in and out of Tokyo Wan via Sagami Wan many times.
It’s a challenging sea detail. For some reason that escapes me now we almost always left Yokosuka late afternoon, guaranteeing it was dark in a few hours. Tokyo Wan is heavily regulated with Traffic Seperation Schemes, speed limits and mandatory VHF reporting points. Exit the TSS into Sagami Wan and it’s the Wild West. Out bound traffic scatters to the four winds and inbound traffic is all jockeying and funneling into the mile-wide TSS lane. It’s a place to bring your A game. And on the ships I was on that’s how it was treated. I can’t imagine the CO not being on the bridge here. The whole report is so appalling it’s almost unbelievable.
It’s always interesting to hear from the experienced pros, Chief.
This mishap brings to my mind the sad and horrible image of that German airline captain locked out of his own cockpit, pounding on the door as his suicidal young co-pilot flew the plane full of passengers into a mountain. While he need not stay on the controls during the entire flight, how very unprofessional of him not to routinely clear his bladder before strapping in so he could at least stay in the cockpit throughout the relatively short flight.
As for the ‘cat fight’ between members of the ship’s wardroom (another sign of leadership failure on the part of the Captain and others), it was best said by Cool Hand Luke:
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
I thought it was the prison warden who said that.
(Finally, a movie reference on Ricochet that I actually recognize!)
I thought so, too, Ret…Strother Martin’s “Captain”.
Can’t pass up a chance to take a shot at Ray Mabus who seemed more concerned about SJW issues like getting the “man” out of ratings.
Or getting rid of ratings altogether, although that turned out to be a bridge too far.
Actually they both said it, or something like it. I thought it better to quote the title character rather than the supporting character.
I haven’t been able to get this sad report out of my head since I read it the other day. I can’t help wondering if the modern military has to spend so much money on arms and equipment that they don’t have enough money left for training.
Google the “Fat Leonard” scandal. I recommend the Rolling Stone article. It decimated the leadership of the Pacific Fleet.