As this thing unfolds, I am aghast at some of the decisions I hear the Navy has made over the years. If true, going to 5 hour watch is one huge error in my view. Back in my day at sea, we stood 4 hour watches and I think that is too long. On my own ship, I set up a 2 hour system. I can't do that single handing as I do most of the time now, but I limit the nights at sea while in the shipping lanes to one night, then get in some where or out of the shipping lanes so that rest can be had. Then I see them turning off the AIS system. Again if totally true, real bad deal. Not wanting to give away positions is understandable. Had the same thoughts myself thinking of how to transit the Pirate areas. So turn off the transmitting system but leave a listening system active. It is not clear what the heck they turned off. Then maybe the worst error is relying on computer simulators for training. Crap, that won't work, you have to get on the bridge in the wind, fog, cold, rain and other shit that comes with the task. The vision of rookies at night in the busiest shipping lanes in the world, with the AIS shut down is petrifying! It is a wonder we have a destroyer left to send out. https://arstechnica.com/information...tale-of-uss-fitzgerald-tragedy-or-half-of-it/
I blame myself. I was playing Battleship at the time, I didn't realize I was sinking real ships. barfo
4 hour watches for the crew were the max, as captain, any high traffic or limited visibility situations, I would extend that for my self as necessary. ultimately always responsible so always in the wheelhouse for those occasions.
Standing both surfaced and submerged OOD, we were on 6hr watches. But with ~8 people on watch at one time concerned solely with not running the ship into something that'll leave a mark, the odds that everyone is too tired to think clearly at the same time about things you've been drilled repeatedly on are low.
But on the plus side, in a submarine, if you did run into something we probably wouldn't hear about it.
Ha! Come on man! A sub is nothing like a surface ship in the shipping lanes. More like a sailboat a 1000 mile from the shipping lanes. But I bet your all on watch when you got company.
Some of those shipping lanes, like the Strait of Malacca or the approach to Tokyo Bay are so damn busy, we go to the next level of watches. Man fire control and get a course and speed solution on troublesome boggies. The old Mark1A took the guess work out of the picture. Of course that cause another problem, less guys to stand the steaming watches, but it was usually for a short period of time. Don't need that now, they have AIS! Shit! They turned it off???
we were fishermen standing watch by ourselves, only thing keeping us up sometimes was the shriek of the watch alarm. Ive pulled 72hours in the past.
No. You jumped the gap again. I do note the numbers of them in the military, especially the Navy and I do note medical cost the Navy says it takes. I wonder what impact this has on decisions like cutting back training of officers that stand the underway watches. They did say they cut this back. I can't quite tell how many we are talking about but I guess it is more than 100,000 persons. They don't train anywhere near that number of officers. I suspect the previous Secretary of Navy was a complete disaster for the service. Perhaps this new fella can sort is all out now. http://www.military.com/daily-news/...d-v-spencer-takes-over-as-navy-secretary.html
U.S. Navy swapping $38,000 periscope joysticks for $30 Xbox controllers on high-tech submarines https://www.geekwire.com/2017/u-s-n...cks-30-xbox-controllers-high-tech-submarines/
Yes, this sounds about right. Right now, I am using a $10 radio controller, good for about 50 feet to operate the dodge port or starboard function on my autopilot. The actual approved hand held device which is wired, good for about 8 feet is $475.
